by kathilipp | Jan 28, 2015 | Clutter Free, Guest Blog |
When people have asked the question: “What is one thing you wish you could change about yourself?”, my first thought, after a slightly faster metabolism, is being organized. When I drive through a neighborhood and see someone’s garage door open with bikes hung from rafter hooks, tools lined up on hangers, and assorted bins of sporting equipment, I have an urge to stop and ask if I could take a selfie in front of it…just to fanaticize about what my world would look like if a magic cleaning fairy waved her magic squeegee in my direction.
Organized people don’t use saran wrap on their Tupperware, only to find a stack of lids in some random craft box three moves later…after the said Tupperware has been used as a pet dish and eventually tossed.
One time, I bought a huge three-ring “everything you could ever need to know about being organized” binder. It was obviously written by someone who made Martha, from the Bible, look like a total slacker. The book was full of master copies addressing everything from running a B & B out of your bonus room to keeping track of your child’s fluoride treatments, and the care and nurture of beekeeping. The big selling point was that it came with “a money back guarantee”! If the book didn’t organize my life within a year, I could return it for a full refund or a voucher for home school craft supplies and a pound of fair trade coffee beans.
With hope and enthusiasm, I took out all the relevant pages. I knew once I got everything copied and began the task of filling all the sheets out I would be able to keep track of EVERYTHING! The one thing I hadn’t planed on was having to keep track of all the papers that were now no longer confined to a binder. I lost them. Gone. At the end of the year, not only was I still disorganized, I couldn’t send my half empty book in for a refund. Something needed to change. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be organized; I just was too busy to take the time I needed to really de-clutter and clean beyond the surface. After all, I am a people person who teeters on the edge of being spontaneous. Seriously, we are talking about me. A woman who lost one of her tap shoes and kept the other one for about four years just in case. Just in case what? I run into a one legged tapper who happens to be a size 9?
This year, I have been reading “Clutter Free” and really understanding that clutter isn’t just something that happens in your house, closets, and under the bed. Clutter can become personal and can cost much more than another filing system. The other day while doing a de-cluttering challenge, I came across a box of random things that had been on the desk, then the table, and finally followed the clutter migratory flight pattern to the far corner of my sewing area. Magazines full of tantalizing recipes, old junk mail, craft supplies, and a small brown paper bag filled the repurposed apple box. I opened the bag and out slipped a simple embossed card. My heart sank. It was a card I had purchased and intended to send to a friend who recently lost her spouse. My clutter and disorganization had spilled over beyond myself. With the card in my hand, I decided that what I have it isn’t about freeing up space in your drawers, but in your life and your heart.
My word for 2015 is BALANCE. It is something I will be talking about for the next twelve months. For now, I am taking it one closet and cupboard at a time and cleaning out the things that do not matter to make room for the things that do. ~ Marci
You can find out more about Marci at her website, and you can also discover her two books, The Adventures of Pearley Monroe and Empty Nest:Strategies To Help Your Kids Take Flight!
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by kathilipp | Jan 22, 2015 | Clutter Free, Guest Blog |
Clutter Free and Me
You know Linus and his blanket from the Charlie Brown cartoons, right? Well, there’s Sharon and her clutter, okay? As a little girl I was challenged with all my dolls and accessories. I shared a room with my older sister who did not do clutter. Every Saturday was clean your room day. What an ordeal for me! It continued on into college. Spaces were getting smaller and I was collecting more “things”. My dad was amazed at my ability to pack it all into the trunk to go home each spring. As I married and had children it became like a snowball rolling down the hill increasing in size and multiplying.
I recall a friend visiting for a playgroup, who commented on how messy our dressers were. She never returned. I felt shame realizing not everyone lived like I did. There were neat people. How could I become one?
Over thirty-five years have gone by since that day. The ebb and flow of clutter remains… on my mind constantly, always like a foreboding storm. My friend, Kathi Lipp has written a book for people like me. She understands that shame, that forever overwhelming feeling, and the energy-zapping demon of clutter.
“The problem is that clutter can become so overwhelming that to try and attack even a little of it can feel defeating. So instead, you give up and live in the piles.
Clutter never lets you settle on one thing. There is too much distraction, too much stop and start; too much ‘I’ll get to it when I can.’
It shames us. It steals our joy. It makes us exhausted. It brings up bad memories. It keeps you guilty…
Clutter keeps talking to us, weighing us down, and keeps us from living the life we were designed to live.”
She gets me. But then she offers words of hope:
“In the next several chapters, we’re going to talk about how our head keeps us bogged down in clutter – the lies we tell ourselves to keep clutter alive and how we can retrain our mind to stop trusting in stuff to meet our needs.”
Really, Kathi?
I have read several of Kathi’s other books. Most recently The Cure for The Perfect Life and her practical, spiritual, and humorous ways to handle my procrastination worked wonders so why not trust her with my clutter? She invited me to be a part of her book launch and I accepted, willing to be clutter vulnerable with the world.
Clutter Free discusses how to get rid of stuff, how to keep it from coming into my home; and why I keep it, and more.
The chapters on what it is costing me tugged at my heart knowing my clutter keeps me from entertaining, from enjoying my hobbies, and from following God’s plan for my life.
As of today, at least 25o items are gone, most of them trash and some to give away. My mom’s piano and unnecessary items from my remodeled kitchen have found homes.
Freedom, peace…HOPE
Sharon Paavola
Sharon writes about hope, healing, and God’s love along with book reviews.
Purchase Clutter Free – Quick and Easy Steps to Simplifying Your Space on Amazon or Barnes & Noble now!
by kathilipp | Jan 21, 2015 | Clutter Free, Guest Blog |
I’ll Just Put it Here for Now by Alexandra Kuykendall
We have a house with a front door that almost never gets used. Sure we open it to go on the front porch to get the mail, but almost everyone who comes in and out of our house does so by way of the garage and our mud room. The “mud room” is a landing place between our kitchen, laundry room, garage and stairs to our basement. In other words, it’s a vortex of stuff.
And because we are a family of six, we’re talkin’ a lot of stuff. Six people’s worth of backpacks and cleats and sweaters and artwork and leftover lunches, to dump every time we walk in the house.
On top of the regular inflow of clutter, its snow season where we live. Which means for the last month and a half we’ve needed snow boots, hats, gloves, scarves and snow pants for sledding about two times a week. The rest of the days, a single jacket will do because it’s back to Colorado sunshine.
A few days ago, I could barely walk through, not to mention over, all of the MESS that had landed in this spot. Visitors coming in and out of our house were greeted by this “welcome mat” of coats and socks and school papers and lunch boxes strewn everywhere. I needed to do something about this disaster of a space.
I grabbed Kathi Lipp’s newest book, Clutter Free: Quick and easy steps to simplifying your space. This is what I found:
“It’s so easy to just put things somewhere “for now” and then leave them there day after day, week after week, month after month until our house becomes a cluttered mess.”
This landing had become our “for now” spot with all things coming in and out of our home. Kathi asks, “What is causing you to put things down “for now”? Are you feeling too rushed in your everyday life? Is there never a chance to reset?” Ummm….does she have a nannycam positioned in this mudroom of mine? I needed to take the hour required to clear this space of its clutter.
I decided our mud room should hold only immediate needs. The jackets, shoes, backpacks, and gloves we need TODAY as we walk out the door. There shouldn’t be soccer backpacks hanging on hooks because it’s not soccer season. There should be no flip flops in shoe bins when we have snow on the ground. And there should not be four coat options per person when we can only each wear one jacket, one hat, one pair of gloves at a time. All of these things we “put here for now” have overstayed their welcome and need to be tucked away in coat closets and bedroom closets to be brought out in a few days or a few months when we need them.
So I did just that, moved everything back to its designated spot (and in the process redesignated some locations) and gave a bag full of shoes and hats away in the process (tips I also learned from Kathi’s book). With all of the piles cleared out it felt as though I could breathe when I stepped in my house. And when my husband walked in the door he proclaimed, “Praise Jesus!” Well, yes, always. But also thank you Kathi Lipp for a practical nudge to get the clutter out.
Alexandra Kuykendall is a mother of four, ages twelve to three, Alexandra Kuykendall spends her days wiping. Wiping counters, wiping bottoms and wiping tears. Alex lives in Denver with her family where she serves as the Specialty Content Editor for MOPS International (Mothers of Preschoolers). Her first book, The Artist’s Daughter: A Memoir, chronicles her questions of identity from girlhood through motherhood.
Find her at www.AlexandraKuykendall.com.
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Purchase Clutter Free – Quick and Easy Steps to Simplifying Your Space on Amazon or Barnes & Noble now!
by kathilipp | Jan 19, 2015 | Clutter Free, Guest Blog, Uncategorized |
When Facing Your Clutter Feels Too Overwhelming by Cheri Gregory
- “You over-react to everything.”
I’ve heard these accusations all my life. I’ve also been labeled
For four-and-a-half decades, I thought there was something very wrong with me.
That I was defective.
Beyond repair.
Then, I read Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking and learned that I’m not defective, just different.
I’m an HSP: .
HSPs and Clutter
According to “16 Habits of Highly Sensitive People,” an HSP is likely to
- be overwhelmed by strong sensory input. (i.e. visual, auditory, etc.)
- be bothered by intense stimuli, like loud noises or chaotic scenes.
- feel more deeply.
- be more emotionally reactive.
- take longer to make decisions.
- become more upset if she makes a “bad” or “wrong” decision.
- take criticism more personally and experience its effects more strongly.
De-cluttering can trigger every one of these, causing me to over-react, shut down, or both. (Sometimes simultaneously!)
I’ve learned that in order to stay out of the “Overwhelmed Zone” while de-cluttering, I need two things: awareness and an HSP-specific plan.
Awareness
In Clutter Free, Kathi says,
Owning is not bad. But we must understand that there is a price to be paid for everything we own. Owning too much chips away at our freedom.
HSPs can pay a higher-than-average price for owning to much stuff, and the de-cluttering process can be especially stressful.
For years, I felt blind-sided by my own reactions to the de-cluttering process, even though they happened every time I tried. When I started to accept and even predict them, they became far more manageable.
Every time I de-clutter, I have three main reactions:
- The visual chaos becomes over-stimulating. Suddenly.
- Sorting through my stuff evokes emotions. BIG emotions.
- Deciding what to keep and what to toss takes time. Lots of time.
An HSP-Specific Plan
When I de-clutter, I give myself these permissions and reminders:
- DO start small. Set a timer and do what you can in a short time span. Then take a break.
Don’t force yourself to keep going–that break is vital. (And whatever you do, don’t haul everything out of a closet and spread it out all over the room to “force” yourself to deal with it all!)
- DO acknowledge your feelings. De-cluttering is a loss process. Every item has a story; much of your stuff holds memories. Honor your heart even as you let go.
Don’t get stuck in guilt or shame. You don’t have to keep gifts to “prove” that you love the giver. You don’t have to hang on to old purchases to “punish” yourself for spending so much money.
- DO develop criteria ahead of time. This prevents analysis paralysis. For example, deciding “If I haven’t worn it in ___ months, out it goes!” puts you in an objective frame of mind.
Don’t force yourself to make big decisions on the spot. It’s okay to say, “I’m not ready” about an area or an item. It’s okay to move on for now and come back.
Finding What Works for You
Every HSP is unique. Make your own lists so you can become aware of what happens for you…and what works for you.
Be sure to check back next Monday, when several special guests will share their HSP Clutter Free stories and tips!
Wonder if you, too, might be an HSP? Subscribe to Cheri’s blog and receive your FREE “HSP–Who, Me?” PDF.
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by kathilipp | Jan 15, 2015 | Clutter Free, Guest Blog |
A year ago we moved into a wonderful home after living in a tiny apartment for three and a half years. I had visions of making this place a home, but we ended up dumping boxes on the floor and leaving them there. When people came to visit, I picked up all the stuff around the common living areas, stuffed it into grocery bags, and hid the bags next to the boxes in my master bedroom making sure to keep the door closed. 
It isn’t fun to sleep surrounded by chaos, but any time I would set out to clean things up, I was so overwhelmed not knowing where to start or what to do with all of the things in the piles on the floor. I’d end up literally feeling exhausted and take a nap. The chaos was like kryptonite defeating my best plans.
Reading Kathi Lipp’s Clutter Free gave me the information I needed to not only deal with the physical aspect of the chaos but also understand the mental and spiritual aspects of WHY I make the choice to hold on to things or continue to believe that purchasing more stuff will make me happy. The first part of the book had such great insight that explained exactly what is flawed with my thinking about stuff. 
It’s tempting to skip this information and just get to the “how to” part of the book, but understanding the WHY was the permanent change in the way I think about everything in my house that I needed. Even though I focused on decluttering my master bedroom first, I found myself questioning the value of items I came across in every room and closet throughout the house. 
Now, I can’t help but declutter as I go about my daily routine and come across items asking myself, “Do I currently use it? Do I really love it? Would I buy it again?” Heck, I even watched my husband throw away a piece of equipment when he finally admitted that it wasn’t worth keeping around because when he did try to use it, it only worked half of the time.
I spend my time blogging and speaking to women about identifying their priorities and arranging their lives to reflect those priorities. Whether it’s Christmas, your New Year’s goals, or how you want to raise your children, when you identify what means the most to you, you realize what DOESN’T and you can get rid of those things. Kathi hit it on the head when she wrote:
At some point, we need to end some things so we can hold on to the things that are most important to us. And when we define the things that are truly important to us, we can start recognizing the things that are not important to us and eliminate those things from our life.
Once I got that concept regarding my stuff, the chaos no longer had control over me. I had the power to look at sections of my house and attack them with the game plan Kathi explains so simply.
This book isn’t about micromanaging the possessions we have, it’s about not letting the emotional aspect of the possessions run our lives. Because of understanding the “why” and learning the “how to” that is in Clutter Free, I know what to keep and what to give away. It’s freeing and now when I go to bed, instead of being surrounded by boxes, bags, and stress, I’m surrounded by peace, comfort, and beauty.
You can find out more about Luna at her website!
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