Sometimes I find myself feeling stressed, for no obvious reason. Things can be going well, it can be sunny outside, but I’m still feeling grumpy and generally fed up. “Irritable” would be a charitable adjective to describe the mood!
It took me years to realise that the biggest trigger for this, for me, is clutter and mess.
Now, don’t get me wrong – with two small boys, I don’t aspire to living in a show home, but there is a level of “out of control untidiness” that helps me have a seriously short fuse.
And I’m also one of the world’s best procrastinators, when it comes to sorting through stuff and clearing out.
Not a great combination.
Anyway, yesterday hit one of those short fuse points and I could feel myself getting more ratty and unreasonable with each breath, as all I surveyed seemed to be mess and clutter.
So I asked someone to look after the boys for an hour and focused on just one room – the worst one. And I got stuff sorted. Just an hour, that’s all it took. A deep breath, diving in and a focused blitz, with a reward at the end. It’s far from perfect, but it’s back down below the danger levels and I’ve lost that feeling of overwhelm.
For me, it’s a fact that decluttering – having a good clear out – be it a single room or the whole house – is wonderfully cathartic. It’s a great way to release the past, that I might have been hanging on to, and create space for the future.
Though it’s a job I rarely enjoy while I’m in the middle of it, letting go and clearing out gives me such a boost that I can smile for days on the back of just an hour’s clearing out.
So I’ve now got 3 bags of stuff in the boot of the car, to go to the charity shop, next time I’m in town, I’ve found all the menacingly lurking unpaid bills and I can actually see the floor (and my desk!) in my office again.
And I was wondering, is there anything you would like to clear out and declutter, to feel happier? How about sharing your thoughts via the comments box?