10 Ways to Consistently Clear Your Commitments for a Calmer Life
Hannah always has an excuse as to why she can’t meet up with her friends. She always seems to be in a state of crisis. There is her family to organise and transport form here-to-there, her work commitments, the emails she has to reply to, the calls she has to make, the emergency repairs and vehicle issues, overdue payments, the clutter to tidy in her home. Her friends see her as a stressed-out mess with no priority for calm and wellbeing.
Hannah can’t see the forest for the trees. The detail has overwhelmed the big picture.
If you are anywhere near the level of how Hannah is operating, then take stock before you damage your health.
What if you could return to a state of balance and calm?
Like weeds in your garden, you need to persistently pluck out the clutter to maintain clarity in your life.
The best way to get on top of the weeds is to clear your physical and mental space from the overgrowth, daily.
The practice of ending your day with a mini clear out is a habit that I have found sets me up for my evening, my sleep and ready for the next morning.
Decisive Decluttering
You have a choice whether to calendar and schedule specific daily times to declutter, do things as soon as they occur, or both, which is my suggestion.
If you schedule times, make them small and manageable (5 to 10 minutes where possible) and flexible enough to allow for interruptions and sudden changes.
If a declutter task has been neglected and built up over time, be prepared for many minutes and possibly hours to bring things back to a manageable state.
Make a rule that you will never neglect your declutter time for more than 2 days in a row when things get ultra-busy in your life.
These areas of life attract volumes of clutter and here’s how you can keep them under control:
First thing in the morning, calendar your tasks for the day, including your To Do’s. Know that it is unlikely you will complete your To Do’s, so be prepared to move them to the following day as needed. Try to prioritise the 3 most pressing and aim to get them done before lunch.
Any readings or bookmarks in your browser need to be read now, assigned a calendar time or deleted. The likelihood of you reading something you keep putting off is unlikely, so take the pressure off and delete it.
At the end of each day, glance through today’s email only. Delete the emails that are no longer relevant, mark any spam and advertising as junk and use a flag to mark anything that needs your attention ready for the next day and schedule it in your calendar.
Build in tidying, clearing and decluttering time as a part of your activities and habitual routines: Put your shoes away as soon as you enter your home, put your clothes away as you take them off, make your bed as soon as you get out of it. These tiny habits bring big results.
Home maintenance. Some jobs get very unwieldy when you don’t keep on top of them. You can quickly end up living in a dump when you don’t pay attention to the peeling paint, marked walls, chipped plaster, and areas needing repair. Ensure you assign time weekly to tackle maintenance tasks. This is what your weekend is partially for. The less you own, the less you have to maintain!
Packaging and plastics. Recycle all that you can and move that clutter out of your home and as soon as it enters your home as junk mail. Ensure you have a “No Junk Mail” sign on your door.
Paperwork needs quick prioritisation and a decision to do or not do as soon as possible. Use your smartphone to take a jpeg photo or pdf photo scan to keep a digital copy and consider recycling the original wherever it has no legal importance.
Recruit responsible help. If you are part of a family, then the whole family has the responsibility to keep your home tidy and uncluttered. If you have a partner or more, all are responsible for the living conditions, expenses and day-to-day management of life. In your workplace, your colleagues need to pull their weight as well, and you need the power to decide to do it, delegate it or delete it, as appropriate to the task.
Plan methods to get thing done more efficiently, e.g., always clean from the top down, always pair your socks as you hang them to dry, always choose the most impactful task first.
Tend to your budget and tax daily, rather than weekly, monthly or yearly. Otherwise, it becomes a huge and foreboding task. Act on those invoices, receipts and bills within the day of receiving them.
Lighten your load by getting into these new behaviours and you won’t get buried by the clutter as other priorities consume your day.
We have no time for dealing with mess in our lives and the only way to keep on top of things is to maintain as we go.
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