Are you up for the challenge?

Clutter....clutter....clutter! Do you have it in your life? In your mind? In your house?  I have come to loathe the word itself.  Mostly because I realize it is so tied to my spirit and mental attitude towards life.  I firmly believe that physical clutter increases the mental and emotional clutter we have in our lives.  During these first couple of weeks of 2018 I have done a lot of reading and spent time looking around my world for the ways it is is tripping me up. 

According to Psychology Today:

1. Clutter bombards our minds with excessive stimuli (visual, olfactory, tactile), causing our senses to work overtime on stimuli that aren't necessary or important.
2. Clutter distracts us by drawing our attention away from what our focus should be on.
3. Clutter makes it more difficult to relax, both physically and mentally.
4. Clutter constantly signals to our brains that our work is never done.
5. Clutter makes us anxious because we're never sure what it's going to take to get through to the bottom of the pile.
6. Clutter creates feelings of guilt ("I should be more organized") and embarrassment, especially when others unexpectedly drop by our homes or work spaces.
7. Clutter inhibits creativity and productivity by invading the open spaces that allow most people to think, brain storm, and problem solve.
8. Clutter frustrates us by preventing us from locating what we need quickly (e.g. files and paperwork lost in the "pile" or keys swallowed up by the clutter). 

I have always had a sentimental side, which helped me keep every piece of artwork my children made, and hold on to things that I thought would mean something one day. As my life has changed over the last few years, I have had to look at many things that I thought would surely have been family heirlooms and realize that they are now just clutter in the scheme of my journey.  It definitely feels funny to think of ridding myself of items that seemed to mean so much to me at one time. Although, I have been doing that little by little over the last few years, I am making 2018 the year to clean out and clear out.  It will help me in so many ways! So I am picking up the Declutter 2018 Challenge!  Rachel Jones over at Nourishing Minialism has a great Declutter Challenge and I hope you will join me on this journey...not just about getting rid of extra "junk" around the house but also extra "junk' around our hearts and minds!

Join Rachel and declutter 2018 things in 2018!

We Had to have "The Talk"...the housecleaning talk.

It was bound to happen. I knew somewhere, sometime, I would be close to snapping and to avert a major explosion I had to scheduled a talk.  It started when we came home from church and I told the boys "I need to talk to you."  When I said it,  I could literally feel the hairs on the back of their necks raise in alarm. Their brains immediately kicked into hyper drive to search their minds to make sure there wasn't something they could be in trouble for or to prepare for what ever bad news they just knew was coming.

I called a talk...because my house is a mess, a big, huge, drives-me crazy-kind of  mess.  I called a talk because their bathroom smells like a locker room and I was worried the mold in there was so ominous it might rise up and take over the universe while we slept. I called a talk because my girlfriends and I all sat around after church and lamented the lack of motivation in our kids when it comes to house cleaning.  I called a meeting because some how we have to get back on track! 

It seems somewhere over Christmas break (after the parties and guests were done) I lost control.  And now I see the calendar creeping dangerously close to the end of January and it has just gotten worse.  I truly worry that the directors of Hoarders, Buried Alive will show up at any moment with an intervention team.  So, here is my very public pledge...I will regain control of my empire with my minions at my side!  We will hunt and kill each and every dust bunny that is hiding in the corners of our kingdom.  We will rid the counters of clutter and the evil piles of paper that have gathered in an attempt at mutiny. We will dust, vacuum, mop and shine our way to victory.

We will NOT appear on Hoarders....at least not just yet.