Our lives are hectic in this 21st century, which makes establishing peace in our homes more of a necessity than ever. We need a sanctuary from the frenzy. When our homes make us feel safe and cozy, they become a refuge where we can recharge our spirits that can get pulled in so many directions out in the world. Peace is a personal matter. What defines peace for me may not come close to your definition. When I think of peace, a lot of “R” words fly around in my mind—like release, rejuvenate, refresh, relax, and rest. Whatever your definition of peace, consider that you are not just a homemaker or a housekeeper, you are a peacemaker and a peacekeeper. The tone of your home rests in your hands. That’s a tall order, but when you reduce the clutter in your home, it’s much easier to keep the peace.
We’ve all heard that the one thing that never changes is change itself. Things don’t ever stay the same in our life—the very fact that we get up each morning to a new day is proof. Much of our stuff is about what was. Little by little, day-by-day, we have to let go of who we were to become who we are, and when we release the clutter in our homes we are allowing that process to happen. We spend our lives losing what was, to what is. As mothers we lose our babies to toddlers and our toddlers to children, then to teenagers and adults. De-cluttering is key to the natural processes in our life. When you de-clutter, you will be allowing your space to reflect who you and your family are now. Your home is your most prized material possession and you have the right to live in it “joy” fully and “peace” fully. As I’ve grown older, I’ve watched my dark auburn hair give way to gray. I feel like I did when I was 25, so when I look in the mirror and see my reflection, I see me in a really good old lady costume and mask, and it tickles me. You get to decide if letting go is hard or easy, sad or fun. So why not have fun?
There are only two ways I suggest to shut the fuss up! Either get rid of it or put it away. If you get rid of it, throw it away or give it away. Well, why not sell those unwanted items? Simple – because you don’t want to give yourself another task to do! If you give yourself that option, you set yourself up for a garage sale project with a mountain of pricing or a bunch of time spent on craigslist.org, both of which requires a lot of follow-through and dedication to the task. You aren’t looking to gain money, you are looking to rid your home of clutter and invite peace back into your life. Getting rid of what doesn’t make you happy and peaceful now is the fastest way to shut the fuss up.
This plan to de-clutter is not for those who find peace in their clutter. What I mean is this: if you happen to find peace when you are surrounded with your children’s handmade pottery, tchotchkes you purchased on your travels with your spouse, or your grandkid’s watercolor paintings, by all means, don’t throw them out. But if your clutter bothers you and you wish your home was freer of it, start regarding it as a throng of revolting voices disturbing your peace.
There are different categories of clutter, but they all nag, taunt, shame, badger, heckle, scoff, jeer, and pester. You’ve tried to organize some of it, but most of it just gets moved around (that migrating clutter I wrote about earlier). Trying to organize clutter is like trying to get a bunch of tone-deaf people together to start a choir. You can’t clean when you have clutter because you can’t find your surfaces. So your house gets dirty. I once met a blind woman who said she could walk into a home and know if it was messy or not. She said, “A house full of clutter has a different sound and smell.” Clutter has energy of its own, and it can sap our spirits with its countless venomous voices.
Clutter is also insidious. If it’s left in one place for more than 21 days, it becomes invisible and it lowers its volume, becoming white noise in the background to which you become accustomed. Have you ever noticed the relief you feel when that white noise gets turned off? Your ears are suddenly enveloped by a silence you didn’t even know you were missing! You’ll get that same relief when you deal with your clutter. You’ll be amazed at the peace you’ll feel that you didn’t even know was possible!
Take a few minutes and look around you. Let what you see speak to you. Where is the most noise coming from? What’s clacking the loudest? What’s drumming in the background, more quietly, yet persistently? By using your imagination to add make-believe sound to your clutter, you are actually sharpening your awareness of what you want to kick out or make a place for. You’ll also begin shopping with a new awareness. Everything you bring into your home has a voice. Have fun with this new awareness. Talk back to your stuff and warn it of its pending eviction, and ask everything that comes into your life if you need it and love it.
Paying attention to the voices is fun and enlightening. When I started to eliminate my clutter, I discovered that at one time some of the voices harmonized with my home’s interior, but as time passed, the voices that had once sung happy songs were now crooning annoying melodies. It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all, it’s a small, small world….
There were also those tired voices of stale, outdated ideas from a stack of old magazines, chanting, “We’re O Magazines, from 2006! Even though we’re filled with old news, just take ten minutes of your free time and read one of us. Read us read us! See what you missed in 2006!” We keep old magazines because we haven’t read them, we don’t want to miss anything, and we think we’ll actually take the time (at some point) to peruse their pages. Search for the delicious looking recipe on the cover. Rip out the Top Ten Beauty Must-Have’s list from years ago. Realistically, when we have an extra ten minutes in our day, we’re NOT going to decide to read old information from an outdated periodical. Chances are really good you have last month’s magazine sitting there unread too, and that’s at least still a current possibility. So dump anything that’s outdated. If you’re still feeling guilty, know this: thanks to the Internet, all the old copies of magazines are now archived online. If you really need that Beauty Must Have list from 2009, then you can Google it. Dump and Google.
Note: If you subscribe to any magazines and you don’t read an issue before the next one comes, you are a true SHE, and SHEs shouldn’t subscribe . . . to anything. (Besides, you can always catch up on old news while you wait at the dentist.)
For me, one very distinct voice I needed to ignore was the price I’d paid for things that no longer fit my criteria for keeping: do I need it or love it? I remembered I spent good money for that lamp, but in time, it refused to go with my new loveseat and end table, and so it begged, “Please release me, let me go,” every time I saw it. That fancy decorator box I spontaneously splurged on had turned into a subtle souvenir of my vulnerability to advertising, and so it hummed of guilt. Maybe you’ve been given a lot of your stuff. Free is a nice price. But keeping free stuff that doesn’t make you feel happy is like having the television on with some stupid program you hate watching. It’s free. So what?
When I’m having trouble letting go of things because of guilt over what I paid or because the item was free, I think to myself, ‘There’s probably a family out there who needs this very thing. They’ve been looking all over for a red and white polka-dotted tablecloth to take on picnics and they just can’t find one. And here I am, keeping this tablecloth all to myself and not even using it, when that family is out there who will use it, love it and give it a happy home.’
Envisioning this family helps me remember how much I have and how much my unwanted stuff might bless someone else. You know that saying: “One woman’s give-away is another family’s favorite polka-dotted tablecloth.”
Another voice of clutter comes from the homeless. That’s all the stuff you love and use, but don’t have specific places to put it. It’s probably stuff you’ve had to look for in the past. You’ll catch yourself saying, “Oh, there you are! I was looking for you yesterday.” Just think how much time you spend each year looking for stuff! (It’s probably at least a couple of days.) It seems easier at the time to just put those items down somewhere, or out of sight in a drawer, because there’s not a dedicated place to put it. To quiet the noise from your homeless stuff, you have to establish homes for each individual voice. Cramming a voice in the wrong closet, drawer, or cupboard, the basement, the attic, or under a bed, is like hushing a gossip and putting him or her out of sight. Clutter shoved out of sight may go out of mind, but the minute you open a drawer or closet that holds an assortment of muzzled clutter, you’ll be like Britney Spears opening her front door to a mob of ravenous paparazzi. It isn’t pretty.
The other day, I had a mess in my office from a recent video shoot. I ignored it for three days because I told myself it was more important to be writing this chapter. But I could see the mess out of the corner of my eye (and hear it out of the corner of my ear) and it wouldn’t shut up! Finally, I put my timer on and said to myself, “I can take five minutes to clean this up,” then began delivering the noisy voices to their homes. One of the items was an assortment of ribbon. I have a plastic storage bin that holds all my ribbon for wrapping gifts and decorating. As soon as I put the wayward ribbon into the bin with the other ribbon, it was like putting singers together. There was harmony, because they all belonged with each other.
If we minded the rule “A place for everything and everything in its place,” we’d never have to search for our glasses, car keys, purse, coat, cell phone, shoes, scissors, or tweezers again. To break the cycle of losing things and find homes for stuff you want to keep, you could use your imagination.
If you’re a romantic, you could pretend to be Cupid. For example, take an item that you tend to spend a lot of time looking for, say, your car key. Pretend you’re a matchmaker and you’re going to hook up Miss Car Key with Mr. Wooden Peg and Mr. Right Pocket (that place in your purse where you are going to put Miss Key when you are out with your car). As a matchmaker, you can relish seeing them together and be so happy for the new couple that every time you see them together you feel like Cupid. Oh, and what Miss Key does with Mr. Wooden Peg when you’re not looking is none of your business!
Or, here’s another idea. If you think of Miss Key as a real person who is direction-challenged and needs your compassion and help to make sure she gets home each time she’s in your care, you’ll have more fun establishing this habit. Think of it as a “keys are people too” concept. Say to your car key, “Okay Miss Key, I’m going to find two homes for you this very minute. At home, it’s going to be a convenient spot so when I head for the car you’ll be right there in my face. When I get out of the car after I’ve driven somewhere, I’m going to choose a home for you in my purse where you’ll always go.” Once you’ve established homes for the common things you tend to lose, the stories you’ve attached to them will help you practice using the new homes until they are second nature for you.
Included in the homeless clutter is what I call IPODs—Important Piles Of Decisions. These IPODS are in strategic places throughout your home where you chronically dump your indecision. They are piles of miscellaneous items that you didn’t want to put away either because there was no “away” or because you were tired or just didn’t want to deal with them at the time. Piles are very personal and we don’t like to talk about them, but they need to be cured if we are to enjoy a peaceful home.
There are two categories of piles: good piles and bad piles. A bad pile is more than six inches of miscellaneous stuff to include coupons, deposit slips, immediate attention mail, credit card receipts, junk mail, old magazines, notes from a recent seminar, greeting cards, maps, old grocery lists you made (and forgot to take to the store), bills, devotional cards, memos, and more junk mail. The stuff of IPODs. A good pile is any pile of “like” stuff; such as a stack of old magazines, a collection of bank deposits, just junk mail, etc. It takes approximately five minutes per inch to take care of a bad pile of papers, but it only takes a minute or two to deal with a pile of like items.
Much of our clutter is made up of IPODs. What is it about us that we can so easily get into the habit of putting off decisions about what to do with something we have in our hand right now? I think it’s that we get so busy and are optimistic we’ll have time on another day. But another day just adds another couple of inches to our piles. Chances are if you have many IPODs, you’ve got closets, cupboards, and drawers packed with miscellaneous stuff too. Bad piles are symptoms of constipation. In the worst case scenario, the garage can be an IPOD too! “Oh, I don’t know Hon, just put it in the garage.” Unfortunately, that sentence has created an epidemic of homeless cars. You can find cars parked in the driveways all across America. A car parked in the driveway at the end of the day means only one thing—the garage is an IPOD.
Typically, you can find IPODs on the dining room table, the kitchen counter by the phone, the chair in the master suite, the coffee table in the living room, and the passenger seat of the car. If IPODs are left unattended, they heat up and turn into bigger IPODs. When the IPOD is taking up needed space—say, so you can eat, entertain unexpected company at the door, or drive someone somewhere—these IPODs are “temporarily” moved to still another location, and the indecisions are bagged or stashed out of site. That’s how our closets, cupboards, and drawers get constipated. These stashed bags of uncertainty turn into archives and in time those archives grow to haunt us and cost us money! Fibber McGee’s closet can easily turn into Fibber McGee’s storage unit at around $100 a month. The cure is spending fifteen minutes every day de-cluttering. If thirty minutes of decision making takes care of six inches, fifteen minutes will reduce an IPOD by three inches, and in a year’s time, just fifteen minutes a day will eliminate 91¼ feet of junk from your home.
Once you’ve eliminated an IPOD, it’s important to ensure that it won’t come back. Because it has been a convenient drop-off spot, in order to stop the habit you need to put some sort of decoration in that spot, like a vase of flowers, a candle, or a bowl of fruit. It will probably take 21 days before you’ll stop wanting to put something down in the spot, but once you are out of the habit and have established the habit of putting things where they belong, you can actually leave that space with nothing there!
Dealing with clutter is all about making decisions to let go and finding homes for what you need and love. That takes energy, but it can really be fun, especially when you look at it as a way to establish peace. When you spend 15 minutes every day de-cluttering, you will be letting go of noise, finding happy homes for noise, and creating peace. In one year, you will have spent 3.8 days as a human tranquilizer, Cupid, realtor, and caregiver. You will have become a saver of space, time, and energy, and an ambassador of your own peace.
There are other nagging voices that sap our energy, peace, and happiness in the same way the “stuff” of clutter does. Those are the voices of routine chores that need attention: the chanting of dusty furniture, the screeching of smudged windows, dishes in the sink bellowing for suds, and dirty laundry shouting things out. Then there’s the nagging from uncompleted projects like the dress that whines to have the other sleeve sewn in, the jealous half-read book that sulks and moans because you are onto a more interesting book, or the shoes that need repair and sit physically challenged, wailing for a helping hand. (I can’t wait to show you how to deal with routines and undone projects, but that’s a little later. I want you to focus on de-cluttering first, because it will bring the most dramatic results. And peace, of course!)
Start in your favorite room in the house and in the most peaceful place you choose in that room. Clear a spot for a candle. Light it, and envision yourself immersed in peace. Feel how safe it is to be there—how warm, cozy, and inviting it is in the light of this flickering candle and your new-found approach to de-cluttering. Say:
I am in a peaceful place. All the peace I can experience is mine right now. All I have to do is be open and alert to accept this peace that is mine. I’m no longer going to fight my disorder, instead I’m going to use my wonderful imagination to lead me to make this room a peaceful and inviting center for me. I’m going to be steadfast in refusing to listen to negative thoughts, especially from myself and from others who sabotage this promise of peace I’ve made. I declare that peace will grace this room with its soothing presence from now on. In this moment, my peace rushes to me, enough to share with my family, my community, and my world. I am a peacemaker and a peacekeeper, and I’m not alone in my quest to put peace into this room. My Creator is always mighty in the midst of me. I love who I am, and I’m going to do this for me and in my way. My way is the only way for me. My peace can never be denied me because my source of peace comes from God, the indwelling essence of my life.
Okay peacemaker, as you tranquilize this room, transforming it into a place you love to go, you’ll be spreading the margin of peace to end up including the entire room. There is such power in de-cluttering and once you get into it, you’ll find it’s fun! You’re going to need a timer and two GROIN (Get Rid Of It Now) containers for this peace mission—a box and a bag. Put a GROIN box or plastic tub in the middle of the room you’ve picked to contain the stuff you want to give away. (Having it in the middle of the room will grab your attention over the ruckus of all the unwanted and unneeded clutter, and remind you of your goal.) Hang a GROIN garbage bag over the back of a chair with its mouth wide open for the junk you’ll throw away. Now you’ve set the scene for making peace with this room. Every day set a timer for a fifteen-minute GROIN session, and when you’ve handled every culprit that’s been disturbing the peace in that room, you are ready to take your GROIN tools and your imagination to the next room.
Once you’ve established peace in that first room, anytime you get overwhelmed, take a break and go to that room, light the candle, and re-remind yourself what you really want. It took a long time for things to get out of order, and it takes time to de-clutter too. Be patient with yourself, and don’t give up.
Note: Sometimes it’s fun to do the three-minute GROIN Dance in rooms used most by the family, like the kitchen and living room. Put a fast-paced tune on, grab a GROIN bag, and see how much you can throw away in three minutes while the song is playing.
Soon, you’ll have a home that is simple and serene and reflects who you are now. It’s a holy process of letting go of the past and creating a home that makes you happy to be in. A home that fills you with peace just by walking into it.Once it’s de-cluttered, you won’t be preoccupied and consumed by “stuff management.” You’ll be able to spot the onset of clutter when things start to get out of place, or something hasn’t been used for a long time and needs to go. You’ll be in happy awareness mode and you’ll have arrived at a whole new level of freedom. You will not only be establishing peace in fifteen-minute increments, you’ll be liberated from the past and free to enjoy your home as you were meant to. When you de-clutter gradually, you won’t see immediate results, but if you’ll trust the process and stay with the plan, you’ll be pleasantly surprised how easily you will transform your home.
Now, if you didn’t already, go light a candle, and read my prayer of peace. Every time you have a GROIN session, end it by taking a few more minutes to light your candle and enjoy the peace. Be glad that you are expanding that peace in your own time and your own way.