Focus Challenge – Month 7

Please, take this moment to give yourself a HUGE pat on the back for all of the decluttering progress you have made in your life. WOW, over 200 days that we've been changing our life for the better and over 200 pieces of clutter that have been evicted from our life. WTG, I'm so proud of us!

You are over halfway through your challenge and are probably a changed person on both the inside and the outside. I bet your eyes are more tuned to identifying clutter and your Motivation Meter is going strong. The clutter doesn't stand a chance!

Now that we're feeling pretty good and read to face our next month, let's do a Focus Challenge! I bet a lot of the clutter that was right out in the open has either been purged, repurposed (to not be clutter any more) or may soon be on its way out. Let's focus on hidden clutter for the next 7 days.

Here are 7 areas to check for your daily decluttering item. If you find and declutter something there, great, because you're done with your challenge for the day! If not, you'll just have to keep looking for one thing to declutter that day. ;-)

* Outside space

* Purse and/or diaper bag

* Desk/dresser drawer in any bedroom besides your own

* Trunk of vehicle

* Refrigerator door

* Magazine rack or bookcase

* Least used kitchen cabinet

I'd Rather Stay Home From Work and De-junk

The words below were from a post on the 365 Days of Decluttering Challenge running on a Delphi forum that was the point of origination for our little challenge here. These thoughts were shared by Jan during the early days of our challenge. I loved them so much that I saved them. Sometimes, I like to find and read them. When I'm feeling the need for a kick in the pants, because my Motivation Meter is lagging, that is. ;-)

Actually, it is easier than I expected.

Purging one thing a day, that is.

At first I was thinking long term - 365 days!

Impossible!

But, taking it one day at a time is simple.

I got up this morning and purged two small things.

This is getting infectious.

I'd rather stay home from work and de-junk.

There is still room in the trash can, and tomorrow is garbage day.

Look out hobby room.

My reply to her was...See? Sometimes it's just taking one step and then another, and figuring out where you're going after that. :-)

So, let's keep going, just by taking babysteps and decluttering one thing each day. You're doing terrific!

Decluttering by Doing

I’ve been asked by several people if doing something, i.e. an unfinished hobby project or a household repair, counts as decluttering for the challenge. According to my opinion, it does. We declutter to rid ourselves of anything unwanted, unloved, unused and unneeded, and doing these jobs replace the decluttered stuff with good stuff instead.

Then, we go on to talk about how unfinished things make us feel. Some feel mad, some feel guilt and some feel frustration with themselves, but not one person I’ve known has felt good about unfinished things in their life.

In my eyes, the completion of an unfinished thing is one of the top three ways to declutter. Why? Well, let’s start with the obvious: physical clutter. The item in its unfinished state, i.e. a box full of pictures that you want preserved in an album or a small hole in the wall from the doorknob, doesn’t make you feel good when you see it. It might be something that nags at you, like the unfinished pictures project, or unsightly, like the hole in the wall.

Additionally, you may have other pieces of the project that, by themselves, are clutter. For the pictures, you may have a photo album and a myriad of scrapbooking supplies. For the hole, you may have tools and supplies for patching the wall. Once the project or repair is completed, those items will no longer be sitting around waiting to be used. So, you’re actually decluttering many items instead of just one!

Then there is the mental clutter. If you’ve walked by that hole and every single time you see it, you think “I need to patch this”, mental clutter is growing in your mind like cancer. That thought will infect all other thoughts around it and poison them. That small “need to do” thought will become thoughts where you attack yourself (Uh, I can’t believe I haven’t taken care of this yet), where you attack others (Those darn kids need to stop running in and throwing open the door) and, worse, when your ability to overcome this clutter gets weaker by the minute (Geez, I can’t do anything right….which leads us to feel defeated and why bother doing it at all).

For the picture album example, it gets worse. Undone things that would result in happiness are the ones that make me feel the worst, anyways. It’s put away in a cabinet and one would think that it doesn’t enter our thoughts too much. In my opinion, we are happiness and fulfillment driven beings. When we are denying ourselves of these things, the resulting feelings permeate our more conscious thoughts, and, the negative feelings we are experiencing throw a shadow over many areas of mind.

You may not realize how unfinished “happiness items” make you feel bad now, but, when you complete them, you should notice that you tend to feel better than the item should make you feel. That is because the happiness that you now receive from the unfinished item (being able to share and enjoy those pictures more readily is but one part). Overall, you may be feeling something more--joy, a sense of being connected to your past, and a surge in your motivation meter, for example. All of those feelings allow us to feel a more authentic sense of happiness than just the literal representation of a photo album.

I encourage you to Declutter by Doing during your 365 Days of Decluttering journey. You will love the results!

The Motivation Meter

So, this challenge has been going on for a few weeks now and the newness & flurry of fired-up inspiration has lost its shine somewhat. It's to be expected.

I do my best to remember for myself, and will share on here, is that every effort you give, every day, is worth it. Sure, it pays off for accomplishing staying true to your challenge of decluttering JUST ONE ITEM a day. What I also want to teach everyone about is what I call The Motivation Meter.

You may be a self-aware person and know of this, even if you call it something else. Human beings haven't evolved enough to have unlimited motivation. Some of us have strong internal motivation that will keep us moving in a forward & positive direction in our life. It does take us far. Some of us rely solely on external motivation to do anything and everything, and many fall somewhere in between.

One thing a day sounds deceivingly simple. But, seriously, life has ups & downs. There will be a hard day (or more than one) during this journey when just accomplishing our goal of decluttering one item will seem too hard to do that day.

Once someone does overcome all those external AND internal forces trying to derail them and is able to JUST DO IT on those hard days, I encourage them to take a short moment to let the feeling of Accomplishment, Pride in Yourself, Overcoming Adversity, etc. WASH from the mind down the body.

Besides the short-term accomplishment of doing your decluttering commitment for the day, you will begin collecting "motivation points" for later use. Every time we collect a motivation point in our day, they group together and inspire later efforts. I am living proof that refilling your motivation meter with motivation points will drastically change your approach to many things in your life. :-)