Day 9

Success! Yesterday was pretty easy--it's sweltering here, so just about everything went into the laundry. (Nurturing parent: OK, great! And you took the time to get everything put away, including shoes and other things that didn't go into the laundry bin, so rejoice at the fact that you calmly checked off another day of success.)

Upcoming challenges: doing laundry and getting it all put away in one shot, and traveling neatly. That one's a particularly big challenge. My husband has told me that he thinks that when we stay in a hotel room or guest room that I "aggressively spread out and mess it up," and that he thinks I "would have to put effort into making it that messy." (I know he's not happy about it, but he does say it with love.)

I'm sometimes shocked by how quickly I can transform a perfectly neat hotel room into a disaster area, and it's so unintentional. (At least, it's not conscious.) I started making an effort the last time I traveled, a few weeks ago, to Boston. And, not surprisingly, when I consciously set my intention to keep the space clean, stayed aware of my actions, and was willing to put some time into maintaining a living space, it wasn't so hard. It wasn't so easy for me, but it wasn't so hard.

It's just that there are so many other things I'd rather be doing than putting my clothes away! I suppose that's the brat speaking (that's another one of those sub-selves), and the adult would explain that it simply makes sense to invest a little time up front and here and there to keep things in order so I don't waste a lot more time searching for things or getting upset that they're wrinkled/dirty/at the pool in the hotel we checked out of yesterday.

I go back and forth on this. On the one hand, I believe there are significant undercurrents, emotional and psychological, that affect our behavior. We have clutter for a reason, or for lots of reasons, and it's important to shift the deeper beliefs in order to create lasting change in our space (and selves). At the same time, I've spent years thinking and talking about the reasons for my clutter and haven't made enough significant changes in my own space to be content.

I guess that's where my chore-chart comes in. It's my next step, my attempt to see what happens if I'm willing to do the part I don't really want to do (put away my clothes every day). It's as if I believe they should magically be put away for me since I'm too busy doing other, more important things. This is also a bit of a stretch for me, to see what it's like to commit to something over a period of time, not knowing whether or not it will work.

I hope that I can focus on what's right in front of me and change the bigger picture with little shifts. My old nutritionist shared a wonderful quote with me:

"Extraordinary results are created by doing ordinary things consistently."

I give this quote to everyone in my workshops. For me, the aim is to balance the inner and the outer, the awareness of why we clutter and the effect it has on us, and the small steps we can take each day to turn our homes into a places of joy.