Is Your Cluttered Space Making You Depressed?
Try clearing just one small space at a time. Just one. Soon you’ll catch momentum.
This past weekend, my husband announced quite out of the blue, “I’m going to finish my coffee and then clean the top of my dresser. That’s going to be my, you know, one thing for today.”
One thing for today? What was he talking about?
Then it dawned on me.
In 2014, I set out to declutter my house by tackling one small space at a time. My hope was that the benefits of a truly peaceful, decluttered house would spill over into other areas of my personal and professional life and by extension, my family’s.
We were in a pretty sad place, figuratively and literally, at the time.
For six weeks I religiously worked my one small space mantra, and I was able to get from my house from depressing, heavy, can’t even think to peace, serenity and openness (spatially and emotionally).
I felt like anything was possible.
Can simply decluttering a house make you feel this way?
It must’ve had an impact on my husband. I hadn’t mentioned ‘one small space’ in a long time, and yet here he was, bringing it up out of the blue as if to remind me of the way we once were. Like a football coach watching film and calling out plays.
We’ve been spiraling down lately. We’ve been working to keep each other positive by talking more gently, more patiently, more compassionately. We’re both too mentally tired and exhausted to keep taking turns bringing each other up, so I’ve decided we both need to think and stay positive, to hold ourselves accountable, to give ourselves the chance to make this one life what we dreamed it would be for our daughters, our extended families and ourselves, so that we can then be beacons of light for others.
When you spiral down, you feel hopelessly inert. Paper begins to feel heavy. Laundry becomes overwhelming. Routines exhaust you.
Before you know it, you feel unsettled and anxious in your own home. You don’t know which pile to start on, so you put on your blinders and opt for Netflix.
You start hating the mail and all the papers that come home from school. You look at the hundreds of crayons, pens, pencils, markers crammed into the plastic five-drawer and wonder how many years you’ve been accumulating them and if it’s wasteful to toss them.
You cringe at the piles of notebooks and unfinished projects strewn about, and try not to see the boxes of tiny tools, shipping labels and hangers reflecting the last big thing you started and let go.
All around you is evidence of spiraling down.
And then your husband calls a time-out. He’s watched the film of our lives before and knows the team needs a reset.
He calls out a play: “The top of my dresser is my one small space for the day,” he says.
As promised, he finishes his coffee and heads upstairs to tackle the receipts, loose change, and all the bits and pieces he’s accumulated for some time.
He sorts, recycles, tosses, dusts.
His team takes notice.
The air changes.
For the rest of the morning, we did laundry, dusted, vacuumed, folded, all while listening to a podcast episode from one of my favorite people.
We pulled up the mattresses and deep-cleaned under the bed. We filled a couple donation bags and drove them to Goodwill.
My dresser drawers can now breathe.
We can sit in my Grandpa’s old rocking chair again.
The guitar is back in its place of prominence, free from the swallows of clutter, waiting to hammer out Hotel California.
That was Day One.
Day Two was more laundry…and batch cooking.
A friend posted on her blog how she simplifies her life by spending one day a week cooking meals for the entire week. A former culinary student, she calls this batch cooking.
Brilliant.
So Day Two was spent making large quantities of:
* Taco meat
* Rice
* Potato & Cabbage Stir Fry
While not whole meals, these starters will allow for quick meal prep throughout the week. It’s a start. And I confess, I’m still struggling to plan family meals with a daughter trying out dairy-free, gluten-free vegetarianism.
Today is Day Three.
My one small space for today is the kitchen floor.
I plan to SOS that baby back to its pearly whites.
Momentum is in the air.
The clutter struggle is real, yes? I’ve spent more time than I care to admit trying to get out from under the “stuff”. If you’re like me, working hard but struggling to simplify your environment to live a healthier, happier life, then you’re welcome to follow my journey at www.rebootyourbucket.blogspot.com. I know it’s a blogspot blog, but I’ve decided to use my energy to simplify first. When I make good headway, maybe I’ll move the blog to WordPress. For all of you struggling out there, let’s do this thing, one small space at a time.
