While growing up, I was the teenager whose room was messy and my dad always took one look at my room and said “The state of your room signifies the state of your mind. Clear up the mess and you will feel much better”. By rules of teenage, I never paid much attention to this. I lived in the clutter and let my mind be the mess that it was.
Not until I left home and started living by myself did I realize that what he said made complete sense. There is something about living alone that makes you reflect on & make sense of everything your parents ever told you. I promptly decided to always keep my space free of clutter to ensure that my mind is free of clutter. This, however, is a tedious job, or so I felt.
Keeping your space clean is basically a daily effort. One tiny lapse means a pile of stuff to clean a few days later. Let’s say you have come home after a late night out and are too tired to put your stuff away. You fling your clothes on the floor or a nearby chair, pop into your pajamas and fall asleep. This is just the beginning of the mess. The next day, you come home to this. You are early and have the energy to put your clothes away. You take one look at the clothes from last night and just pile new ones on top of them. It starts snowballing and pretty soon you are left with a pile of clothes to now clean up. That is never fun.
Moving is one of the things that easily results in a huge mess. I am obsessive and insist on unpacking and arranging everything on moving day. I do not like to wait because the mess bugs me. This time, however, with the puppy at home, I had to put him first and clear up just enough that he has space. Resulting in a cluttered closet, because that’s where I hide things to keep them out of his reach. The mess just kept getting worse. I didn’t even realize that the mess was getting to me until I started suffering. I started worrying about what a mess my mind was and then my dad’s words just popped into my head. In my effort to start fresh and reconnect with my work, I decided that the first step was to declutter. It worked wonders for me.
It is a difficult thing to do, but a daily effort will keep your life free of clutter allowing you the time to achieve the excellence that you are capable of. How do you deal with clutter? I would love to hear. Tell me in the comments below 🙂
