Simplify your surroundings, simplify your life!

As a business owner, creative entrepreneur, wife and mother, I am intrigued by all methods and tools that help me, as well as my clients in living our authentic lives in balance and harmony.

I am all for mindfulness, living in the now, and enjoying life to the fullest, but let’s face it; everyday life in a busy world requires much more than the act of being present. Whether we like it or not we all have to think about our future, and plan it to some extent. Waking up, getting dressed, preparing meals, raising our children, cleaning the house, doing laundry, paying the bills, shopping for necessities, exercising, going to work, having a productive day, responding to our clients, and creating the groundwork for our next step in life and in business…. well, all this and more involves future-minded planning efforts.

As much as I love being in a simplified, clean, calm and organized home, getting it to that point, meaning the cleaning and tidying part, is not exactly on the my top ten list of favorite things to do. I would not exactly label myself as a 'domestic goddess' and I would much rather be fully calm and present with a great book or even sit in front of the computer doing research, communicating with others, or writing or simply goofing off and having fun with my kids. But, since those pleasantly creative and leisurely activities do not provide me with the surroundings I love living and creating in, I choose to get off my butt every now and again and get to work on creating the environment of my dreams. Although, my ego sometimes dreads the thought of cleaning and organizing, once I am “on it” I can’t help but feel energized by the creative power that starts flowing through me and from me. Not to mention the bliss I get from getting to live in the results of my labor. A simple surrounding helps my overly active mind calm down and be present and I feel more energetic and creative which positively affects all areas of my life. So, every now and again, the ‘domestic goddess’ has to be called upon to whip things into shape!

A crucial component to finding balance and calm in your home or workspace is committing to simplicity. When our spaces are cluttered, our minds are cluttered and we are bombarded with stimulating reminders of the things we ‘should’ be doing or ‘should’ get to, making it hard to focus on whatever it is we are doing in the moment. Getting your surroundings simplified and organized can do more for your emotional well-being than a long relaxing trip to an exotic island because you are creating an environment that affects you in your everyday life. As an interior designer I have witnessed people completely transform as their surroundings get transformed. By simplifying your surroundings, you are destined to simplify your life!

Once you have a system in place the actual work of keeping it that way is not so hard, although definitely just as important. Getting your surroundings organized in the first place is the part that requires most of the planning and effort.

In case you are interested in embarking upon a simplification journey here is some advice on how to tackle such a project:

1. Create an action plan. List out the rooms or areas that you want to have organized and write out some goals for the spaces. State what you want to achieve and how you will feel when you have achieved just that. Start with the most important room or area, predetermine the order that follows and work ONLY on one space at a time.

2. Commit to the process. Rome was not built in a day! Acknowledge that it is consistency with the small things that makes the biggest impact. Many small changes will create a BIG change. Just keep at it, commit to the process and do not give up!

3. Get real with your time and decide how much time you can commit to doing the work. Whether it is a half hour a day or a couple of hours every few days, just make that time your “on it” time. Chances are you will get an even bigger ‘time reality check’ and get more skillful with your time management if you time yourself with a timer. We can learn a lot about how long things take to complete and how much we can get done in a certain amount of time if we apply a timing exercise. If you only have 15 minutes a day to work on organizing your spaces, then set the timer and use up those 15 minutes each and every day, one room at a time. Within a week or a month you will see an enormous difference and all it took was 15 minutes a day!

4. Make it fun. Setting the timer and treating this like a fun race can be lots of fun, and/or you put on your favorite music, and sing and dance while you are at it.

5. Organize with these three steps in mind:
a. Sort and Purge. Get rid of everything that is unnecessary. Sort like things with like things. Only keep what you need and use on a regular basis. If you have not used something for more than 2 years, chances of you ever needing it again are very slim. Remember that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure so make sure to donate all useable items, and do not add to yet another landfill for no good reason.
b. Create zones and homes. When a “thing” has a home to go to at the end of the day it is much easier to keep things simplified and organized. Use logical systems such as placing ‘like with like’, storing things in the areas you are most likely to use them, placing frequently used things within easy reach while seldom used items can move to the harder to reach storage spaces, placing heavy stuff at the bottom, and lighter on top, storing things in appropriate containers, and just label, label, label.
c. Customize to make it fit YOU. Make your organization system work for the way YOU work and just be realistic with it. Research some organizational systems and invest in the right storage system and containers for YOU but only after you know exactly what you intend to do with it and how you intend to use it. Otherwise, you may just be adding containers and stuff to the clutter instead of actually organizing it.

6. Celebrate the Outcome. Make sure to value your accomplishment and celebrate the simplified surrounding. You just created a fresh start!

7. Maintain, maintain, maintain. It is easy to forget to ‘keep at it’ once the system is in place but maintaining is the most crucial aspect of living a simplified life in a simplified surrounding.
a. Create an action plan of how you are going to maintain the order and calmness. Do a daily/weekly/monthly action plan of things to tackle, such as sorting through the junk drawer & pantry once a month, sorting letters and filing important papers once a week, doing a 15 minute sweep-through each day etc.
b. Commit to the process. Just keep at it, clean and organize as you go, every little action makes a difference; it is consistency with the small things that makes the BIG impact.
c. Get real with your time and make it fun. The 15 minutes a day “laundry basket exercise” is immensely effective. It entails briskly walking through your spaces with a basket to grab all things that are out of place and then taking them back to their ‘homes’, perhaps while you’re also blasting your favorite music or turn it into a race with your kids seeing who picks up the most toys and stuff.
d. Use the trip. This is a simple, little, mindful technique that I personally use to simplify my efforts and maximizing my ‘trips’. It entails doing a short, little peak-over the room that I am in when I am off getting something or doing something to see if there is anything in the room I am in that does not belong there and lives in an area I might be going back to or passing by on my way to where it is I am going next. The simple act of being ‘mindful and noticing’ can save you a lot of time and help you prevent the buildup of clutter in the first place.

As contradictory as it may sound it is also important to not get over-consumed with organization and feel as if you have to keep everything ‘perfect’ all the time. ‘Stuff happens’ and it can actually happen quite quickly. We all have different preferences for aesthetics and different tolerances for clutter in our surroundings, and we all operate differently. Personally, I may be on the somewhat extreme end of the spectrum in that I simply love complete simplicity and would like nothing more than to have a totally clear and calm house and office with every little thing out of sight and in its place. But, the truth is that this is contradictory to how I actually operate which is often moving quickly from one thing to the next, not wrapping up the last thing I was working on before I am off floating along with the power of creativity. In addition, I also share a home with two active and creative kids who do the exact same thing, and tend to move from one project and experiment to the next one so clutter can accumulate quite quickly in our home. And, since I consciously choose to be a pretty laid back mom, I do not let myself get bent out of shape about every little thing that is out of place so our commitments entail sticking to our system of consistently cleaning up after ourselves ‘after the fact’. As a result, the 15 minute ‘laundry basket exercise’ is a regular exercise at our house and those 15 minutes can literally create a major transformation. Fifteen minutes a day is usually all the time needed to put everything back in its place. The thing is that when we have no more stuff than we actually use and need, and every little ‘thing’ has a ‘home’, it really is no big deal to have it all go out of its place for a while because the system you’ve created ensures that putting it back in its place is fast and easy, and you can easily recreate simplicity, balance and calmness in your surroundings and in your life. Then, all that is left is sitting down with a warm cup of tea and a great book… and just enjoy!