January – Mental Energy
“You cannot change anything in your life with intention alone, which can become a watered-down, occasional hope that you’ll get to tomorrow. Intention without action is useless.” – Caroline Myss
I figure the best way to begin the New Year is by tackling “Mental Energy”. It seems pretty certain that this endeavor will take a lot of time (which I seem to never have enough of) as well as discipline, but I’m going to give it a shot! So, this month I will engage in a little healthy obsession over to-do lists and organization.
The resolutions to focus on this month:
- Clean my closet
- Toss, restore, organize
- Follow the one-minute rule
- Observe the evening tidy-up
- Make my bed
- Tackle nagging tasks
To use the first month of my Happiness Project to tackle clutter seems a bit ridiculous, as if my main concerns in life are to empty my “junk” bin and reorganize my sock drawer. But I crave an existence of order and organization and I believe that outer order will bring inner peace. Besides, the mayhem Christmas has left in its tracks leaves me feeling a big urge to start cleaning!
Clean my Closet
I have a very large closet; the whole spare room in our house to be precise; and it holds a LOT of outfits! I intend to eliminate 50% of my clothes, and being the crazy clothing fanatic that I am, this will mean donating/throwing out at least 100 shirts. I intend to get rid of anything and everything that is no longer in style, no longer fits, is damaged in some way or is only there for sentimental reasons. I will also be throwing out all my old socks! I have this bizarre habit of keeping gross old holey socks for no reason and then I waste time each day sorting through them all to find the good pairs. Well no more! In anticipation of this event, I have even purchased a bunch of new socks just so I can’t use the excuse “I might run out and need to keep these old ones….”
Goodbye old socks! 🙂
Toss, Restore, Organize
I am an incredibly organized person by nature but I tend to have a few “disaster areas” in my house that I tend to pile all the stuff I have no place for. This month I will be cleaning and organizing all of those areas including my desk, the ever overflowing “junk” bin, the linen closet, the bathroom counter/cupboards, and finally cleaning up and tossing out all the excess clutter that has accumulated on every bare space and empty shelf in my house (the extra dishes that are collecting dust, all those bottles of body wash I’ll never use and those old VHS tapes have got to go!)
Follow the One Minute Rule/Observe the Evening Tidy-up
A few daily rules I will use to help me keep the house from constantly falling into disorder are: the one-minute rule – do not postpone any task that can be done in less than a minute; and the evening tidy-up – take 15 minutes each evening, before bed, doing simple tidying.
Make My Bed
This is pretty self-explanatory…
Tackle Nagging Tasks
I am quite weighed down by the unseen but even more exasperating mental clutter of loose ends. I have an extensive list of neglected tasks that make me feel stressed and guilty whenever I think of them…book a haircut, call the vet, buy new lamps, re-pot all my new plants…and the list goes on and on. I desperately need to clear away the accumulation in my mind and check off the items on my to-do list.
To be happy, not only does one need to increase the joy in their life but they also need to eliminate all those “not so happy” feelings (anger, frustration, guilt etc). I’m really hoping that by de-cluttering my life, I will feel less stressed, my house will no longer feel chaotic and I will leave the guilt of my nagging tasks in the wind – which of course will leave me much happier. 🙂 Wish me luck!
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