Monday, May 16, 2005

Stop Hiding Behind Your Junk!

Kim Wolinski, MSW
“Dr. DeClutter” www.drdeclutter.com

Stop Hiding Behind Your Junk!

It’s well known that people, especially women, use eating and weight, fat, to insulate themselves from the outside world. It’s a way of setting up armor for safety usually not created in appropriate ways in childhood.

Do you use your clutter and junk to insulate yourself from the world?

Think about this seriously…
1. What “payoff” do you get from keeping more than necessary "stuff" around your home, office, car, etc.?
2. How does it shield you from pain?
3. How does it act as a “high,” like self-medicating-- a “soft-addiction?”
4. How would you feel if your house was extremely cleared out and you couldn’t buy anything more to “fill up” the/your emptiness?

Or, maybe it's asking it another way...
- Do you shop to feel good?
- Do you feel like a hunter coming back from the great north hunt having “bagged” your game, showing everyone and telling the story of how and where you got it, the prices and “great deals”… your “hunting” story?
- Who would you be if you didn’t go on the hunts?
- How does that make you feel?

If you are getting anxious about now, you are indeed getting a “payoff” for shopping, finding, hunting, gathering, etc. and bringing home more stuff to “fill” your trophy room.

OUCH!

“In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing,
the next best thing is the wrong thing,
and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”
~ Theodore Roosevelt

Temporary fixes are a short path to deep problems that just aren’t worth it.

Your surroundings should reflect the best of who you are. Everything in your home and office should be what you LOVE. Your LIFE should be 99% more than any of your possessions. There’s always more, there’s plenty, and even if you could “have it all” the bottom-line is that you deserve to do and be so much more in your life than a buyer, consumer, hoarder, keeper, cleaner, defender and insurer of stuff.

Don’t let advertising and sales mailings lure you in like a fish to a worm. You can swim for years in your pond and never have to have “more.” The few lily pads you have a beautiful, or get a few that are and really enjoy them.

Go shopping, go to garage sales, go to markets and festivals… enjoy the weather, the music, the people. You don’t have to buy anything! Invite friends and family, join clubs, enjoy yourself and the time in which you have to enjoy yourself … it’s short, remember!

Clutter and stuff that just keeps piling up and taking up room creates “visual white noise.” It creates visual and physical distractions. Distractions keep you off center, off balance and out of your natural state of joy and peace.

KEY: If you don’t have LIFE GOALS, DREAMS, PASSIONS and PURPOSE into which you pour your glorious unique and personal creativity, joy, time and energy… clutter will take up the space. The universe abhors a vacuum. If there’s a space open, it will get filled up. So, get on top of it. Fill it in with what you truly WANT, not with just stuff, new or old. Fill it up with open space, by choice, so that it can stay beautifully open and enjoyed.

Sit down and write out your “do want’s” in life. WHAT DO YOU WANT?

If you decide what you WANT, clutter will not be on the list and will have to move aside and out of your life in order to make “space” for the good stuff. But, if you don’t know what you WANT it’s too easy to let the clutter sit heavy in piles and stacks and ….

So, the “price tag” for clutter is stress, fear, anxiety, embarrassment, guilt, etc. Up the standards by which you live your precious life, declutter and bring peace, joy and self-love (not loathing) back into your space and life. You deserve it!

YOU HAVE PERMISSION TO GET RID OF EVERYTHING!

Stop trading yourself for symbols of yourself.

I recently spent several weeks of appointments decluttering, reorganizing and putting closet shelving and systems in place for a family. After finishing the daughter’s room, Mandy, age 8, told me and her mother that she loves staying in her room now, that “it feels like home.”

©2005 Kim Wolinski – Dr. DeClutter 303-485-5280
Need help getting your space (house, office, barn, backyard – thoughts, mind, time, schedule, priorities, or life) decluttered and re- organized? My new video “BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN, AND OTHER ORGANIZING TIPS AND TOOLS FROM DR. DECLUTTER” is a great help. You can find out more or order BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN at http://www.redecisionsinstitute.com/kims_store.html

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