The Unstuffed Project

Greetings:

Okay I have decided to call the Pile Project the Unstuffed Project. After thinking about what happens during Thanksgiving, people stuffing themselves until they are overstuffed, uncomfortable and listless, I thought it was a good theme. Clutter is much like Thanksgiving dinner, it tends to be way over the top, too much and excessive. Being stuffed on the inside is just like being stuffed on the outside. It doesn't feel good.

For me staying unstuffed, or at least uncluttered, isn't easy. I just wasn't born with the gene. But that doesn't mean I can't manage my stuff and not let it manage me. I remember going to my mom's office and seeing her desk. My mom was the office manager and her desk was the only one in the office that looked like it had been blown up. She had a sign hanging over her desk that said, "An uncluttered desk is a sign of a sick mind." Whenever I would go to her office I would feel embarrassed by her mess but it never seemed to bother her. What was perplexing was the fact that our home was as neat as it could be. It wasn't cluttered or overstuffed. It wasn't until my mom died that I realized why growing up the house was always in perfect order. My Grandma lived with us and she was an organized person by nature. Her favorite saying was, "Everything has a place and everything in its place."

When I was growing up I shared a room with my sister. It was if there was a magical line down the middle of it. My sister's side of the room was always neat and tidy while mine looked like a bomb had been set off. My grandmother was always on me to clean my side of the room but it just didn't seem to matter to me. I knew it would be messy again so why bother.

It has taken me years to appreciate the ability to stay organized and be able to find things when you need them. I always prided myself in the fact that I never lost anything, it just might take me weeks if not years to find it.

When I became a coach the concept of creating structures and organization in ones life was stressed. It was then that I began to embrace the concept and have been working on it ever since. What I have found that works the best for me is structures. One of the ways I keep my house neat and tidy is I have a cleaning person come in every two weeks. She does an okay job with the cleaning, but what she does more than anything is force me to keep things picked up. Cleaning people don't pick up, they simply clean. If the house is a mess they can't clean. I once had a cleaning lady that refused to clean my home because it wasn't picked up. I vowed to never let that happen again. I have forced myself to keep the house in order so that the cleaning lady can do her job. It is a structure that works really well for me.


So how am I doing with the piles. Well yesterday I worked my fifteen minutes as planned and I felt like I made little to no progress. However I actually did. For one thing I made the rule that everything I touched had to be dealt with immediately. I couldn't just do the pile shuffle, which means take everything from the pile on the right and create a pile on the left. I actually am pretty good at that but it isn't very effective. So the first rule was I had to handle everything to completion. The top of the pile had several things that required action so although the pile didn't go down much, at least a dozen things got handled.

One funny thing that I found in my pile was The Clutter Busting Handbook by Live the Day Radio expert Rita Emmett. Rita and I have talked about my challenges with clutter and I think she would find it amusing that I found her book in my pile of stuff. I found it to be ironic.

Okay day two went faster, wasn't as much to deal with. A lot of the stuff could be tossed or filed, didn't have to take any other action. The pile is way down but not even close to being gone. And that is okay. Although I gave myself a week to get it cleaned up I actually thought that a week would be way too much time. I figured I could knock it out in a day or two. That type of over estimation is what gets us in trouble. Being realistic is important. Keep in mind that Rome wasn't built in a day but some parts of it were. Meaning the pile was built piece by piece overtime, this pile took several months or more to accumulate. I actually don't know how long it has been there. But longer than fifteen minutes. So thinking that I would make it disappear in fifteen minutes, thirty at tops, was not dealing with reality. I decided to take a Michael Angelo attitude and know "that it will be done when it is done."



Actually today was fun, the pile seemed to go faster and I kept finding fun cool things in the pile. Recipes I couldn't remember where I had put them, a couple sweepstakes entries and oh yea, some business related things that were fun as well. I actually had to make myself stop working on the pile and move onto other work I needed to get done.

So how are you doing. I would love to hear how you are going to get unstuffed during the week of Thanksgiving.

Take Action Now

Rachelle


PS - Here are just a couple simple rules to keep you on track.

Touch each piece of paper or item in the pile only once. When you touch it you have to decide right then what to do with it, do it and be done with it.

Set your timer for 15 minutes at a time. Doing more if you want to is fine but I found much more was way too overwhelming.

Keep in mind that Rome wasn't built in a day but parts of it were. You will unstuff piece by piece, not the whole pile at once.

Stay positive about it. You are not a bad person because you have clutter, you simple need to manage it so it doesn't manage you.