Simplifying: Far From Simple, Isn't it?

It seems that the more that I want to "simplify" my life, the less simple it gets. My home is a cluttered mess. I've been paying so much attention to taking care of myself personally through diet and exercise that I kinda forgot about the squalor surrounding me.

Clutter, while bad for many reasons, is also not good for energy purposes - it just bogs down the flow of good life energy through your home and through your life. Makes sense to say that you don't have the energy to clean sometimes. I think that to get rid of clutter also makes room for more good (non-material) stuff in our lives.

I found it interesting that as I sat here contemplating where to begin with this mess, that several friends started talking about decluttering and then I got two interesting emails (notification of new blog posts) that related to it as well. I think the Universe is trying to tell me something!  :)

Zen Habits is a blog that I try to read somewhat regularly. Look at this great description on its "About" page:

"Zen Habits is about finding simplicity in the daily chaos of our lives. It’s about clearing the clutter so we can focus on what’s important, create something amazing, find happiness."

I try to read this regularly, but ironically, the emails get caught in the clutter of my inbox.  Cleaning 1,000+ emails from my inbox let me focus on these gems I wanted to share with you.

In the recent post How to Simplify When You Love Your Stuff, I love this section:

"But let’s be real here. In spite of embracing the concept of simplicity, most people really love their stuff, and they love acquiring more stuff. Like our attitudes about a healthy diet, our feelings about material things are complicated. We know what’s good for us, but we just don’t want to give up what we like. Our stuff makes us feel good.

Is it possible to live a simple life and still love stuff? How much letting go of stuff really counts toward simplifying anyway?"

You can read the answers to that here.

This post on The Clean-Slate Guide to Simplicity scared me! I am uncomfortable with the concept of feeling like I'm missing something, even if I'm not actually missing it. Probably has more to do with being somewhat of a control freak. :) I bet there's a Health Kinesiology correction I should do for that!

"Simplifying Backwards is Easier

If you’re having trouble deciding when to hold on to something and when to let it go, try doing things backward. Learn to add responsibly instead of subtracting."

He then shares several steps which, essentially, tell you to take all your clutter, get rid of it, and then as you find yourself missing something, go get it. You can read the post here.

If that makes absolute sense, why do I feel like I want to hyperventilate when I read that? :)

Do you deal with clutter/lack of simplicity in your life? Do either of these posts help at all? I'd love to hear your methods for simplifying in your own life.

Comments

[Sue Mariconda]

I have to say that he was right about decluttering the inbox. I had over 2,000 email in there - crazy! I've spent the last 2 days blowing through it and am down to about 500. But I created a new email folder for email to process later, and moved everything into there. Inbox now at zero. Very weird feeling! But it's also a lot less overwhelming, and I can now go through my allegedly important 500 email in the other folder.

Now maybe I can learn to go through the email and process it as it comes in!

[Anne]

I could stand to declutter a lot more than I do. It's amazing how quickly stuff piles up. Speaking of which, I thought you might enjoy this article in the LA Times since you once featured this video on your blog:

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-me-story-of-stuff-20100713,0,5779944.story