Raking up the Clutter

Halloween is tomorrow, and later today (when it warms up a bit – it’s still only 30f degrees out there), I’ll be hauling the bulk of our decor upstairs and putting a decent amount of it out in the yard (the expensive stuff waits until tomorrow, for obvious reasons).

I took today, tomorrow, and Friday off work specifically so I could “do” Halloween in an organized, controlled manner rather than trying to do it all in a few hours on the day and then dropping it all back in the basement after to be put away “when I get around to it” (or rather, whenever I want my workout space back). I am not a good housekeeper (something I’m trying to remedy), but I do prefer things to be organized. The clutter in our house has gotten way out of control, so I’m on a mission at the moment to declutter and organize our stuff & spaces not only for better usability, but also for peace of mind.

To start, last weekend, I spent some time cleaning off my writing desk. It’s a small thing, and since I still had my computer desk to use, seemingly unimportant, but my writing time is from 11:30pm to midnight (or a little after if I’m on a roll), which is late by any standards, and well past when I’ve used up most of my energy for making good decisions.

So if I sit at my laptop that late, and a random question pops into my head, or an email notification pops up, I’m highly likely to go do a “quick google search”, or just “peek at” my email. And in my weary mental state, I’m unlikely to either start writing or get back to writing after that, because consuming is less work than creating.

However, if I sit down at my writing desk, with a non-internet connected device (I like my Freewrite Traveler), it becomes more work to get distracted than to just write. The nights I was writing on my laptop, I averaged around 200 – 300 words per night with the visual “noise” of writing in that space. This week, on my Freewrite at the writing desk, I’ve been averaging between 400-600 words, so I doubled my output just by giving myself a less distracting environment.

This is just the start of my decluttering project. I’ve been in a pretty serious mental funk for the better part of October, dealing with changes at work that are leaving me mentally exhausted at the end of the day, and then coming home & just not making good decisions (lots of impulse late-night internet shopping, for example). When I sat down & really thought it through, I realized that the physical clutter in my house was making my metal clutter worse, and really affecting my ability to recuperate from the day, much less do anything creative at all.

Hence the mission to clear the clutter, clean up the mess – and do it in a way that is maintainable over the long run. I have a tendency when I get in these moods to spend large chunks of time doing a massive cleanout, but not having any way to maintain that space over the long term. This time, I’m deliberately forcing myself to slow down, and figure out maintenance strategies *while I’m decluttering* so I’m more likely to keep up with them when the space is decluttered and usable again.

More on that later, but this is long enough,the sun is shining, and it’s time to get some movement in (I have fat to “declutter” as well). A few trips up from the basement with Halloween props should get the blood flowing nicely, methinks!

Until next time,

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Jamie DeBree

Writer | DBA | Dog Wrangler