Your House as One Big, Giant "To Do" List

As I moved through the KonMari Method®, I realized that Konmari’ing your house is like getting rid of a huge list of unfinished projects and pending decisions that you didn’t even know you had. Let me explain. In this crazy busy life, there is constant stimulation and not a lot of down time, so the tiniest of house items get pushed down to the very bottom of our very full lives. As they should be sometimes - when work, family, health, and life take precedent. The problem, is when we push EVERYTHING down, our house slowly and without our knowledge becomes a giant to do list of actions and decisions that we don’t even realize we are noticing each and every day. For example:

  • Read that book

  • Do that cleanse

  • Do those stretches from years ago when you had an injury

  • Study those materials from that training you went to 6 years ago

  • Clean this

  • Fix that

  • Figure out what the heck these are

  • Do this business project (or 12)

These things add up, and mostly they add to our subconscious and block us from doing, or even envisioning the BIG THINGS that we really want to do. Trust me. Just get them off your list. Sometimes you complete them by DOING them, right then and there, and checking them off. But many other times it’s just by making a decision we have pushed off for years, to let them go and remove the item and unfinished project, them from the space, allowing you to have space to focus on your future.

I threw away pages of stretches “I was supposed to do” after injuries I had had years ago. I found an old watch, figured out what kind of battery it needed, and bought one so I could stop using my cell phone to tell time so often. I took bricks to a recycling yard, hazardous waste to a county center, and e-waste to Best Buy. I discarded electronics I was going to try to “figure out,” recipes I was going to try out, and binders of training materials I was going to “look over,” despite the fact that I hadn’t once glanced at them in all the years I had held on to them. I completed a few business projects, delegated others, and let go of ones that were either completed enough for now, not applicable any longer or just not a priority right now.

And you know what I did after I finished my KonMari journey? I had made so much space, in my house and my mind, from letting go of all the “should do’s” that I was ready to think of the thing I wanted to do now, and in the future. And I did something I NEVER thought I would do. I signed up for a fitness bootcamp.

What can you get off your list so that you have the blank space to create your future?

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