Is it Time to Declutter Your Life?

I recently moved, downsized actually. It’s been quite an experience moving from our family three bedroom, spacious home to a new, but modest condo with significantly less space. During the process my wife and I drastically reduced our footprint on this earth. We discarded, decluttered and delivered many useful but unnecessary items. We digitized our memories, we donated useful household small appliances and dealt away most of our furniture. I thought I was a minimalist to begin with but I was astounded at how many things we owned that had “value”, either future or present, but we didn’t actually need. 

Even after the move, with a significantly reduced footprint on this earth, we still likely have too many things. It seems to be a fact of life, a part of the human journey, to gather, collect, store and forget. Just drive through your neighbourhood and peer into the open garages. Space is at a premium. 

But something happened to me in the process. It was as if every single thing I owned was weighing on me. Maybe a better analogy is that each possession required a certain amount of brain power to care about it, to catalog it mentally and be concerned about its whereabouts and wellbeing. It took a significant amount of brain-power. It’s as if everything I own requires a nano percent of my brain’s RAM, not much, but add that all up and just like your cell phone, soon all the memory is consumed on apps you don’t really use but think you need. It’s a cumulative effect. You get it, I know it. 

The downsizing journey (and I say journey, because we’re still on it) has been freeing. I haven't missed many of the things we donated or sold. Even though we’ve moved to less square footage I’m enjoying the relatively clutter free and openness of our new home. I enjoy the sunlight streaming through the windows onto the bare floor, the echo of the open room and airiness of the high ceilings. I could swing my arms and dance if I wanted to (don’t worry, I won’t do that, we don't have window coverings yet!). 

But here’s something profound. In the creation of open space I have newfound openness emotionally. The gift we receive when we declutter is space. By this I mean physical space to move effortlessly, but also mental space and emotional space.  I feel lighter and less burdened. I can use this new found headspace to be creative, to plan, to dream.

Fewer possessions equates to less responsibility for things that I need to care for or worse, worry about. It means less upkeep, maintenance and oversight. And coincidently, this new simplicity has given me a surprise gift of freeing up more of my time. Fewer things to care for means less to do which means those minutes are available for something else. Suddenly I have unexpended minutes and hours to use as I please. What a gift! Now to break the habit of not using that time to gather more things! 

This purging has me thinking about other areas of my life that might lend themselves to a good “fall” cleaning. Where else can I look to create open space in my life, to let in more sunshine and fresh air. Does it just need to be in my personal possessions? Does it apply to my schedule, my email inbox, even my habits and routines. What about my business, my work priorities, my meetings, my phone calls or even my clients? Where else could I free up a bit of emotional RAM, where could I let in more sunshine and create more room to be creative and do a mental dance? What if I had a few more minutes or hours to give away to someone who needs me? 

You may have heard of something called Parkinson’s Law. It simply states that work expands to fill the time we give it. Just like my garage intuitively seems to attract clutter in proportion to its square footage, so does my schedule. This has us on the defensive, always looking for more time, more shortcuts, a faster route or way. We keep trying to cram more and more into what seems like a shrinking number of hours. 

So what if you went on the offensive? Rather than doing more with less, what if you did less with more. What if you cut out of work an hour early every Monday? What if you cut your meetings to 45 minutes from an hour in length? What if you declared that all reports had to be on one single page? The point is, just like me moving into a condo, I commited to shrinking the space first to force the decluttering process. So can you. It starts with commitment and then action. The reduction will follow, it simply must. 

What about you? How does this principle pertain to your work, your schedule or your leadership? What can you cut out to create more space? What can you give up that you can always replace if you truly need it but today you can live without? What new space would it give you to have less to worry about, less to do and more time to do those things that really motivate you and move you forward? 

Today, I challenge you, as a leader or a team member, a professional or a mom, to create some space in your life. Think of it as creating an open area for sunlight to stream in that allows you to move, dance or think more clearly, whatever you want, in newly claimed space. Today, find one personal item in your office or home that you can donate or discard and find one habit, process or meeting that you can discard or do without. Then feel the freedom that comes with it. 

Tomorrow, find one more. 

Think about it.

Now: practice giving away, send this to a friend!