Monday, January 19, 2015

It's what's "in" in America!

Amerika de hayatte iru no ha kore!

My imaginary internet friend, whose beautiful daughter's pictures grace my dining area wall, asked me about this lady.  Apparently, she's really trending in the Americas right now. I decided to see what the fuss was all about, but since I'm in the midst of decluttering as I speak blog, I opted to sneak a trip to my local bookstore and flip through the book.

It was interesting and practical. The book was entirely text, telling you in simple language why having a clean room/ apartment/ house was a good idea and potentially life changing (you feel better about yourself and find the energy to do more, and that might change your life).

A lot of the stuff was about decluttering. If it doesn't make you happy and excited, you should chuck it. One interesting point she made was that you should declutter all at once (as opposed to, say, 15 minutes per day as recommended by other self-help gurus), and declutter by category (start with clothes, move on to books, etc). Makes sense. I've started decluttering sprees that lasted for 3 15 minute-sessions too many times.

Another interesting point she made was that you should imagine the life you want to live in your apartment/ house once it is clean. She described a client who spoke of a peaceful, tidy room where she would look forward to coming home to every night, and drink herb tea and do yoga. I tried to imagine my perfect fantasy life…everything is here already (nice husband, healthy and happy children, well, most of the time anyway, never mind) but one fantasy I have is that the house will always be ready for overnight visitors. A friend will call me and tell me she was in town with her family, could they come crash at my place? And I would say yes without so much as blinking. Right now, it's just that, a fantasy. The spare room is currently a disaster area of old books, CDs, toys in various stages of appreciation, and returned school assignments.

(I didn't buy the book, by the way. The point of the book was to limit the things in your house so that you will have less clutter :P)

So I set out to declutter my children's clothes. This was an easy task, especially when they were away at their grandma's. I just put everything that didn't fit anymore in the "chuck" pile. Then I picked out just the nicest and most expensive and least stained items and bagged them for hand-me-downs (the stretched out T-shirts and hole-y jeans were picked up by the Pumpkin City trash collection this morning).

I can see about 50% of the spare room floor now, up 40% from this weekend. We'll see if I can do better!

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