Whatif… We “Declutter”?
A good friend of mine is a professional organizer. She works with people to help declutter their physical and technological spaces. Recently, we were chatting and I realized while she primarily helps people declutter their physical space, I primarily focus on helping people declutter their mental space. But, to declutter your physical space requires decluttering your mental space and vice versa. Our work, therefore, is deeply intertwined.
One of the themes I've heard from my students recently is that they feel "overstimulated". Thoughtful awareness from these 20-somethings. We have too much "stuff" in every sense of the word.
Too many physical things: We are accumulators. I'm fascinated by those minimalist people. And sometimes I feel like I could be one. Then I open a drawer and wonder how in the hell I accumulated so many different coasters and simultaneously how I like and have a story about each of them that makes me want to keep them. I'm never without a coaster. They are literally in every room of my house. And now I'm going to be thinking about coasters all day. (These are not the only physical things I have in bulk - it just came up for me how this one category is so funny).
Too many mental things: I remember being bored as a kid a lot. (Not because we didn't have a lot of things to do - just because the nature of the world was different). I don't remember the last time I was bored. I kind of want to be bored. But our brains are overloaded. Work is one area, but news, social media, and other forms of technical connectedness are also forms of clutter. Why do we feel the need to take it all in? Would it be ok if I just let it all go? Is it FOMO? Something has convinced me it's important to "stay informed", but somehow that often turns into me watching endless hours of videos on people renovating vans and busses to live in (I have no idea why this is so fascinating to me right now but the algorithm is not wrong).
The world is fundamentally different than it used to be. It is so very easy to accumulate physical things. And there are so many ways to clutter our mind. All of these are essentially distractions. Things that keep us from staying grounded and living intentionally.
Whatif… we practice "decluttering" our minds and our spaces? If we start with decluttering our physical space, will that open up mental space? And if we practice decluttering our mental space, will that inspire us to declutter our physical space?
I understand the desire for simplicity. But I don’t think the world today is simply going to hand us that, it requires a bit of individual (and collective) effort to decide what most deserves our attention, as well as what can be decluttered without significant consequence to our well-being.