{"id":41,"date":"2008-01-23T11:05:02","date_gmt":"2008-01-23T18:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aboveyourself.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/decluttering-your-life\/"},"modified":"2008-01-23T16:26:08","modified_gmt":"2008-01-23T23:26:08","slug":"decluttering-your-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aboveyourself.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/decluttering-your-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Decluttering Your Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/clutter.jpg\" alt=\"Clutter\" align=\"right\" border=\"1\" height=\"156\" width=\"150\" \/>One of the most rewarding activities we&#8217;ve done so far this year is to remove clutter from around our house. After our Christmas vacation, some of the stacks of mail, coupon clippings, and extra &#8220;stuff&#8221; intruded into our daily life, making it difficult to remember which bills were still due and generally preventing us from getting things done. We took advantage of our extra-long weekend to finish packing up those Christmas decorations which were still left out, organize the piles of stuff, and make things much better. It wasn&#8217;t an intensive cleaning or anything like that, just an organization of sorts. Now that everything is where it should be, we see a lot of benefits of giving everything a place:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Things are easy to find.<\/strong> If I need to go out, I have to grab my keys and my wallet. If they&#8217;re not in their usual location (I put all the things I take with me daily in one spot),  there are only a few more places I might have left them.<\/li>\n<li><strong>It&#8217;s easy to keep track of things.<\/strong> Not only is it easy to find something I know I have, but when things are organized it&#8217;s easy to know what you don&#8217;t have. We have two locations for food: the pantry or other kitchen cabinets or in our food storage area. That makes it easy to see when it&#8217;s time to buy more of something.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Your things don&#8217;t impede your daily life.<\/strong> When things are put away it becomes easier to focus on specific tasks or even just relax.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Decluttering a home isn&#8217;t just a one-time weekend project, it&#8217;s something that evolves over time. As our stuff has grown, we&#8217;ve had to make decisions about where things go and how things are stored. We&#8217;ve had to come up with creative ways to store our daughter&#8217;s toys and live with temporary fixes until we can get things just how we want them, but this progress gives us a sense of accomplishment that we can build on until things are just the way we like them. This doesn&#8217;t mean that our house isn&#8217;t lived in, it just means that we try to use it so that we can fully enjoy it.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;d like some creative ideas on this subject, I recommend visiting <a href=\"http:\/\/unclutterer.com\">unclutterer.com<\/a> or the <a href=\"http:\/\/zenhabits.net\/2007\/01\/zen-mind-how-to-declutter\/\">excellent post at Zen Habits<\/a>. For those trying to get the whole family involved, take a look at this Family Home Evening Lesson, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lds.org\/ldsorg\/v\/index.jsp?vgnextoid=e1fa5f74db46c010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&amp;locale=0&amp;sourceId=6d22a41f6cc20110VgnVCM100000176f620a____&amp;hideNav=1\">Making Work Fun<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the most rewarding activities we&#8217;ve done so far this year is to remove clutter from around our house. After our Christmas vacation, some of the stacks of mail, coupon clippings, and extra &#8220;stuff&#8221; intruded into our daily life, making it difficult to remember which bills were still due and generally preventing us from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-habits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboveyourself.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboveyourself.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboveyourself.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboveyourself.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboveyourself.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aboveyourself.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboveyourself.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboveyourself.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboveyourself.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}