By: Aby Garvey
So you want to simplify your life. Get more organized. Make life just a notch or two easier and better. But where do you start? And honestly, why is it so hard to create simple?
Even though “simple” can be a tough thing to achieve, with a few basic strategies it is possible to simplify. Here are seven techniques that will help you create the “simple” you crave.
Know what’s important to you.
If you want to simplify, it means something in your life is too complicated. The life you’re living is out of whack with the life you really want to live. Can you put your finger on what that is? What do you want more of? What do you want less of? What areas of your life are too complicated? Take a few minutes to really think about what’s most important to you. By knowing what matters, you can eliminate the clutter—all that stuff that’s getting in the way of what you really, really want. Knowing what you want is like a roadmap—it helps you get where you want to be. Without this roadmap, it can be hard to even take the first step in the direction of simplicity.
One thing at a time.
Once you know what is most important to you, take steps to eliminate the clutter, one thing at a time. When I look back over my own efforts to create change in my life, I often set the stakes way too high. For example, when I refocus my efforts on eating healthy, I attempt to cut out every single not-so-healthy food I love. In the end, I get frustrated and have a desire to go back to my old ways. This year, I’ve decided to add one fresh piece of fruit a day at breakfast. It seems almost too easy to say out loud, doesn’t it? But by focusing on just one piece of fruit a day, I set myself up for success. I keep my point of focus simple and clear in my mind. Plus, I don’t feel deprived.
Simplifying your life is just the same. Find one thing that is too complicated or out of sync with what’s most important to you and simplify it, or eliminate it altogether. Focus on one life change, one project, one task, one piece of fruit. By focusing on less, you increase your power of attention on that one thing. Once your “one thing” becomes part of your routine, then add the “next thing”. One-by-one, little-by-little, you’ll create the change you crave.
Avoid complications.
I’m willing to bet there are certain people, places and things that make your life more complicated than you’d like it to be. I have that, too. It’s called Target. I always go to Target because I need something, and yet, I always find things at Target that I don’t need. Unneeded stuff unnecessarily complicates lives.
Let me say that again.
Unneeded stuff unnecessarily complicates lives.
You probably have a Target, or two in your life. What places do you go where you always say “yes” to obligations you don’t really have the time or desire to do? Where do you go and come home with stuff you don’t really need? And who do you encounter in your life whose presence weighs you down, instead of lifting you up?
Avoid these complications and you’ll quickly add a bit more simplicity to your life.
Eliminate the Clutter
I define clutter as anything in your life that isn’t serving its intended purpose. Clothes hanging in your closet with the tags still attached. The piles of paper you aren’t reading or dealing with. Scrapbook supplies that are too old, too new, too pretty, too disorganized, too something to be used! Break free from the clutter by eliminating anything that isn’t serving its intended purpose.
Say yes.
This may seem like a complete contradiction to what I’ve told you to do in the past. “Just say no” is one of my favorite principles for simplifying life, and gaining control of your time and schedule. However, focusing on “no” assumes there isn’t a yes to go along with the no. And there is. Each time you say yes to one thing, you’re saying no to something else. I say “say yes first!”
Fill your time and space with your “yeses”—those things you want to do and have in your life—first. Then, when an opportunity comes along to say yes to something else, you’ll know whether or not it fits. Is there any room for another yes?
“No” becomes much simpler when you say “yes” first.
It’s OK if it’s easy.
Simple is easier than complicated, right? So if we want to simplify, this means we have to be willing to accept easy. And quite frankly, that’s easier said than done. I’d be willing to bet there’s a hard-work ethic deep at the core of your being (or even right at the surface, for that matter.) Our culture teaches us that life is hard. Success requires hard work. If we don’t work hard we’re lazy. Without breaking through this, and seeing the contradiction between striving for simplicity and our deep rooted beliefs about how hard life is supposed to be, simplifying becomes very complicated. You’ll continually and subconsciously push against simple, without really understanding why.
Here’s a new mantra for you: easy is good.
Embrace the white space.
As you may know, I dabble in scrapbooking a bit. I’m no scrapbook design genius, but I love to study the pages of the design geniuses. I love understanding what the scrapbook designer has done, and trying to figure out what makes her pages work. One of my favorite scrapbookers is Cathy Zielske. Her pages are clean and simple, with consistent margins and white space.
This idea of white space on a scrapbook page is a 180-degree turn-around from one of my main motivations for using 12 x 12 pages for scrapbooking. I naively thought by using 12 x 12 pages, I could load up my scrapbook pages with oodles of photos. How efficient! How much money I’ll save! Flash forward nine years…and I see things differently. I crave the clean and simple feel that white space gives a scrapbook page.
I crave white space in my home and life, too. Yet, it’s just as counterintuitive to create white space in our homes and lives as it is to have white space on a scrapbook page. If you don’t have something on your calendar for the weekend, do you feel unpopular, unloved, or all dressed up with nowhere to go? If you have white space in a closet, do you feel inefficient, that there has to be a better way to use that space? White space in our homes can feel like scarcity—that somehow we don’t have enough.
White space is simple. When we fill our spaces with things we don’t use, need, or love, and spend our time doing things we don’t like to do, life becomes complicated. Appreciating white space is essential to creating simplicity.
If you’re uncomfortable with white space, but crave simplicity, pick one drawer, closet, or shelf, and create emptiness. I bet it will feel very uncomfortable at first—perhaps even wasteful. But over time, your white space will come to represent possibility and breathing room. The emptiness creates the possibility to fill your space, if you choose, with something new and meaningful.
Or just keep it empty altogether, and relish in your newly found simplicity!
In a nutshell, simple can be hard to create because you may have built-in resistances to it. Perhaps it’s hard for you to slow down and really consider what you want. Maybe for you the idea of white space feels very uncomfortable—lonely, wasteful, empty. Perhaps you’re just in the habit of getting into situations that complicate your life, like my Target habit. Whatever it is that’s making it hard for you to simplify, once you can put your finger on it, you can do something about it—one thing at a time.
Simplify your filing!
January is a great time to rethink (a.k.a simplify!) your current filing system. For financial records, I use a simple monthly filing system. Instead of filing bills away by the various creditors, I file them all in one monthly folder. This makes the act of filing super simple, yet I still know exactly where everything is. If you have a “to file” folder that’s overflowing with last year’s bill statements, take this as a queue that your current system is too complicated. Simplify by using a monthly filing system, and it’ll be a snap to keep up with your filing all year long!
Aby Garvey is a professional organizer and the owner of simplify 101, inc. Her mission is to help you create time and space for what matters most in your home and life. Aby is the author of the e-book “the happy scrapper – simple solutions to get organized and get scrapping!” Visit the simplify 101 website for organizing ideas and to subscribe to Aby’s organizing email newsletter.
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