If you’ve been reading lately, you know that I’ve been feeling a little buried by STUFF. We recently moved, and lost about a thousand square feet of living space. This prompted me to begin a major decluttering initiative, but I had an epiphany this week. Bear with me as I try to express what I realized.
As I remove items from my space to be stored and “shopped” later, donated, or trashed, I keep asking myself, “Does this item enhance my life in some way?” For example, I am donating a perfectly good jewelry box because I just don’t have use for it. It isn’t doing me any good, so I decided to let it go so that maybe someone else could enjoy it. In packing the jewelry box and similar items into the DONATE box, I’m feeling lighter already.
My realization was I was in dire need of asking the same question of many of my habits. Believe you, me, this has been much more difficult than culling material goods! Much prayer is required! Still, as I go, I expect to find even greater satisfaction in discontinuing bad habits than I do in clearing my physical space. Here are some practices that have to change:
Losing time to Facebook
Why is Facebook so addictive?! Here’s the story. I turn on my phone to check my bank balance and see that I have Facebook notifications. I click the big blue F to see what’s happening. I lose an hour scrolling through the feed. I totally forget to check my balance. A few hours later, I remember that I still need to do that, so I turn on my phone. I see that I have Facebook notifications… You get the idea.
The question is, “Is looking at my Facebook feed for hours a day enhancing my life?” No, but keeping in touch with friends and family that I don’t necessarily see or talk to all the time is an enhancement. So what to do? After thought and prayer, I landed on the decision to take the Facebook app off my phone. I didn’t close my account or anything, and I can still check it when I’m on my computer, but there is no more constant buzzing of notifications or clicking on the F to kill time. If I want to entertain myself on my phone while waiting for an appointment or something, I can still choose Kindle or Pinterest which I did deem life-enhancing, Kindle just because reading is almost always a smart use of time, and Pinterest because I use it mostly to do useful things like plan meals for my family.
Buh bye hours lost to the scroll.
Standing on the scale
What?! I no longer weight 120lbs?! What do you mean I’m not twenty-three and childless anymore? Ever had these silly thoughts while standing on the bathroom scale? Me neither! Ha.
I know my body is changing for the better as I eat healthfully, work hard in karate, and generally take care of it. No need to see the number on the scale. I never feel positive and light after looking at it. I know I’m strong and healthy. My body just MADE A HUMAN. Now, it’s creating food for that little human that provides for all her nutritional needs. How flippin’ cool is that? All these are positive thoughts that I’m blessed to have in abundance. No need to mar that beauty with the negativity of a number on a scale.
Plus, one of the guys from karate called me a “brick house” the other day, and I kind of like the idea. I’m mighty, mighty! I’m letting it all hang out!
Blow drying my hair
It sucks. It’s sweaty. It’s time consuming. My hair turns out the same either way. I hate it. I’m not doing it anymore. I might even say…it blows.
Wine
Oh boy this is difficult! Wine is arguably my favorite consumable in the whole world. I love it more than butter. More than cream cheese. Yes, even more than chocolate! One of my beloved pastimes is sitting at my mother’s kitchen table with a glass of wine and a snack, chatting about the day. I. Love. My. Wine.
Alas, when I really get down to it, it is not only not enhancing my life, it’s preventing me from other things that might. My innocent glass of wine at mom’s dehydrates me a bit, making it necessary for me to scramble to catch up on water to keep my milk supply up. The dehydration also makes it more difficult to push myself the way I’d like in karate classes. Plus, it contributes, in part, to the fact that wine is seriously fattening, and though I’m not standing on the scale, I certainly don’t need the extra weight challenge. No fun.
Finally, that simple indulgence renders me lethargic and sleepy. When I get home, I’m much less productive, and I fall asleep much quicker than needed. Not only does this cut my limited quality time with Dan short, but it also causes major stress. You see, I have things that absolutely have to get done in order to start the next day. If I can’t get it done at night because of the wine sleepies, I have to get it done in the morning as I’m trying to get ready for work, and there’s already enough to do at that time.
I surely won’t give it up completely, but putting wine back into the “special occasion treat” category will let it go back to being a life enhancement. It’ll stop being a roadblock and start being a lovely luxury that I can look forward to, and that sounds life-enhancing to me!
P.S. I’ll still stop at Mom’s for some popcorn and chatting while skipping the grape juice (:
Trying to get breastmilk stains out of my clothes.
Impossible. Waste of time.
Venting, trash-talking, and negative conversation
...but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. -James 3:8
Man! This is the hardest for me. Your red-head stereotypes are true! I have a short temper and I’ll tell you all about it. I’m quick to judge and slow to empathize. Ugh! This is hard to admit.
However, there was a time that I broke the habit for a while. It’s kind of a long story, but the short version is that I used to work in the King Soopers deli. The staff was mostly female, and the tongue lashing between them was harsh. I joined in to fit in… and quickly found myself hated for what I said about others.
When I left the job to work at a middle school, I was pretty gun shy when it came to talking at all. The thing was, I really wanted to make friends. So, each time I found myself making a judgement, I tried to find something positive to say out loud about the person or situation I was judging. The practice made me a more positive person in general and, you know what? I did make friends. In fact, I still maintain some of those quality friendships even though I left the school a couple of years ago.
I’m not the type of person who seeks to be liked all the time. I am what I am, an you can take it or leave it, thank-you-very-much. But I, myself, feel so much better when my tongue is tamed and doing good, not evil.
Some things made the cut
I seriously considered getting rid of a few other habits, but decided they were worth keeping. I already talked about Pinterest, but the other social media outlet I kept was Instagram. It doesn’t suck me in like Facebook, and I can choose to share my photos to Facebook through it. This lets me continue to share baby pictures with friends and family without the feed suck.
Sugar does almost all the same things as wine (see above) but I’m choosing to keep it for now. I actually would like to see it go eventually, but I don’t feel capable of putting in the extra willpower to say no to wine and sugar all at once.
YouTube. Oh, YouTube. I can waste hours with the always-popular automatic video load at the end of each offering. Do I need to know everything about travelling light? Considering the small amount of travel we do, probably not. Is watching “My Year of Empties” videos necessary? Nope. But I think it’s fun, and it occupies my brain during pumping and nursing sometimes, so I kept it.
I feel the same way about Netflix as I do about YouTube. Dan and I also use it to watch tv or movies since we don’t have cable. It stays.
Thanks for bearing with me through a long post. I felt like it was important to share some of the deeper decluttering I’m doing because it is just as real as packing up the STUFF and trashing it. What have you given up? Why did you choose to let it go? Leave your comments below, I’d love to read about your journey as well.
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