I think I’m like a lot of other people in that I get overwhelmed when I look at the cluttered areas in my home, garage and garden and see all the work I have to do to get it all organized. What happens to me is I look at the clutter and the task of cleaning and organizing seems too big that I don’t know where to begin – so I don’t get started at all and continue to live surrounded by stuff. I’ve discovered that when my environment, like my office, is cluttered my brain feels cluttered, too.

Though I’ve made great strides in creating a nice writing space for myself in my office, there are several areas in my office where I’ve pretty much piled things up with the intent of sorting through the stuff later. Every time I walk in my office, I see the piles and feel yucky, for lack of a better word.

So today I made some small steps to clearing space in my office. I’m doing this, in part, because I’ve signed up for a LIFE.REVAMP class in which the teacher/trainer gives us a challenge of the week. Last week’s challenge was to Clear Space – to set a timer for 30 minutes and tackle one area of your home that you feel needs to be more organized and clutter free.

I have a busy, busy day ahead and the thought of dedicating 30 minutes to clearing space yet this morning feels like too much – especially considering I need to shower and get somewhere within the hour!  But, I’ve decided to take some time to clear some of my office space anyway.

I started by taking pictures of three areas in my office I want to get cleaned up. Part of me says that I don’t even have 15 minutes for clearing space but I realized that if I stay off of Facebook I have enough time to put some stuff away. So I tackled one stack of books. Putting them away was more difficult than I thought it would be. I looked at the books and thought I would never remember to read them if they were tucked on a shelf instead of in a pile on my office floor so almost talked myself to leaving them on the floor in a “to read” pile. Well, that’s what they were already in and I hadn’t read the books anyway so I might as well shelve them, I figured.

Then I got a bit hung up with wanting to have the books in exactly the right spot on my bookshelves. My memoir and fiction sections are arranged alphabetically by author so it’s easy to shelve those books but there are other books that don’t fit there and don’t really fit in other sections, either. So instead of getting stuck on perfection, I tucked those books into one catch all section of my bookcase and didn’t even bother to put them in by author name.  The books are not in the perfect places – but one spot of my office is now clean and it feels good to have that little bit of space cleared up.

Hmmm, maybe I’m clearing up some space in myself, too, in letting go of the idea that my books (and other things) HAVE to be arranged perfectly.

Are you clearing space in your home or in another part of your life? What challenges did you face in making it happen? How did you feel when you were done?