Anyone who really knows me, knows that my desk no more looks like the picture above than ….you know!
But, I always knew when to clean my desk. It was when I didn’t know exactly where in the multiple piles on my desk something was.
I’m a member of the messy desk means a creative mind club.
So, when I saw the book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo on multiple lists, it appealed to me. I love life changing magic of all sorts and tidying up had a nice ring to it.
Marie Kondo suggests in her KonMari method that in order to tidy one’s living spaces, one needs to stop spending 15 minutes a day to clean. Stop going into the closet and pulling out a few things for Goodwill. Stop doing the kitchen one day, the bedroom the next. Just stop.
The Life Changing Magic she encourages is to tidy up. Those gentle sounding words, however, are anything but.
Go into your closet and bring everything out.
Go through your house, find every single book in every single room.
Go into your kitchen and put every pot and pan on the table.
Now for the hard part….you ask yourself one question.
Does it bring joy?
Now that was unexpected in a cleaning book.
And that’s when I knew she was onto something. Cleaning has always been my ‘go to’ when under stress. Hear bad news, get out the buckets. Someone died, hit the bathroom with clorox. Cleaning provides a way to control the uncontrollable. But, she encourages us to do more than that.
She encourages us to clean our lives.
When you put your house in order, you put your affairs and your past in order, too.
Like the proverbial phoenix rising, she asks us to purge ourselves of all that does not give us joy. It doesn’t matter that Aunt Sally gave us that special trinket. Does it bring you joy? It doesn’t matter that your daughter gave you a sweater for the holiday last year. Does it bring you joy?
Our lives are full of junk. Our lives are full of things we have around us that just don’t bring us joy. Is that email inbox giving you joy? Is reading this post bringing you joy? (I can only hope). Empty our lives of the joyless and we just might have something that matters.
My clients constantly seek joy in their work and their lives. As Marie says,
The only tasks that you need to continue for the rest of your life are those of choosing what to keep and what to discard and of caring for the things you decide to keep.
I agree. Best advice ever for a life coach. Best book ever for remembering what to look for amid the piles.
Pour your time and passion into what brings you the most joy, your mission in life.
It’s Monday…let’s find the joy. Do you find connections between tidying up your external world with tidying up your internal one? Have you read the book? I hope you’ll share.
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