What I Learned about Tidying up (Week 4)

As a self-proclaimed organizer, I was thrilled to see Annie had chosen tidying as our topic for this week. The show and the book are dreamy, and the concept of minimizing what you have to just the stuff you really love is dynamite. 

My tidying project this year wasn't so focused on my physical things (although I did move and donated boxes of things, so who am I kidding), but more on my time. I've spent the year slowly evaluating my time commitments, and here's what I know so far.

1 - More Time Spent = Higher Priority

This is an obvious statement, but worth repeating. When did you last calculate the minutes you spend on a particular activity in a week? The result of such an assessment might be frightening. My time is often not in alignment with what I claim my values are. Frequent time checks help keep me on the straight and narrow.

2 - How I want to spend my time can change

This is a big one for me. Once committed, I like to see something through to the bitter end. This is a wonderful philosophy for projects and tasks, but it's more difficult to be committed to things that don't have a clear "bitter end". Organizations, relationships, and jobs might fall in this category. I realized this year that sometimes it's time to change things not because they are bad, but simply because it's time to change.

3 - Life is too short to spend time on people or activities that don't add joy

We all have stuff in our life that is mediocre. Life is really just too short to tolerate that. Go for the most joyful people, places and things you can get your hands on.