“Life Cleaning” – living with gr...

What will make your life easy – "easeful"?  What is living less compicated?  Certainly it's living with less stuff and we can downsize and declutter, of course.  But living more simply also means looking at relationships that drain us, commitments that overwhelm us, habits that don't serve us.  Our life may not fit us anymore.  First comes clarity, then...

The Overflowing Storage Room

I recently helped a woman clear out a basement storage room.  It was brimming over with stuff – with hardly room to move around in the crowded space.  So, everytying on the floor came out into an adjacent area, shelves in the room were reorganized with "like things together".  Bins were found to gather and collect all the stuff that needed to find a home together – the camping stuff,...

Moving Day – not quite the same hassle

I recently helped a woman on move-in day.  When I arrived, it was mid-day and she was tired. The movers had been there in the morning and the kitchen was stacked with plastic bins and the rest of the house wasn't much better.  We spent four hours the first day and almost the same amount the next day opening boxes and bins, carefully taking out the contents, finding new homes for stuff, and gathering up all the...

Another Way to Think About Stuff

Wayne Dyer, in his book Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life, talks about the challenge of thinking about "surpluses" in our lives that can be put back into circulation to decrease "deficiences" that exist elsewhere in the world.  What a neat idea – to consider that our extra stuff can actually be helpful to someone else.  And that we might have a moral or ethical...

Help is on the Way

A lot of moving and downsizing is psychological.  Absolutely, yes.  It can be tough – not only the physical labour but the mental and emotional strain. Recognize when things are out of control.  And just like binge eating, not doing regular exercise, procrastinating, etc. compulsively buying to fill a void – at some point – is ENOUGH.  We need to find the strength and the courage to...