The Clutter Fairy Weekly #110
In Search of Balance: Managing Your Time, Energy, and Priorities
Creating a home that supports the life you love is what organizing is all about! But if you’re working to clear a backlog and cultivate habits to reduce future clutter, it can be hard to find the time and energy for much else. In episode #110 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, suggests strategies to balance the competing priorities of clearing clutter and enjoying your best life.
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The Weekly Tittle is an exercise designed to focus your attention on a specific space, aspect, or challenge of decluttering and organizing your home. We assign a new tittle in each webcast/podcast, then check on your progress the following week.
A Balancing Act
This week’s assignment is to examine factors in your life that contribute to a feeling of balance (or a lack thereof):
- Assemble a list of the organizing projects that are making the most “noise” in your head, plus a few non-decluttering projects or priorities that demand your attention the most.
- Rank the items on your list* according to which will potentially:
- give you the most satisfaction,
- free up the most time and/or energy for other purposes, and
- contribute most to the achievement of other priorities on the list.
- Next rank the items* according to which seem likely to require:
- the smallest time commitment,
- the least expenditure of energy, and
- the smallest new habit(s) to cultivate.
- Add up all the scores you’ve assigned to each item. Make a plan and schedule to work on the item with the highest score.
*Note: We don’t want to turn this assignment into tedious math homework, so feel free to use any numeric ranking system that makes sense to you (for example, give each item one to five stars, or perhaps a score from 1 to 10). Any numbers that make sense to you will work for purposes of this exercise!
We encourage you to revisit this exercise again in a few weeks to check whether any of your rankings or conclusions need adjustment. (This assignment isn’t about making long-term life choices. It’s about checking in with yourself right now about what feels the most useful and important in your life.)
For the full discussion of this week’s tittle, watch the Weekly Tittle segment on YouTube.
Chat Transcript
Download a transcript of the chat that took place during the live event.
Note: For best results, we suggest you right-click (Windows) or control-click (Mac OS) the link above to download the chat transcript text file, then read it in your text-reader or word-processing app of choice. If you click the link directly, you may get quirky results viewing the text file in your browser.
3.15.22 Tittle, Most useful math was to use scale of percentages 100% = positive goal to inspire me to keep striving for self care as I quiet the “screaming” in my head…demands to Do this now! Loss of energy…too 0% = Took The Trash Out!
Example: Current phone holds no charge, demands all my energy to maintain. This weeks Title got me to open up the box Ive had since last Christmas with my new phone, hook it up. +100%. Done!
I recycled the box it came in +0%!
Such a profound change of venue in decluttering with SelfCare up first. Safety. Essentials of Need along with better balance of my spirit as I hold ME up first.
Hope I ‘ve made sense? Thank you all. Melly.