One of the often overlooked aspects of maintaining an organized life is your own sense of well-being.
There are many reasons that people find their lives and their surroundings in varying degrees of disarray; They’re busy with kids, jobs, there may be an illness in the family, and sometimes they’re just trying to make ends meet on a day to day basis, which as many of us know can occupy our minds with worry and stress to the point that everything else in our lives gets overlooked or postponed, often with undesirable results.
When our lives become so full of stress, or a series of tragic or unfortunate events occur, typical clutter can spiral out of control, often resulting in situations of hoarding, a state of living (mental as well as physical) that is very difficult to recover from.
But that extreme condition is a topic for another post. The point is, and this may seem obvious, your mental and physical states are closely tied with how you maintain your life. When your mind is filled with the clutter of stress and worry, your surroundings will most likely reflect that to some degree. Conversely, when you feel good mentally and physically, not only will you have more energy to tackle the organizational issues at hand, but you will be more likely to see the problems for what they are, before they become insurmountable.
One book that I would suggest for further reading along these lines is Feng Shui Home, by Hale, Martin and De Winter. Feng Shui, if you are unfamiliar with the concept, is the “Chinese art or practice of creating harmonious surroundings.” While there are many books available to help people understand their organizational problems, this particular book addresses these issues with the view that replacing negative energy in your home with positive energy can help you on the path to better mental and physical health. It may not be your particular cup of tea, (to use an Eastern metaphor), but it does offer a lot of good advice on how to keep the spaces in your home simple and clutter free. I highly recommend it.
