Summary: KonMari, Clutter Busting, Clear & Simple, or Fly Lady<br> <br> If you haven’t seen anything about the new Marie Kondo Netflix show, you might be living under a rock. Just kidding. But, seriously, I went on and watched an episode to see what it’s all about, and I did feel myself getting infected by the declutter bug once again. All of this talk about Kondo’s method made me realize just how much I know about decluttering. It reminded me how much I used to be very, very organized and wish I could be again!<br> <br> I'm the sixth of seven kids, so I know a little about the accumulation of STUFF. Nine people in one house is just a lot of people, so we had a lot of stuff. I regret that a lot of that stuff stayed at our childhood home with my parents and now they are dealing with a lot of our stuff.<br> <br> Something I held onto when I was a kid (and I still have) are my marching band drumsticks. I love those things. I loved playing the drums and being in the marching band. I had the privilege of leading my drum core for three of my four years in high school. It wasn't because of my skill as a musician, necessarily, but it was because of my passion for the organization and the music. I loved it.<br> <br> <br> <br> I found out after I graduated that my band teacher named a drum cadence we had written after me. It's kind of weird to think that these kids shout out my name when they want to play that cadence while they're out marching, but it made me think about why those drumsticks matter to me. It isn't that they are imbued with my skill or my memories. It's because they represent the legacy I left behind at my school. The thing is, those drumsticks will never BE my legacy. I cannot go back in time and relive those years that I loved playing the drums. I also don't want my kids to hold onto them believing that they have some inherent value just because they were mine. What I want them to realize is that our lives are a legacy and I want to DO things that are memorable. I want our experiences and our passions to be memorable.<br> <br> We put way too much value into our stuff and acquiring stuff that those things become more important than our time and our stress over stuff. This year, my family has actually committed to NOT giving gifts for holidays and birthdays because we want to have experiences instead. My kids are a little disappointed but I want them to give up this obsession over stuff, and start valuing our experiences.<br> <br> I think it’s healthy to regularly go through our stuff and purge things that don’t serve our family anymore. I talked about this a bit in Episode 034 (Part 1, and Part 2) with Lee Waters and Brityn Bennet. Brityn said that she likes to keep her home organized because the mess creates what she called “white noise” that drowns out the important things in life. I noticed that theme in the first KonMari show. The couple on the show observed that their family life, and even doing chores was less frustrating, and they felt less anxious when they got their clutter under control. <br> <br> I also feel like the outer clutter in the home is a reflection of my inner chaos. While I was learning about different coping strategies back in August, I had one particularly rough day when my kids had totally trashed our house. My anxiety was boiling over, and I just could not function. That’s rough when I have my kids home all day, and a lot depends on me! I went outside to sit on the back steps to sulk for a minute. Then, the thought came to me that no one else was going to get this work done! I need to just get in there and do my best. One of the principles I’d learned that I will talk about later came to mind to set the timer for fifteen minutes, and I got to work. A task I sincerely thought would take me all day took only one hour, and I had a crazy sense of accomplishment and peace. <br> <br> In the article “Why Mess Causes Stress: 8 Reasons,
