Deal With It Now
Did you cringe when you read the title? You’ve already figured out where I’m going with this one. A lot of the clutter accumulates in our homes simply because we refuse to deal with it “in the moment.”
We can take a tip from those Zen masters who always encourage us to “live in the moment.” Now, we can add to that “live in the moment to avoid that clutter.”
This rule is best illustrated by the daily mail. Every day your postal carrier drops mail off in your mail box. What exactly do you do with that mail? If you’re like most of us, you look through it and set it aside. “I’ll deal with it after supper,” you say, as you hurry into the kitchen.
However, you forget all about the junk mail and instead read a good book while you’re watching television.
The next time you find that particular sales flyer for your local grocery store, it is three weeks after the sale has expired. If it didn’t get buried under a mound of other junk mail, it fell under the couch.
Oh, yes, I do understand the nature of clutter.
Instead of putting everything aside, you could have dealt with this in a more efficient matter. You could have taken the few moments to separate the bills and placed them on your desk in a small container, where you’ll sit the next time you pay them.
Take the junk mail and begin to prioritize that. Mail that doesn’t appeal to you at all throw out immediately. Flyers you may want to look at later – like for your trip to the grocery store – set in another basket, preferably one close to where you sit in the evening. In this way, their presence triggers you to at least glance through them.
Now at least you know where it is when you decide to check out this week’s shopping list.
Apply this principle of the Power of Now to other aspects of your life, and you’ll soon find that your clutter is being tamed.
