SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life

A Four-Step Guide to Getting Unstuck

Julie Morgenstern

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780743250900
• eBook ISBN: 9781451639667
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Time Management
• Index: Business

Expert organizer and New York Times bestselling author Julie Morgenstern teaches you how to get rid of the physical, mental, and time clutter that's keeping you from the life you want. Julie Morgenstern has made a career out of helping her clients get organized. But in the process, she discovered something surprising: for many of her clients, organizing isn't enough. For those who are eager to make a change in their lives—a new job, a new relationship, a new stage in life—they need to get rid of the old before they can organize the new. They need to SHED their stuff before they can change their lives! So Julie created the SHED process—a four-step plan to get rid of the physical, mental, and schedule clutter that holds back so many of us. But SHEDing isn't just about throwing things away! Julie teaches that its just as important to focus on what comes before and after you heave the clutter, so that the changes you make really stick in the long term. Learn about: • Separating the treasures (figuring out what really matters)
• Heaving the rest (undertaking the tough work of eliminating excess)
• Embracing your true identity (figuring out who you really want to be)
• Driving yourself forward (achieving real change now that the past isn't holding you back any longer) Whether you're facing a move, a promotion, an empty nest, a marriage, divorce, or retirement, SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life provides a practical, transformative plan for positively managing change in every aspect of your life.

STEP 1

Anything that has real and lasting value is always a gift from within.

—Franz Kafka

What to Pack?

We’ve all packed a suitcase before, whether it’s for a trip to Grandma’s house or a European vacation. There are essentials you just don’t leave home without: a pair of jeans, comfortable shoes, underwear, a toothbrush, maybe your camera, or a good book. And if you are like the majority of people, packing happens in a tear, the final items shoved in your bag just minutes before departure. The mad rush to get out the door often leads to a 50-pound suitcase full of stuff you don’t need or empty of scores of forgotten items—ever found yourself away from home with ten shirts and only one pair of pants?

The first step of SHED, Separate the Treasures, is like packing for a long trip—only instead of a bathing suit and dress slacks you bring your most valuable belongings, behaviors, and lessons into the next phase of your life. By the end of this section, you’ll be able to answer the question, What do I want to preserve from the past as I move into my future?

When faced with a big, bold change—like divorce, a new job, or a move— people typically have one of two responses. The first is to clutch fast to the familiar and dig in their heels, slowing the inevitable process and making it more difficult or traumatic than it need be. The second is to leap headlong into the future, tossing everything and starting over (there is something appealing, heroic even, in the innocence and excitement of starting anew). But neither of those responses is ideal.

Going through a transition (big or small) always requires you to release your attachment to an old way of doing things. But it’s a careful balance: hang on to too much, and you won’t create enough space for change; get rid of too much and you might have to start from scratch unnecessarily. Consciously evaluating what’s truly valuable and what’s not forces you to connect to what’s relevant and vital to you as you move forward into the next phase.

In this section you will determine which objects, activities, and habits you want to preserve from your past to bring with you into your future. Using the inventory built in chapter 3 you will go through each point of entry and pluck the treasures from the stagnant areas. It’s so easy to hold on to the negative images of the clutter and go for a clean sweep, but I challenge you to keep looking beyond the negative in the clutter and find the treasure inside. In many ways the “treasures” are a reflection of what is unique about you. It’s an opportunity to examine and celebrate your life so far.

What’s a Treasure?

When it comes to selecting the treasures, there are two basic types, practical and meaningful.

1. Practical treasures are pragmatic objects, activities, skills, or life lessons that will be useful to you or could contribute to your ability to fulfill your new theme.

2. Meaningful treasures are symbolic or sentimental objects or activities that bring you pure and unambiguous joy, energy, and inspiration, and as such, reflect your core self.

With both types, the value of identifying the true treasures is to bring forth the gems from your past that support your truest self and your future goals, rather than criticize or call your truest self into question. These objects and activities are well worth the space and time they occupy in your life.

For each point of entry in your inventory, you should aim to keep only 10 to 20 percent or a handful of items at most—these are the true treasures. If you hang on to more than that, you won’t be able to create enough space for objects and activities that support your new theme. This is the moment you decide whether the value an object once had to you is still valid, relevant, and useful in the context of your new direction. If it is, you’ll keep it. If it isn’t, you’ll toss it during the second step of SHED, Heave.

Whether a treasure is a physical object, an activity in your schedule, or a daily habit, as a general rule your treasures will:

• give you energy rather than deplete you;

• inspire you;

• be useful to you (in a physical sense or otherwise) in the next phase of your life;

• serve as the best reminder of an event, a relationship, or a particular time in your life;

• symbolize life lessons that make you a better person;

• support your vision or theme for the future.

A sample of a “physical” treasure could be the perfect pair of jeans you find hiding in the back of a cluttered closet or a beloved gift that acts as the best reminder of an important person or event from your past.

A sample of a “time” treasure could be any activity that is healthy and productive, rather than negative and energy draining. It could be a weekly check-in meeting with your boss, the ability to deliver on a deadline, or a spin class every Thursday night.

A sample of a “habit” treasure could be the mental break you get from procrastinating after an exhausting week, or the feeling of connection you attain from constantly emailing.

Separating the treasures will fortify you and make you feel safe to move forward in a healthy way toward the change that you seek. The next three chapters will guide you in selecting the treasures from each of the realms— physical, time, and habit points of entry. Once you have selected the gems, you will be ready to heave the defunct and archaic holding you back, confident that you’ve got the best from your current life tucked safely in your backpack.

Chapter 4

(Read in conjunction with Chapter 7)

Finding Physical Treasures

May your walls know joy; may every room hold laughter and every window open to great possibility.

—Maryann Radmacher-Hershey

In chapter 3, you came up with an inventory of the things in your physical space that are weighing you down, stagnant points of entry in your home or office that present an opportunity to open up space. Physical belongings come into our lives in any number of ways—conscious acquisition, mindless accumulation, gifts, and hand-me-downs. Other times, belongings just seem to grow like weeds. Some of your objects have practical or emotional value, while others are no longer useful, but sorting one from the other can be confusing.

While the popular advice from friends, family, and even many clutter experts might be “Just toss it, let it go, time to move on,” I am going to suggest that you slow down a minute. Don’t be so quick to reenact the Boston Tea Party. Instead, I want you to study the contents of each point of entry before launching them all overboard.

Contained in the clutter are clues that present you with an opportunity to gain powerful insights into who you are, what makes you tick, and what is vital to you. Taking the time to separate the treasures positions you to make a more complete transformation, rather than a temporary fix. In this chapter, we’ll go through a two-part examination of each physical point of entry. First, you will explore and discover what your attachment to this stuff is. Second, you will decide which items are worth saving; these are your treasures.

What Is Your Attachment?

In my experience, buried beneath even the most oppressive clutter was a good, healthy impulse; it’s just not always obvious what that good, healthy impulse was. Many of the stagnant objects and activities in our spaces actually represent an old belief system—someone we used to be or wanted to become; something we once believed about ourselves or the world. Maybe you have been accepting subtle, false ideas: “My only value is through my work” or “I do not deserve love,” or “Life is supposed to be difficult.” Whatever those preconceived notions may be, this kind of negative, habitual thinking is one of the most menacing things holding you back from making the big change in your life because it’s invisible. You are barely aware of its presence. In this respect, your clutter actually helps you. By providing a very tangible clue to that old belief system, it’s something you can examine, evaluate, and expunge.

Understanding Your Attachment

The easiest way to find value in the clutter is to go backward before going forward. Pinpointing precisely when something became obselete, and then finding the pure impulse or value in it, allows you to separate your identity from your stuff. By visualizing a time when the stuff wasn’t weighing you down, you can picture life without it again. This is an opportunity to reconnect with the most authentic version of yourself. Wouldn’t you love to remember who you were before you attached your identity to the stuff ?

Sometimes clutter represents old insecurities; we didn’t feel quite good enough without the stuff. Or it validated who we were or what we had achieved. Sometimes our stuff represents things or people we weren’t ready to relinquish; other times it represents emotions we can’t articulate. Clutter can fill a void, and in its own way provide a level of companionship by always being present as a focus for our thoughts and energies.

The following client examples highlight the most common value people find in their clutter and the importance of slowing down to discover it. Once clients understood the root of their attachments, they were able to address their legitimate needs in a healthier way.

1. Physical Clutter Can Represent Obsolete Goals

Jessica, 53, sidled up to me after an organizing presentation I delivered a few years ago. Wearing a downtrodden expression, she carried the unmistakable air of someone paralyzed by a heavy burden. She divulged that her home was buried under so much paper that it was treacherous to walk. Not even her bed was safe—she’d been carving out a sliver of mattress to sleep on each night. And while her mess had been a source of marital conflict for years, now her husband was threatening divorce. She needed a magic pill. She wanted to rein in her piles, but had no idea where to start. She felt utterly clueless, stuck, tied in a knot.

I asked Jessica what was in the piles. She explained that they consisted mostly of reading materials—several years’ worth of newspapers, magazines, and books that she still had every intention of reading. When I respectfully pointed out that she’d never be able to get through all that material, even if she read ten hours a day, seven days a week, her face went pale. “I’d feel like such a failure if I didn’t get to it,” she said.

It would’ve been easy to discount her comment as unrealistic and implore her, “Don’t be ridiculous! Just dump the junk!” But I was struck by her attachment to this clearly impossible task. The trick was to find the time when the mess didn’t exist. So I asked her how long she’d had these piles. “Ever since we moved into our new house eight years ago,” Jessica said. “I didn’t want to move. I think I let things go because I never liked it here. I just haven’t cared.”

I then asked Jessica if there had been piles in her previous home. “Well, yes,” she confessed, “it was pretty bad there, too.” Within seconds, her eyes lit up in an epiphany: “The piles must be an act of rebellion against my husband!” she exclaimed. “He’s always harassed me so much about my mess, it just makes me dig my heels in even more.” But I wasn’t convinced. Jessica was so quick to blame her husband, but it seemed l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preparation
• Step 1: Separate the Treasures
• Step 2: Heave the Trash
• Step 3: Embrace your Identity
• Step 4: Drive Yourself Forward
• Appendix: Resources for Heaving
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• About the Author