One of the most striking things about human beings is our ability to tell stories. Everything around us can be interpreted as a story, from the little fib we tell to make life easier to the big stories that make our societies go, like our belief in the value of a piece of special paper called a paper bill worth so many Pound Sterling, Dollars or Euro.

Our lives are run by those and many other stories, but what has that got to do with clutter?

When you are running a business, you will often be faced with tough decisions about what you are doing, how you conduct your business, or how to generally continue doing what you do in the future. The big question is lurking somewhere in the shadows at all times: “Is this worth the effort or do I have to let this one go?”

Or course you will be invested in your brain child, the business you have built and –hopefully – are passionate about, but is there a time when you have to take a different route?

I have recently come across this cartoon by the creator of the ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ series, and I suggest you take a moment to read it (it’ll only take a minute or so).

[waiting for you to come back with a cup of coffee in hand]

There you are! I hope you enjoyed that. Where I’m concerned, I got goose bumps when I saw this first: I had the nagging suspicion that ambition comes in many forms, and for a long time I was exposed to the idea that ambition and achievement in life can only be gained through total immersion into the workplace – to the extent of working yourself to the ground.

Whenever we think about decluttering, what usually comes to mind is not only “taking things out”, but also we usually think about decluttering ourselves rather than others. Both notions are concepts we might want to reconsider, though, as they only give us partial insight into the tail end of the process, and less than half the picture for the second concept.

Decluttering is often about ourselves, of course, and when it comes to taking care of what stuff is already in our lives, it makes perfect sense to think about ourselves first. However, have you ever given any thought on how you might be cluttering up other people’s lives without consideration?

Do you occasionally get overwhelmed by that nagging feeling you have forgotten something? That strange feeling that you have agreed to do something and not followed through, or that there were more steps to a process than you remember doing?

We all get that, of course. However, not only is this disconcerting – most of the time it’s no more than a bit of existential panic and nothing has really happened – but it could also be potentially devastating in terms of customer relations and require a fair bit of damage control if things really get out of hand. So: how can we avoid this?

A lot of the thoughts, ideas and solutions in previous blog entries were based on the tacit assumption that we were all able to see clutter in the same way. Lately, I have come to realise that – while there are similarities at the mental and psychological level for most of us – that is not necessarily the case when it comes to the purely physical side of decluttering.

I’m talking not just about the fact that some of us might simple unable to lift heavy items or dislodge things from their hiding places, but that there is a real possibility that a very specific disability has an effect on how we perceive clutter, and even IF we can even know it’s there!

It doesn’t matter if you work in an office or a shop, in a manufacturing plant or the great outdoors, as a self-employed person or an employee: we are all subject to work schedules that we often have little influence over. Yes, of course, if you are self-employed, you might seem to have more control, but at the end of the day the customers will to a large degree determine if and when you are done, and how much time you actually spend on particular jobs.

Let’s look at the part of your schedule that you do have control over: most of us have some flexibility in how they fill in their day, especially if you are working in a position where you are given work to finish within a given time frame. That could be in an office, in a shop or a workshop, too.