Going ‘shopping’ with your friends as an activity is probably not the best idea to keep the clutter at bay, but sometimes venturing out and buying these necessary things cannot be entirely avoided. The consumables we need to run our daily lives need to arrive in our household in some way or fashion, and usually doing this kind of shopping personally is the most straightforward way to get it done with the least amount of fuss.

A large part of keeping your home organised is based on consistency in your daily routine. I’m certainly not saying that you have to turn into a robot doing everything the same way, every day. But to be fair, it’s likely that you are already doing that. I invite you to look closely how you start your day and you’ll probably find that 90% of what you do follows a very specific pattern already.

My Italian colleague Selina Angelini (details below the article) has published a blog post on this subject that I found especially interesting and have decided to translate it for you, dear listeners. She starts out with the following question:

"Do you believe that light can help organise your work time?"

Of course you have heard of Marie Kondo: her book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” and her Netflix series have made her into pretty much a household name around the world. She clearly is a big inspiration to a lot of people who want to make a change to the way they live.

Some of us are perfectionists.

While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with wanting things to be perfect, and that desire being an valuable driving force behind any kind of advancement we strive for, it can also be an important reason for depression and – ultimately – failure.

Some people find decluttering to be an enormous chore, others think of it as a joyful experience. Either way it can be a lot of work, depending on the scale of your project and the type of stuff you need to take care of. A smallish area in your living room with lots of magazines sitting on the floor takes a smaller investment in time and effort than a garage or even a complete house…

Summer is coming up and many of you will be taking some time off from work, or at the very least experience some level of change in your daily routine: maybe you’ll even take your family on a vacation or decide to spend some time on a city trip to somewhere sunny.

Either way, one thing is for sure: social media will be coming with you…

Have you ever considered that your image of yourself plays a huge role in how you can build a happy home, without distractions, and avoid / remove a lot of clutter in the process?

It seems that being happy leads to more success, not the other way around, so let’s explore that idea a little.

Have you ever had the chance to watch a child play? Really play, with all their toys engaged in a story and doing all the voices that go with the characters? Completely lost to the world and engrossed in the game they were playing and oblivious to the world around them? THAT is flow: being fully engaged and focused, without having to make an effort.

I often come across clients who appear to be stuck in a vicious circle. They feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things they are surrounded by and that leads to a level of distraction that makes it impossible to focus enough to take action and remove some of the items that create the overwhelm in the first place. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place!