Why now is not the time to declutter!

It seems everyone is ‘bettering themselves’ at the moment. They’re home educating their kids. They’re taking zoom conference calls whilst working from home. They’re also meditating, starting a new hobby, going on runs, looking after elderly parents, the community, making amazing meals from leftovers, doing yoga, and learning a new language while their kids make amazing rainbow artwork without any mess. They’re ‘making the most of the opportunity of being at home’.

Or so social media would have you believe. Don’t believe the hype. In a time where everything is totally unprecedented and actually quite scary it’s very challenging being at home. You may be feeling low, depressed, anxious and fearful, not to mention being driven demented by the mess and family arguments of having everyone at home 24/7. You might think I’m going to tell you now is the perfect time to declutter and organise! Yes, it could be, but I’m not telling you to do that at all.

Now is not the time to compare yourselves to others. Now is not the time to put massive expectations on yourselves and power through long to do lists. Now is not the time to feel you *should* be achieving things.

Now is the time to SIMPLY GET THROUGH IT ANY WAY YOU CAN.

Although I’ve been crazy busy with my other business which makes me a key worker I’ve had quite a few days off. Lately on these days I’ve been sleeping a lot, feeling very unmotivated and struggled to do anything other than watch Netflix. Yesterday I realised something needed to change. This did mean writing a very long list of things I’ve always promised myself I will do when I have the time, including the delights of removing the old mouldy sealant from around the bath and replace with shiny clean white stuff. However I know that being given a long list will just makes me feel overwhelmed. So I picked just one thing. Today that was to replace two blown lightbulbs in my bedroom ceiling. Knowing I only had one thing to achieve made me more motivated than I’ve been for the past few weeks. I got up relatively early. I had a shower and got dressed. I replaced the bulbs (easy when you have a bulb and battery basket!).

I then saw spare bulbs for the living room and dining room lights. I got the step ladder and replaced blown ones there too. I noticed that they were so dusty, so I washed all the light shades. Dusting the fitting made clumps of dust (and a horrifically dried up dead wasp!) fall all over the floor, so then it was time to hoover. I figured I might as well dust the rest of downstairs while I was at it before vacuuming so did that too. Then saw the top of the chimney breast that needed wallpaper stripping off ready for painting. Did that too!

I’m now sitting here writing a blog post for you at 5pm, where’s the most I’ve done on other days by this time is to confirm that yes Netflix I’m still watching.

So it works. Pick ONE easy thing to achieve tomorrow. If you achieve more, great. If you don’t, don’t worry. There will be other days.

Stay safe. Do what you need to get through, and be kind to yourself.

Heather x