I have this game that I accidentally play sometimes when I am cleaning my house. It goes a little something like this: Take an item out of this room and put it in this room. Take this other item and put it over here. Take these papers and recycle part of them, but then put the rest of them back in this other pile. By the time I am done with this riveting little cleaning game, the house is a little cleaner and I feel accomplished. After all, I have successfully rearranged my stuff from one formation to another.
Mission accomplished…if that was the mission.
In truth, I have just spent a good portion of my valuable time moving things around without actually completing any one specific cleaning or organizing project. But somehow the “game” makes me feel better.
Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes my cleaning and organizing sessions are truly productive. Clothing is folded AND put away. Mail is sorted AND filed. But, as I said, sometimes my little game takes over instead. It is usually prompted by me feeling not totally interested in cleaning or not really sure where the items will ultimately be stored. And instead of doing something else instead, I somehow decide that this is a better distraction. And I always feel it’s productive, just not as productive as it could be.
So, it hit me today…what if this is not actually productive at all. What if I am just fooling myself into a false sense of effectiveness? What if instead of just rearranging my belongings, I dealt with them to the state of completion?
I believe the answer is that my productivity with cleaning and organizing would quadruple. The house would be at the next level and I would have more time to accomplish other tasks in my life with this new-found time. Then I realized that perhaps I had not done this because I wasn’t actually ready to have that new-found time. If the house were at the next level through this productivity, surely I would rise to the next level, as well. And was I ready?
Your success is in direct relationship to your productivity. Yes, it is affected by other things, as well, but the more productive you are with your time, the more effective you can be with your life. And a big block to each of us being productive with our time is the level of organization of our homes and, therefore, our lives.
On some level, people understand why organization is important. It makes them feel better. They waste less time and get less frustrated. But on another level, what many do not realize is that many of us subconsciously stay disorganized as a way of holding us back in life. We are not actually ready to step to the next level of success. If we had more time and space, we may have to look at that we are actually blocked in some way. Whereas, if we keep our life and home disorganized, it provides a fabulous distraction to both our emotional blocks and our effectiveness.
What if for every minute each of us spent looking for a misplaced object or wading through clutter to get to what we are looking for, we instead volunteered our time, invented something, wrote a book, sang to our children, planted a garden, cleaned a riverbed, made love or even just read a book. How much would we all move towards the next level of knowledge, success and consciousness with these actions? Once we eliminated the distractions that kept us too busy to do these things, we could choose to face whatever other blocks were in our way preventing these actions. And by doing that we could be more effective as individuals and as a planet. Can we accomplish all of this just by keeping our homes more organized? Try it. What do you have to lose? Well, maybe a messy house….
