Dear Friends,

This week we did a survey. We found out that 70% of you have not been decluttering. This is why many of you are struggling to establish your routines. Clutter stands in the way of you finding success and peace in your life. Getting rid of clutter is stressful at best but if someone came into your home and threw everything out you would feel violated.

This is why the gradual approach is much easier for us to take. We don’t feel out of place in our own homes. We teach you to declutter for 15 minutes, clear out a hot spot and do a 27 Fling Boogie to release your clutter in babysteps. We don’t tell you to back a truck up to the front door and start pitching. That is very difficult. Even the thought of it tears us up on the inside. When we take the gradual approach it gives our eyes, brains and bodies time to adjust to little changes. The clutter got there a little at a time and you can and will get rid of it one bag or box at a time.

We have all cleaned up an area. We can spend hours doing it but it won’t stay that way very long. We will start to pile it up all over again. All because we did it too fast; we worked too hard and we crashed and burned in the process.

Do a little every day and see the changes start to happen in babysteps. One day you will wake up and your house will be clean and you didn’t even know you were doing it. Please don’t allow your perfectionism to rip off the clutter that you have been protecting yourself with. Learn about why you collected it and gradually let it go. If you strip it all away you will just put it back with a vengeance. It is like going on a crash diet. We all have lost the weight but when we stop the diet it all comes back because we didn’t address the real problem of why we ate it (collected it) in the first place.

Be good to yourself. We don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. The peace will come with consistent babysteps. You can do this.

I think you need a hug! {{{{HUGS}}}

We want to make it fun and this is why we are having the FlyLady Declutter Games. Each day we will be sending out five missions to declutter. Do what you can and then follow the link to get your medal. Don’t sweat it if you can’t do all of them; do what you can. Then take your place on the podium and accept your prize. You can’t organize clutter; you have to get rid of it.

FlyLady