Reason #3: You have become overwhelmed
When your alarm goes off, you don’t want to jump out of bed, you want to put the pillow over your ears and sleep some more. It seems you just fell asleep, since you were awake much of the night worrying.
Life is flying at you – kids fighting, barely saying hi to your spouse as you both run out the door, going from meeting to the phone to email to meeting. You never get all your work done. Or you are bringing kids to soccer practice, piano lessons, cleaning up after little disaster makers, being in the PTA, and making cupcakes for the class party you helped plan.
You have a hasty dinner, (pizza again !) before driving the kids to another activity or going to an evening meeting. Your house is trashed when you get home, but you don’t even have the energy to look at the mail. You veg out in front of the TV, since that’s all you feel up to doing, get the kids off to bed and then fall asleep way later than you intended. After all that’s the only alone/me time you get. Too bad it was wasted watching Jay Leno or the news channel.
Does any of this sound familiar? If you are tired and would rather veg out all the time, or if your only fantasy is a week in a hotel room by yourself you may be feeling overwhelmed.
When you simplify your life, you pare down to a manageable pace. You feel more at peace, lighter and calmer. How does that sound to you?
Reason #4: You are missing out on your relationshipsÂ
That sounds like the modern condition! Spot on..
You are so right. Since I started simplifying my life (and it’s taken 2 years to complete most of it), I have so much more peace and time. I can find things quickly rather than digging through a lot of junk. I set a timer and in 15 minutes can straighted up my dining and living room. Then 10 min in bath, hall. Later 20 in kitchen. I may not get everything done in the timer time but anyone can do anything for 15 minutes. If it’s almost done or even if it isn’t even close I can keep at it or walk away leaving it for the next 15 min the next day. It’s only works because I have so much less stuff and my son, who is a college student, has been trained from a very young age to pick up after himself (I don’t go in his bedroom and dust does accumulate there along with the mess I lived with when I was his age) and he helps me with vacuuming (1x), trash (daily), dusting (1x)and laundry (3x). “You live here, you work here is my philosophy” I have never been his servant as my goal was to raise a fully functioning man, which I did. Anyway, Thanks again for your blog. So true what you say and so helpful to see all can be done by low stress tiny steps one at a time. The peace I’ve found also leads to less spending and a purging of clutter leads to an unwillingness to add more back unless it takes the place of something or is really needed. I also don’t buy made in China products. I’ll buy used before I’ll give any money to companies who are sending jobs overseas and give money to companies who are selling inferior products. I’ve boycotted Walmart for over 10 years now. I use freecycle, craig’s list and eBay a lot although I also try to keep my shopping local when able.