Clearing out the pantry

As spring approaches, and as I delve into my happiness project, I have been experiencing the strong urge to declutter my life. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. What an overwhelming task. I have lived in my home for 5 years now. It's the longest I have ever lived in one place in my entire life. I love that fact. But what I have learned is that being stationary enables me to collect more "stuff". Piles of old mail have hidden themselves away on shelves, in nooks, and crannies. Notes from friends, lovers, and nemeses stored away because I wanted to keep them for one reason or another. The good ones were to remind me of the happiness, warmth and love. The negative ones were most likely being saved for a court date. Knick knacks, copious amounts of art work, and other kidlet stuff are abound. Way too many shoes. Clothes that have been on the hanger so long they literally have collected dust. More yarn that I will ever need. Camping gear. And all of this, just in my bedroom closet. It's ridiculous. I spent three hours in there today. Three garbage bags of recycling, two of clothes, one of paper needing to be shredded and then recycled, one giant one of craft supplies, and two of random knick knacks. It's organized. It's spacious. It's awesome. As I dropped off the donations and dumped the recycling, I felt so light and airy that I wanted to dance.

I realized something today. I started out with the intention of clearing my physical clutter because at first glance that would be the easiest to tackle. However, I noticed that most of my physical clutter is tied to me emotionally in some way. It makes perfect sense, but it was an AHA moment for me. Letting it all go was such a relief, yet also a very emotional experience for me. Reading through letters I was reminded how wonderful the people in my life are, and how some of those connections have disappeared. Going through clothes and jewelry I forgot I even owned I was reminded of occasions in which they were worn. Some good, some bad. The most difficult was the journal of dealings and goings on between my childs father and I right after I left. Reading the things he did or said put me right there all over again. Being able to look at all of these experiences, and then let them go, or put them away, was so freeing!

I have always been a sentimental person. I have a piece of yarn that was part of a worship service at a youth con where I met my two best friends at when I was 15. I have stupid overwhelming stacks of pictures from all different parts of my life. But today I noticed that while it's nice to be able to look back at theses things, it weighs me down more than I'd like. Maybe I have romaticized parts of my past, and that interferes with my present because nothing now is as good as what I created in my mind as 'then'. Also, knowing that there were piles of old bills, invoices, pay stubs was so depressing. Seeing them was like adding one more weight to my shoulders. That constant reminders of the money I owe, the money I don't have, the money I wasn't smart with. I don't need that hanging over my day. Throwing out the paper part of those lessons doesn't mean I will have learned less from my experiences in the past. I still have that in me.

Also, seeing so much evidence of my work and my progress makes me feel like a bad ass!

Happiness Project Launch Party....er...blog post!

This book really kicked me in the ass and got me to thinking. So much of life is spent working towards something in the future. I get caught up in that. "Once I do ____, or make ____, or go to _____, life will be happier!" I have a great life! I am happy right now! But I could be spending so much more time on NOW then I do. I was to appreciate life more, enjoy it more, spend more time savoring the now so that when I hit hard times, I have this to carry me through it.

So, I am starting my own little happiness project. I started by making a list of my own personal commandments to abide by, writing down some Secrets to Adulthood that I already know, and swimming in the essence of the Happiness Manifesto that I just posted in the previous entry. I have a couple resolutions to get me going on the first couple of months, and I am excited to see where this takes me!

My personal commandments of happiness are:

• Be Amber
• Let tomorrow come tomorrow
• Act the way I want to feel
• Remember the days are long but the years are short-savor it all now
• Be good to myself and others everyday
• Embrace the need to write
• Do it now
• Enjoy the process
• There is only love

My first month's resolution? Create more vitality and energy in life. I will be clearing out clutter of the physical, emotional, and mental kind. I will be taking superb care of myself. I am so very intrigued by this and cannot wait to see where it goes. Cheers!

you can learn more about or start your own happiness project using tools and outlines found at www.happinessprojecttoolbox.com.

Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Manifesto.

A Happiness Manifesto

• To be happy, you need to consider feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.
• One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.
• The days are long, but the years are short.
• You're not happy unless you think you're happy.
• Your body matters.
• Happiness is other people.
• Think about yourself so you can forget yourself.
• "It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light."—G. K. Chesterton
• What's fun for other people may not be fun for you, and vice versa.
• Best is good, better is best.
• Outer order contributes to inner calm.
• Happiness comes not from having more, not from having less, but from wanting what you have.
• You can choose what you do, but you can't choose what you like to do.
• "There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy." —Robert Louis Stevenson
• You manage what you measure.

my happiness project

Lately I have felt this pull towards something I cannot define or see. It's an urgent kind of tug, on my heart. It's not scary. It's just there. So much of my life is focused on "doing". Doing homework, doing the endless amounts of housework, making lunches, helping Em do homework, doing work that might in the long run make me money, doing what I said I would, doing what I feel like I should. What happened to just being? I feel like I worry so much about getting things done that I am missing what really matters to me most. What is scary is that sometimes, when I stop to think of those things, I don't remember what some of them are. I feel like I start to lose myself in this to-do list that the world around me never stops contributing to. It isn't that I am unhappy with my life, quite the opposite. I am more happy now than I have been in a really long time. I just feel like I could appreciate it more. Or take more time to actually see the things in life that are beautiful to me. I want to stop being so focused on what I have to do next so that I can take time for what is in front of me right now. Too often, I push those things aside.

So, here I am, sitting with this feeling, and I happen upon a book. The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. And it is all about what I had been feeling, organized by a slightly OCD writer (I mean that in an envious I-wish-I-could-lay-it-all-out-like-that kind of way). I start to read this book and it is so much what I want to do with my life. There is so much awesome right now, I don't want to just glaze over it anymore. I don't want to settle for hoping my loved ones know how much I appreciate them anymore, I want to hold myself accountable for enriching those relationships and seeing that they know I love them. I am tired of my mental and physical clutter holding me back from enjoying life more. And, as if you hadn't guessed already, I am starting my own happiness project. In the book, Gretchen Rubin picks 12 areas of her life that she wants to boost happiness in, or appreciate more. One for each month. She even has little bullet points in each area that are specifics of WHAT will make that happen, and she lays them all out on a little chart so she can give herself check marks or X's at the end of the day to rate her progress. How organized can one person be? Anyhow. My happiness project. I don't really know what it is going to look like yet, or how it will play out, but I do know that I would like to be living my life and conducting myself with more intentionality than I have been. God bless the inventor of auto-pilot, you were a genius, it's just not how I want to live my life.

I am excited about this. I am kind of a nerd for organizing things, even if my household disarray doesn't reflect that all the time.