There are so many options available for getting to a relaxed state these days. You can do yoga, massage, Feldenkrais, breathwork, stretching, hot tubs, Healing Touch, Reiki, exercise, and meditation to name a few. I have experienced most of those options and they are all wonderful. But, when you’ve finished experiencing one of those techniques, is your house in better shape? No!

When you clear clutter you can create a relaxed state in several ways:

• With each item you get rid of you are are releasing a source of negative energy. As you eliminate negative energy the overall balance of energy becomes more positive. As the energies become more positive, you begin to relax.
• Every item has an energy that talks to you. The more objects in your space, the more conversations you have going on at the same time. A room full of clutter just screams at you. Items with negative energy, like broken things and piles of unprocessed paper, scream the loudest. As you clear clutter you quiet the conversations. The quieter the space, the more relaxed you’ll be.
• When you eliminate things you no longer use or love, it’s much easier to organize what’s left. An organized space is a much more peaceful place than a cluttered space. When a space is peaceful, you can relax.
• Clutter clearing is a form of exercise. Exercise relaxes you!
• When you clear clutter you can think more clearly. When your brain is clear you can relax because you are less likely to make an error in judgment.

So, make clutter clearing a part of your self-care plan to ease stress and be more relaxed! You’ll feel better about the energy of your home as well as your own energy!

I’ve had the pleasure of having an outstanding little dog be a guest in our home these past two weeks. Squeaker Bug is a little gray miniature poodle who belongs to a friend who is spending eight months in Australia. His mom and I decided that he’d be happiest if he was able to spend time with a family instead of with his dad who works long hours and is not a dog lover.

Squeaker is the kind of dog who loves people better than dogs. And, I am his special person at our house. Lucky me! He follows me everywhere, even into the bathroom. His preference is to sit on my lap when I’m at the computer. And, he sleeps on my pillow above my head at night. He really doesn’t want to go outside unless I go with him. Now, I realize his neediness could be perceived by some as a burden. I’m not always thrilled about having to go outside with him, especially in heavy rain. But, he is so sweet and adoring that I am willing to do what he needs to feel comfortable. His devotion more than makes up for any inconvenience he may cause. My heart just melts when I hold him close. He loves it and so do I. His warmth and caring soothe me.

What soothes you? What helps you relax and release the worries of the day? Playing with your children, a good talk with a friend or spouse, reading a novel, knitting, playing ball with your dog, biking on your favorite trail, doing watercolor painting? Anything activity that feels good and causes no harm to you or anyone else is probably a source of positive energy and therefore good feng shui!

“I never spend time at home.” Those were the words of a woman who recently heard me speak about clearing clutter to get more of what you really want.

When I hear those words they usually mean one of two things:

1. Her house has some serious clutter challenges because she doesn’t have enough time at home to do what it takes to maintain a clutter-free home.

2. Her home is so uncomfortable because of clutter that she’d rather be anywhere else.

People who are never home often develop the dangerous habit of “drop and plop.” When they do get home they are usually so tired that they drop their mail, their bags, their clothes, etc., and plop on the sofa or into bed from exhaustion. Consequently, the all important habits of regularly putting things away, throwing things away, and cleaning up take a back seat to the more pressing need to get rest from the exhaustion of doing too much.

If you suffer from “drop and plop” or if you are over-committed to the point where you have no time or energy to make maintaining a clutter-free home a priority, evaluate your commitments and let go of at least one.

Think of it this way. You are making space for your needs and your well being. Your ability to help others will only increase and deepen when you first MAKE TIME to take care of yourself!

Commit yourself to the path of a clutter-free human “being” by ceasing to be a human “doing!”

Let go and GO HOME!

This blog entry is offered with permission of the author to help you get organized for good health and a healthy weight. Enjoy!

By Charles Stuart Platkin

While there haven’t been any studies I know of linking clutter to obesity, I do know that being disorganized doesn’t help. Think about the factors that facilitate weight loss: increased physical activity, eating healthier foods, good sleeping habits and a balanced emotional life — all related to an organized, clutter-free life.

The fact is that most failed dieters complain that maintaining a diet is just too much work. The amount of information and control required can be extremely difficult to sustain. This becomes especially important when your control systems are weakened — like when you’re disorganized or stressed. When distractions compete for your attention, the mental workload can be overwhelming. That alone could be the reason you fall off your diet. Therefore, you need to arrange your personal environment to maximize your chances of controlling your weight and minimize your chances of slipping up.

One of the leading barriers to increasing your physical activity is time. If your home and office are disorganized and filled with clutter, you’re probably spending a lot of time simply looking for things you need. When you get rid of the clutter, you can make room for a small exercise area and have easy access to your gym clothing so you can get to the gym. Think about it: If you spend 10 fewer minutes a day looking for things, you can spend 10 more minutes exercising.

Keep in mind, while you’re cleaning and organizing you’re also burning 210 calories per hour – not bad. Here are a few key strategies to help you get organized and declutter:

Organize Your Pantry and Have Healthy Spices Available and Easy to Use

If you believe you can easily prepare healthy foods with a disorganized pantry, you’re mistaken.
· Take everything off the shelves.
· Get rid of expired items and foods that have unhealthy ingredients (e.g., partially hydrogenated oils, high-fructose corn syrup). “Trigger foods” also must go. These are your go-to foods that can lead to binges.
· Clean the shelves and, if possible, paint your pantry white, or some bright color so you can see the foods you have.
· When restocking the shelves, group like foods together and try to make healthy foods easily accessible so that you reach for them first. Several companies make storage containers and tools to help you get organized. ( www.spacesavers.com, www.containerstore.com/shop/kitchen)
· Create an easy-to-use spice section. Spices make bland foods taste great, and should be used as part of your cooking process.

· Make sure you have the following:

o Fat-free cooking sprays.
o Fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth.
o Rice vinegar, apple cider vinegar and balsamic vinegar to add a lot of zing.
o Canned beans.
o Whole-wheat bread crumbs and flour.
o Soups and other healthy canned foods: It is not cheating to open a can of low-calorie soup or tuna for a fast dinner. Stock up on these foods — they’re filling, inexpensive and right there when you don’t feel like making a big deal out of dinner.

· Go through your utensils do you really need everything you have? Put things you don’t often use on a top shelf where they won’t get in your way.

· Things you do need:
o Several small plastic cutting boards or mats that fit into your dishwasher.
o Very sharp knives, along with a knife sharpener.
o A food processor or blender to slice, grind, dice, chop and shred.
o A microwave: Great for defrosting meat and reheating leftovers. It also cooks a potato in about seven minutes.

o Pots and pans, readily available and in good working order.

· Make sure your countertops are clean and free of unopened mail, old newspapers and magazines; they’re supposed to be for food prep.

Refrigerator Makeover

Take the Fridge Quiz at www.dietdetective.com/column/refrigerator-quiz.aspx. Would you shop in a dirty, poorly laid out grocery store? Keep your fridge clean and organized into sections, just like a supermarket. Soda and juice are high in calories; try to keep water or unsweetened iced tea in the front so you grab them first. Better yet, toss the cola.

Fruits and veggies should be front and center and at eye level so you see them. Keep all the high-cal foods in the fruit and veggie drawer or in the back.

Be Fitness Prepared

Have a gym bag packed and ready to go. Buy a crate to store all your fitness items, including sneakers, bands, pedometer, gym clothes, fitness DVDs, jump-rope, etc. Make everything easily accessible and ready to use.

Organize Your Closets and Garage
Get all the areas of your life organized, including your closets and garage. Using storage bins is great, as long as they don’t serve as another place to hide stuff you don’t need. If you haven’t used something in the last two years, chances are you will not use it at all. If you do end up storing things, make sure to label and make detailed lists of what’s in each container.

You’ve tried before and it didn’t work? Check out a few of these Web sites:
Real Simple: http://tiny.cc/eQYSZ
Good Housekeeping: www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/getting-organized
Oprah magazine: www.oprah.com/home/Clean-Your-Messy-House-in-6-Months
Unclutter Blog: http://unclutterer.com/
Clutter Diet Blog: http://www.clutterdietblog.com/

And if you can’t do it yourself, find someone to do it for you. The National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) has about 4,200 members — visit their Web site at www.napo.net. You can also take a “help wanted” ad for an organizer on Craigslist.org, or have an organizing party with your friends. (There are always a few friends who would love to get their hands on organizing your house.)
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CHARLES STUART PLATKIN, Ph.D., M.P.H. is a nutrition and public health advocate and founder of DietDetective.com. Copyright 2010 by Charles Stuart Platkin. All rights reserved. Sign up for the free Diet Detective newsletter at www.DietDetective.com

The roles of wife and mother are all-consuming, often leaving women with no idea about what really matters to them. In a sense they lose their identity when they have children. Many women I’ve worked with can tell you what they want for their children and their family much more easily than they can tell you what they want for themselves. It’s as if they don’t have the time or energy to figure it out because they are consumed with the responsibilities of being the CEO of the home. When their children grow up and leave home moms come face to face with themselves. And, they often don’t like the person staring back at them in the mirror. Years of self-neglect can leave women over-weight, exhausted, sick and sometimes depressed.

My solution–give a busy wife/mom a room of her own. If the house is so small that having a whole room is not possible, give her a section of a room that is off limits to the rest of the family.

Why give a woman a room of her own?

• she needs a place where she has complete control, a place that no one else can mess up
• she needs a place to pull together and organize the objects associated with her many projects and responsibilities
• she needs a place where she can express her creativity
• she needs a place to retreat to refuel that is calm, beautiful and organized
• she needs a place to ground herself and get clear about what matters to her

I once had a client who had all her projects piled up on the floor next to her side of the bed. That was a real recipe for sleep problems! There was no way she could sleep peacefully with piles of work-related items in such close proximity .

When I suggested that we find another home for those things she informed me that there were no rooms available for her to claim as her own. Not to be deterred, I asked her to show me around the house to see if we could identify some space that would work as her personal cockpit. We finally settled on a corner of the family room. She claimed as her own the desk and filing cabinet that were already located there and informed family members that the area was off limits to them. Several weeks later she wrote me to thank me for giving her life back to her.

Are you a woman who is unable to get clear about what really matters to you? Are you distracted by a million and one things to do, places to be and people to care for? Do you want the opportunity to have more clarity, more peace, and be more organized? Find a part of your home that you can claim as your own. Make it your own. Make it lovely. Fill it with your projects, books and precious personal items. Then set boundaries by informing family members that the space is yours alone and guard it with your life!

Others that are accustomed to spreading out all over the house may need to be reminded to stay out of your space and keep their things out of it. Do it! It’s time for you to have your own peaceful place to get reacquainted with you. It may feel selfish, but do it anyway! You deserve it! Claiming a space for you is really an act of self-love and self-respect that will make you an even better wife and mother. Go for it!

We all have a need for down time. We need time to do whatever we want to do–rest, read, play on the computer, visit friends, anything that is pleasurable and gives us a break from the many essential tasks of living. I have a hunch that if we don’t make enough time in our busy schedules to take a break, we find ways to take it anyway or we pay for not doing it by being only halfway present for essential tasks.

What may look like poor time management could really be an expression of insufficient down time. You fritter away an afternoon at work, spending more time than is necessary on email and surfing the web. You are exhausted and what you really need is a mental health day. Instead you show up and take the time anyway, procrastinating doing essential tasks, instead playing on the computer.

Imagine having worked for weeks with no quality down time. It’s time to put together an important proposal. How well are you going to be able to work? The part of you that is committed to your survival is going to wage war against the dutiful part of you. You may not procrastinate by wasting time, but it’s quite possible that you will only be able to attack the proposal with half the energy and focus that you would give to it if you were really rested. And, the proposal may get done, but its quality may be half what it could have been–the price you pay for not scheduling sufficient down time.

Have you heard the saying, “We teach first that which we must learn?” I’m writing about this challenge as much for me as for you! It’s time to make down time as essential as going to work!

Today I finally whole heartedly dove into planning the seminar I’ll be giving on February 12, entitled “Organizing for Productivity and Success.” I’d done some preliminary planning last weekend and during the week. As I usually do with something new and overwhelming, I chipped off small bites of the big project so I could get it to a size I could handle mentally and emotionally. Because I’d done that prep work, I was able to pin my butt to my chair and worked diligently on all aspects of the preparation–the slide show, the handouts, props, and the outline of the speech. When I finished I felt really good about my effort and my results. And, I felt good about me.

That got me thinking about procrastination. When you procrastinate, you put off doing something that needs to be done. You may be having a great time doing something else, but somewhere in your subconscious the task is nagging at you. With it there you are unable to fully relax, fully enjoy the present moment. And, you aren’t able to fully feel good about yourself. A part of you knows you are avoiding something important. That part can often be abusive. It sends you messages like, “What’s taking you so long to get started on _______?” “You always wait until the last minute and when you finally get going the results are just mediocre.” “What a slacker!”

Procrastination about those really important tasks, the ones that could launch you into a new career, that could free your energy to access your creativity, that could heal a rift with a significant person in your life, or that clear the decks for new adventures, costs you the most in terms of self-esteem. Likewise, when faced, those challenges bring the biggest rewards.

Are you procrastinating about an important task, one that could be life-changing? What is holding you back? Fear of success? Fear of failure? Fear of the unknown? Not doing the task is worse than doing it and struggling. Your efforts will feed your feelings of self-worth. Do it now as an act of self-love and as a commitment to ceasing self-destructive behaviors.

Today I was listening to “Voices of Experience,” a CD produced by the National Speaker’s Association, and heard speaker Rowena Szeszeran-McEvoy share five action steps to get you feeling great. They are:

Smile!
Move more.
Eat less.
Eat more fruits and vegetables.
Drink more water.

Rowena believes that getting healthy doesn’t have to be complicated. If you follow her suggestions you’ll be feeling great in no time.

When you feel good physically, you’re more likely to do what needs to be done to get and stay organized. You don’t have to make major changes. But, you do need to be consistent with the changes you make.

Give it a try! And, let me know how Rowena’s prescription works for you and your efforts to get and stay organized.

“I bought those curtains for my bedroom, but they don’t fit the windows.” This is the kind of statement I often hear when I explore the contents of a shopping bag in a client’s home. And, I’m thinking, “Then, why is it still here?”

Have you ever purchased something that just didn’t work the way you wanted it to? Or, have you ordered a CD course that you were sure was going to change your life for the better, but discovered that the speaker’s voice was intolerable? We’ve all done something like that from time to time.

Once you realized that what you bought was a mistake, what did you do? Did you return it? Or, did you just leave it in your space, immobilized by the feelings of regret about your choice?

Things you’ve purchased that just didn’t work out for you have “mistake” energy, a particularly toxic type of negative energy comparable to the energy of something that is broken. Every time you come across “the mistake” you remember its history, its flaws and you reconnect with the feelings of regret, disappointment, and perhaps even judgment of yourself for making the mistake. And, it also communicates, “There’s something you need to do to fix this problem.” It irritates you because it’s not right and needs tending.

Imagine this. In your space you have a collection of shopping bags, bags that contain items purchased that you don’t want because they aren’t what you really want or don’t work right in your space. They radiate “mistake” energy. They may be buried under other things like piles of recycling or clothes that need to be donated to a charity. But, they are still there holding the energy of the mistake you made. Because the energy of those items is so negative, it drains your energy even when you are no longer conscious that those items are still there. Because mistake energy is particularly toxic, when you have even small quantities of it in your space you run the risk of absorbing that energy. When you do that you begin to feel like you are a mistake. Mistake energy erodes self-confidence.

So, when you make a purchase that is a mistake, return the item immediately. The sooner the better. Some people seem to need a period of time to beat themselves up for their error. Self-flagellation is never helpful and a total waste of energy. Others struggle to follow through with tasks that need to be done. Not following through on tasks that have a direct effect on your self-esteem is a form of self-abuse. Fix those mistakes quickly and view that action as a matter of life and death for your self-esteem. You are worth the effort!

The weather the last few days has been really nasty! Some tropical storm just dumped a bunch of wind and rain on Virginia and assaulted us with high winds and gray skies. During that time I had such difficulty maintaining my usual optimistic attitude. My body seemed to scream, “Sleep!!!!”

About the same time I was gifted with two large blocks of time to get office work done. Great! The urge to sleep is not exactly compatible with being productive at difficult tasks like writing and communicating with speech prospects. What to do when you don’t want to do anything??!!

The first thing I did was acknowledge how I felt. Rather than deny it and try to push through the inertia (what I normally would do-totally disrespectful, by the way!), I first decided to do something that could help increase my energy. I got an ionic foot bath that drained all kinds of toxins out of my body. What an amazing and scary experience! The water was black! No wonder I had been feeling sluggish! I couldn’t blame the slime that came out of my body on the weather!

After the foot bath I ran many errands to clear the errand clutter that had accumulated in my brain, on my to-do list and in my car. I cleared my body and I cleared my errand to-do list. Boy, did I feel lighter!

Once I’d done all that clearing, I again had energy to tackle my more difficult action items, like writing a tips list to send to my coach. Yes! I did that and actually got my desk cleared and some substantial tasks done.

So, the next time you’re fighting with yourself to get things done, check in to see what you really need at that moment. Because of fatigue, the weather, or your mood, you may have to take a short detour to re-energize yourself. The trick is to get back on track once you’ve received the benefits of the detour. Remember, a detour is a temporary place whose purpose is to lead you back to the main road to your productivity and success.