Setting Goals Towards Simplification: Decluttering

I admit it. I'm not the best goal-setter in the world. I've often read about the importance of setting both short-term and long-term goals to keep you on track and focused, and while this makes a lot of sense intellectually, in practice I haven't been great about setting goals, short-term goals in particular.

I could blame any number of factors for this, but a large reason is due to faulty goal-setting when I was younger, which resulted in an association between setting goals and failing to achieve them, and thus a subconscious aversion to goal-setting in the first place. Bad, I know. But imagine the overworked undergrad [how melodramatic of me] staring down a long list of readings and assignments at a coffee shop ... only to put her head on the table and sleep for a couple hours.

Classic. And completely the product of

1) Underestimating the time that tasks will take,
2) Overestimating my ability to be productive,
3) Providing no rewards for small milestones achieved [always one to look beyond and to the next set of challenges that lie ahead]
4) An out-of-control To Do List, utterly unprioritized and entirely too comprehensive,
5) A personality that gets lost in the details sometimes [and lets those details wind up on the To Do List],
6) Ignoring the rhythms of how I function best.

This past weekend, after 7 years of living away from home in various dormitories and apartments, I moved back home. It is a temporary move for a couple months before I move out again for grad school, but staring down the heaps of boxes and overflowing bookshelves in my room, I decided I need to downsize.

I've been trying to downsize for a couple years now. I know my problem, I have too many clothes that I love, too many hobbies that I love, too many books that I love, too many accessories that I love ... And it doesn't help that I'm both supremely indecisive about where to unpack belongings, and that we just recently moved back into this house and so I'd never really unpacked in the first place. Overflow on top of overflow. But when my living environment is too messy and jam-packed it feels restrictive, uncomfortable.

Any cullings that happen now would be the third or fourth sweep through, and yet, after reading about Rowena's challenge to herself to get rid of 100 things, I thought I'd take up the challenge as well.

So here's where the goal-setting comes in. Though normally averse to it, last night as I was drifting off to bed I thought I'd set up some goals for the day so that I keep the unpacking and culling process moving along [I have another week of work left so I'll be commuting up to the city, and I didn't want to leave my stuff strewn all over the house to prematurely wear out my welcome at home]

1) Get all the boxes out from downstairs and into my room. This would involve some unpacking and just cluttering up the room further. One step back for two [hopefully] steps forward, eh?

2) Hit a total of 30 things removed.

And tonight as I sit typing this, I'm at:

1) All boxes removed from downstairs [though admittedly, I moved a couple things into the guest room downstairs which I'm hoping I can turn into a mini sewing studio for the summer; and admittedly there is a suitcase sitting just outside my door]

2) I've removed a grand total of 28 items so far. Some were small, like bits of costume jewelry that I frankly don't wear; others were larger, like the wool peacoat from high school that I just might need, you know, one of those distant days in the future.


And yes, it does feel nice. So I missed out on #2, just barely ... but I've got an hour and 45 minutes until midnight ... just kidding. I'll take that as "close enough" and fight that battle another day.