Adjusting My Attitude with a Tidy-Up

A coworker told me they would clean to relieve stress. I remember thinking that was such a bizarre outlet but if that worked for them, why not?

I now understand this as a stress reliever - when I cannot control what is happening around me, I can control the grime on the shower tile or backlog of laundry. This reminded me of my first foray into the world of organizing; I started with building a capsule wardrobe to make everyday decisions easier and feel like I had more control over the stuff around me.

When I’m grumpy and need to snap out of it, I try to find something small around the house to clean or spruce up. I can focus my energy around that one task plus I benefit with tidied-up corner in my home. Sounds cheesy but it’s true.

I was feeling particularly frustrated last weekend and realized how annoyed/irritated I was when I walked in the door and flung my tote backpack onto the entry way table. It was heavy and I didn’t know why … so this was the perfect opportunity to swap it out for a newly acquired cross-body bag.

After dumping everything onto the table, I cleared out all the little bits of trash, snapped pictures of crumpled work receipts with my Wave app, then began placing everything into the new bag.

I felt an immediate improvement and writing this now, don’t really remember what I was so grumpy about. In the past, I would mope a bit, watch TV or mindlessly scroll through social media, finding myself getting more annoyed/bored/angry. I’m going to work on choosing tidying up - it’s better for my attitude and my home :)