Done is better than perfect. {Decluttering, Part 3}

When you are contemplating moving, especially a big move, one involving planes and suitcases, not a moving truck, you look at your stuff with a laser focused critical eye. You scour bookshelves, sorting sell/give away/read again (and then give away). You realize you haven't actually consulted those history textbooks or old university notes in the past 10 years (and we have the internet now...) and you fill the recycling bin. You finally let go of those clothes you've been keeping "just in case" as you rotated through many sizes with the births of two kids in the past 4 years.

I find it incredibly freeing to get rid of stuff. Clutter in the closet and on my shelves clutters my mind and my soul. These last few weeks I've been relentlessly sorting, throwing parties with a shelf full of help-yourself items, selling stuff online and to locals. I get a surge of joy when an item we don't need anymore finds someone who can use and enjoy it. I am astounded to discover the things we have carted through not one but two moves in the past few years: compilation CD given to me by some boy over a decade ago? My high school French verb charts? Notes and essays from my B.A. Canadian history and Quebec lit classes [over a decade ago]?

Madame Lucid's infamous verb charts.
Merci Madame, toujours utile!

A friend commented recently "I know a lot of people who have a lot more stuff than you!" I am married to an über-minimalist German who regularly tries to throw out the kids toys/books/drawings or any scrap of paper that has landed in our house for longer than 2 minutes. But still, I can't believe the amount of things like ill-fitting clothes or hand-me-down decorative items, I have kept which I dislike. I read somewhere that we should only have things in our house which we find beautiful or know to be of use. How many things clutter up our lives, tie us down, that we don't need, use or even want?

Stuff on its way out

A couple of months ago, I listened to this podcast with Christine Caine talking about decluttering, not just of objects in your home, but of relationships holding you back, decisions that haven't been made, holding onto things from the past that need to be let go, paperwork lying around, unanswered emails... I love the readiness that comes from decluttering--being ready for the new (ideas, responsibilities, adventures), ready to leave the boat behind, ready for healthy growth. A few quotes from the podcast that stuck with me: "Done is better than perfect." (Ahem, my dissertation needed to hear that.) 

"You've got no room for the future if you are full of the past."
I'm finding this to be true. Not always easy, sometimes painful and downright terrifying, but I want to be light on my feet, ready to go when called.

This post is part of a little series. Here are part 1 and part 2. 

Go to bed.

My word for 2014 is discipline and it truly has been a guiding principle thus far. Rather than being a random word I chose out of the air or a New Year's resolution, it is something God had been impressing on me as an area He wants me to grow in. Self-discipline. Disciplining my schedule. Finishing. Following through on commitments. Not thinking about throwing in the towel.

HolyBelly Café, Paris.

If they fed me every morning, I would be a better woman.
3 months later I can still taste these sweet, tender pancakes.

One big area that needed discipline in my life was sleep. I am naturally a night-owl. I love to work in the wee hours, often that is when my writing flows. But when I go to sleep at midnight, am awakened at least once in the night by a child and definitively by 6:30, I am useless the next day. I prop myself up on a couple of espressos and slog on, but I feel like I have been hit by a truck, I am short-tempered and irritable with my children, and I am unmotivated in my work. As we looked a things in our daily lives that needed to improve, how to be more effective and productive, I realized getting to bed earlier would have a positive impact on everything else. Rather than working on improving in a whole bunch of ways, my aim has been primarily this one: 

Go to bed.

I listen to podcasts while doing housework or cooking if the kids are not at home, asleep or playing with their papa, and a recent practical talk for church planters encouraged me to actually put sleep in my calendar. So I do. I now have a set bedtime (allowing for a few exceptions). I have a pre-set alarm on my phone and get out of bed at the same time every day (the kids helped enormously to bring rhythm into our lives, as they, like the Dowager Countess of Grantham, do not observe weekends). Then I "wind the clock" back 8 hours from that wake-up time, and that is my bedtime. And, knowing I suddenly realize I should start laundry before bed and need time to wind my brain down before I can fall asleep, I try to start heading to bed half an hour before that. Simply writing out our daily schedule at the beginning of the year helped me enormously to always have the basic times in my head of when I should be doing what. I don't always hit the mark, I don't get angry or legalistic about it, but it's a helpful guideline.

Sleep. We need it. Our overtaxed brains need to rejuvenate to be at our best. Plan it in and then take care of the rest.