Eric Walker

Fall is one of my favorite times of the year. Mostly because the weather is cooler outside and I have been known to pretend I am allergic to heat and humidity. As a runner, the cooler weather is welcome but you have to live with the downside of running in the dark morning or night hours. However, fall is another time when you need to start thinking about cleaning up the yard of leaves or putting away the summer stuff, and finding all the winter gear.

Since we have younger kids we put up a pool in the summer and an ice rink in the winter. Both of those things require some infrastructure that needs to be stored in the off-seasons. I don’t mind having to put it away but when this happens it always becomes a day project as it gives me some time to really clean up the other clutter that has been accumulating during the other 3-6 months.

I have written before about how we have used House Projects to Help Declutter as well as using the Seasons to help clean up areas of our house as well. However, most of all of that energy in decluttering started after I read the book “The More of Less” by Joshua Becker. Not only did the book energize me to start some of those decluttering projects around my house but also the book gave me access to a course that connected me with a community of people who wanted to and were going through the same process.

Uncluttered was the course and it was great because it was only a 12-week course focusing on various aspects of becoming uncluttered. However, in reality, the underlying message was not to just trash everything and live in a house with nothing. No… because who would really want to do that. The course walked you through how to figure out what is important to you and helps challenge your thinking of what is important so in the end, you hopefully will know exactly what is important and lift the weight by removing the other “stuff” cluttering your life.

The best part about the course is that you get lifetime access. So for someone like me, I enjoy that because I have done the course a couple of different times. Not only as a refresher but also as a way to get motivated again. As I said at the beginning of this article, I have two big clean-up events every year due to the infrastructure of outside stuff I need to put away. I am approaching one right now and even though I would love to say I decluttered our house once and after that, all was well… Well, that is not the case, it is something you have to intentionally work at going forward because let’s face it everyone is busy and stuff can start to pile up again. So for me retaking this course that continues to inspire me is time and initial money well spent.

Ok, I need to make something clear because I do not want you to think I am trying to pull one over on you. I know the previous paragraph seemed a little sales pitchy. Note that is not my intention, I am only telling you things from my own experience and no one is paying me to write this article. I would not try to convince you that something is good if I have never used it before and given it a try.