Cultivating My Inner Calm

Yesterday I shared that I am no longer willing to be disorganized.

It’s not just the wasting of time trying to find things that is driving me crazy. It’s even more that clutter and the messes are making me angry. It literally puts me in a bad mood.

If you’ve been around here for the past couple months, you know my favorite podcast is Oprah’s SuperSoul conversations.

As luck (or fate) would have it, this morning as I was beginning to clean out my office, I was listening to the latest episode with Gretchen Rubin.

Gretchen Rubin wrote a book about happiness. But she’s also kind of an expert on developing habits (which is how I first discovered her). But in this podcast episode, she was talking about happiness, and wouldn’t you know it, but clutter puts a big dent in your happiness.

And then as Gretchen is explaining this inverse clutter-happiness relationship Oprah chimed in with, “outer order contributes to inner calm.”

And I was like, YEEESSSSS!

This is what I have discovered since keeping our dining room neat and eating all our meals in there.

I am so much happier when I’m in that room.

So today I was going to write a post describing what I did to organize my gym bag and cut down on the time I waste every day getting that together, but instead I’ve been working on my office.

Because I remembered something else.

On Christmas Eve, Number 2, 3, and 4 took care of a friend’s dog while she was visiting family. I had never been to her house, so I took the kids over to show them what to do, and I walked into her house, and it was SO NEAT.  Not like psycho/OCD neat, but just orderly.

And calm.

And it felt so nice to walk into.

And that was the when the first being-disorganized-is-really-f*cking-pissing-me-off feelings started surfacing.

And what I’ve realized since then is that I am no longer willing to tolerate things that are within my control that make my unhappy or make me stressed out or anxious.

This is under my control.

It’s time for me to take control.

Back to my office…

My office used to be in the kids’ playroom upstairs. But I wanted my own space.

So we transformed a small, unused area in the house and made it my office.

It’s very small. Only  45″ x 136″ —  under 4 feet wide by 12 feet long.

My brother asked me if it was Harry Potter’s office.

That’s all the space I really need, though. Plus it’s got two windows so it’s bright and cheery.

But once I moved the computer in and hung up a few pictures, I kind of stopped there.

I never set up any systems in my new space. So it’s been a mess.

And the chaos in here is making me feel like the complete opposite of calm. And it certainly doesn’t help me to be efficient or productive.

It has so much potential.

In my mind, I know exactly what I want it to look like.

In fact, I am all set to write about how to transform a really small space into a usable office.

I just never finished the entire transformation.

No follow through. Until today.

So here’s what it currently looks like. This is one side — my desk:

Here’s what is behind my monitor:

Here’s the other side:

Here’s what I see every time I walk into my office:

I’m ready to have a calm, peaceful, cozy, and inspiring place to work.

So anyway, that’s what I’m working on today.

It’s basically going to be the world’s cutest office when I’m done, and I can’t wait to show you.

That and my super organized gym bag.

Stay tuned!

(And while you’re waiting, maybe you can work on the stuff that’s messing up your inner calm, too)