My Home Life Was Wearing Me Out. So I Decluttered My Brain.

Over the past year, I’ve come to realize that I need to simplify my life. I am far busier than I should be. I have a stressful, time-consuming job and a family. Add laundry, grocery shopping, appointments and family events and there is hardly enough time in a day. Rarely do I have time to do something I actually want to do. What if my life were simpler? What if everything in my home had a place, everything in my closet actually fit, and meal planning wasn’t a weekly ordeal? What if my home felt like a sanctuary and my weekends actually had room for things I enjoyed?

This was more along the lines of what I had in mind.

Then I came across research suggesting that clutter doesn’t just annoy us—it can actually affect how we feel. One study found that women who described their homes as more cluttered and unfinished had less healthy patterns of the stress hormone cortisol and experienced more depressed mood throughout the day.

Reading this research launched me on a quest to simplify. But the result was not what I expected. I started going over lists in my head of all the things I needed to take care of to make my simplified life a reality. I needed to organize every room in my house, remove things that aren’t used anymore, clean out my closet, organize my home office, do some decorating, make some repairs, the list went on and on, and it was overwhelming. I didn’t just think about the list. I thought about how to do the things on the list and when to do them. I thought about other commitments I have and how to work around them to make time for the list. The list in my head was keeping me awake at night. As each day went by without progress on the list, I felt many things and none of them were good. I was anxious, annoyed, tired and feeling like a failure. Some of the things on the list brought up negative feelings about other goals I have and haven’t reached. My cluttered closet held clothes that no longer fit me, reminding me I haven’t reached my fitness goals. The stress was compounding daily. I had somehow turned simplifying my life into one more thing I was failing to accomplish.

I was overthinking…but not doing.

This was not getting me anywhere. Something had to change. So, I decided to regain control of my thoughts by making a list. I needed to see the list and make a plan. I opened up Excel and started typing. As I typed out all the things I’d been thinking about, I felt lighter. I could think more clearly about what I was trying to do.

I didn’t just want a list. I wanted a personal operating system for my life. I wanted it to be something I wanted to look at every day. Something that helped me organize and plan, but also made me feel good about my accomplishments, not upset at what I didn’t do. I no longer wanted my goal of simplification to be something that made me unhappy. That was the opposite of what it was supposed to do. To that end, I made some rules for my system.

The rules that changed everything.

For my task list, I decided to break big tasks into small, manageable ones. “Clean my closet” became “organize shoes and remove any I don’t wear”, “remove anything that doesn’t fit me right now”, and “get rid of damaged items”. I try to keep each task to 15 minutes or less. Related tasks do not have to be done on the same day.
There are no due dates on my task list. I have a scheduled date for each task. It’s gentler. If I need to move it, then I do and I don’t feel bad about it.
I don’t schedule more than three optional tasks from my personal list in a week. I know I can accomplish that most weeks. If I can do more, I do. I never feel like a failure because of my list.
I built a dashboard that shows me what matters this week without making me stare at my entire list. It also shows me how much I’ve already accomplished, because I realized I needed a system that reminded me of my progress, not just everything I hadn’t done yet.
I check things off my list. Turns out, I really like checking things off!

I check in with my system a few times a week. I see what’s scheduled, add things that have been bouncing around in my head, and—my favorite part—check off what I’ve finished.

I also added a place for appointments and commitments, because those take up space in my week too.

The biggest difference, though, is that my brain doesn’t have to carry all of it anymore.

It’s written down. There’s a plan. I know what I’m doing this week, and everything else can wait.

I’m calmer. I’m getting things done. And every time I open my system, it reminds me how much I’ve already handled.

This is really what The Happy Quest is about for me. I’m not trying to build a perfectly organized life. I’m looking for the little things that make everyday life harder than it needs to be and figuring out how to remove them.

Want to get it out of your head, too?

I turned my own Personal Operating System into a simple Excel workbook you can use too. It’s designed to help you get everything out of your head, decide what actually deserves your attention this week, and see how much you’ve already accomplished.