­­­Clutter. We’ve all experienced it on some level. Some of it is visible. Some of it is hidden from our sight. Physical and mental clutter have a funny way of creeping into our homes and our lives. Slowly but surely, we become inundated and overwhelmed by it, sometimes to the point of making us sick.

Visible Clutter

Think Paper Clutter

The kind of clutter that seeps into our homes every day and when not dealt with on a regular basis, it builds up, filling our kitchen countertops, desktops, nightstands, and coffee tables. Every flat surface we have in our homes becomes a repository for junk mail, take out menus, unsolicited advertisements, and bills. Paper clutter is like a virus that spreads rapidly and can easily take over our lives.

Think Digital Clutter

Unopened emails, poorly labeled files, disorganized desktops, digital photos that we promise to delete “someday” fall in this category. Left unattended, our messy and cluttered virtual lives negatively impact our productivity and workflow, causing undo stress.

Think Sentimental Clutter

All of those special things like photos, love letters, and memorabilia that we just can’t seem to let go of. Those things that sit in boxes and storage containers for years in our attic and basement waiting for the right time to sort through them.

This type of physical clutter tends to accumulate as our kids grow and move on and as our parents and loved ones pass away. It’s the type of clutter that will be hidden from our sight, takes up valuable space in our minds because we know we will have to face it someday. 

Think Calendar Clutter

When our calendars are filled with too many commitments and obligations (the “have to’s” but “I don’t want to’s”) and when we allow unsolicited expectations of others to consume our time, attention, and energy our calendars leave, no room, no white space for our own priorities and desires.

Hidden Clutter

Think Relationship Clutter

We may not have ever considered toxic relationships and toxic behavior to be a type of clutter, but constant yelling, shaming, blaming, and controlling negatively impact our health and well-being. Just like physical clutter, relationship clutter can hold us back from living the life we want and deserve.

Think Financial Clutter

Like relationship clutter, financial clutter is not always visible or easy to identify, but if you have no budget, regularly max out your credit cards, tend to buy on impulse, and face overdue bills each month, you are likely experiencing the impact and stress of financial clutter.

Each of these types of clutter, whether visible or invisible, impacts our health, our wealth, and our overall happiness. Clutter is like a disease that slowly eats away at the quality of our lives.

But once your eyes have been opened to just how invasive and insidious clutter is costing you your freedom, you’ve taken the first big step to realize the therapeutic benefits of decluttering your home and your life. 

How Do You Feel About Decluttering?

For many, the thought of decluttering stirs up negative emotions. These are the top 5:

1. Overwhelm

Problem: Not knowing where or how to get started. Too big of a task to comprehend.

Solution: Start in one small area, one drawer, one shelf. When you see progress, this will motivate you to continue.

2. Sentimentality

Problem: Attachment to memories, feeling that we will lose those if we let go of sentimental clutter.

Solution: Keep a few special items, take photos, create a Shutterfly album, and write about why the items are important to you.

3. Procrastination

Problem: You know you have to declutter, and you even want to declutter, but you keep putting it off until tomorrow.

Solution: Give yourself a deadline and a schedule. Get a friend to help and to hold you accountable.

4. Fear

Problem: Fear that you will make a mistake and might give away something that you need later.

Solution: Develop a decluttering mindset and muscle. Over time it gets easier, and you experience the freedom of less.

5. Guilt

Problem: The feeling that you spent “good money” on it or that it was a gift from someone and you feel guilty about letting it go.

Solution: Face the reality that the money is spent, and you will not get it back. Also, give yourself the leeway to realize that it was a gift, and it is yours to keep or not. Focus on how life will be much easier after decluttering.

Push Reset on How You Feel About Decluttering

When you rethink the way you feel about the process of decluttering, you will start to see it as a way to make your life easier because it frees up space in your home and in your head.

Decluttering is an emotional process. Allow yourself to feel those feelings of fear, guilt, sentimentality, and attachment. Allow yourself to grieve the loss/donation/repurposing of items to others.

Decluttering can be a positive and therapeutic experience. It can reduce stress, overwhelm, and restore clarity, peace of mind, freedom, and happiness. Decluttering is the cure for clutter.

Think of decluttering as a way to cure clutter and to simplify all areas of your life. 

• When you make a habit of decluttering and purging excess physical and mental clutter regularly…
• When you create boundaries about what you allow into your home and into your life…

You will start to see decluttering in a whole new light because it is more about what you will gain rather than how much you will lose or let go of.

Benefits of Decluttering

Decluttering your home and your life gives relief, it lifts the burden and weight off your shoulders of clutter. It helps you make room for a simpler, more abundant life. 

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear/read about decluttering? Is it positive or negative? Have you started decluttering any area of your life? How is it going?

Photo: @Brynn_Whitfielld

Originally posted at: Brynn Whitfield’s Plaid Coat

Originally posted at: Erin Lichy’s Cream Off The Shoulder Top

Many people in the life phase after full-time work use the word “freedom” to describe their experience. When we dig deeper, we find that there are different explanations of what freedom really means to each of us. I am curious about what is true for you.

Is This a Time of Freedom for You?

Freedom may not be how you would describe your life after full-time work and other life responsibilities. For some, responsibilities continue, such as caring for a family member or even raising grandchildren. For others, it may feel as though there is no longer a purpose.

You may have a full life just taking care of your own wellness. For about 30% of our generation of women, loneliness defines this phase. What are some of the words you use to describe what this phase of life is like for you?

How Do You Define Your Freedom?

If you do identify with the notion that this phase is a time of freedom, stop and reflect on what you mean by that. Is it “freedom from” earlier responsibilities, or is it “freedom to” create life? Survey evidence indicates that our generation is split 50-50 between these two definitions of freedom.

Freedom “From”

One group defines freedom as no longer having the work and family responsibilities of earlier life phases. For my husband, it would be freedom from getting up at 5:30 to make it to his first meeting. It may be freedom from a long commute, or from work travel, or from a bad boss or co-worker. It may be freedom from having little personal time.

It appears that there is gratification in taking note of what negatives are no longer present. So, it is possible to relax in life enjoying the absence of what was not pleasurable.

Freedom “To”

The other group defines freedom as being free to accomplish/create/be. When I interviewed a few women about what freedom means to them, they used the word “choice” in their explanations. It is freedom to choose the life you want to live; it might be for the next five years or for just today. The point is that they get to decide. On the surface, this sounds easy. Right? In fact, it often is challenging.

In the beginning, taking your power and choosing what you want can feel foreign. We women often are not very practiced at doing this. Two women I spoke with talked about how they are learning how to choose by getting to know themselves, that they deserve to live the life they want, and take their power to choose.

Sometimes this learning requires setting new boundaries in relationships; sometime personal time and space is needed. Certainly, you must be in touch with your own inner wisdom. You might find this short meditation helpful to begin to know your inner voice.

Both Are True

Of course, there is truth in both perspectives about freedom. Yet, when you consider the qualities of the life you desire, there is value in emphasizing the perspective that serves what you want. I have a personal bias that I will explain. I’d love to hear if you experience it differently or likewise.

My sense is that the “freedom from” perspective may serve the early months of post full-time work. In this early phase of transition, you are letting go and perhaps allowing yourself to relax at last. You get to feel what it is like to not be driven by a work schedule.

Do you think there is some incentive to stay in this phase and not move into the “freedom to” perspective? Or perhaps, you moved immediately into the ‘freedom to’ perspective?

Personally, I stayed in the ‘freedom from” stage less than six months. My mind went from relishing that I didn’t have work obligations to considering what it is I did want as my life. Exploring this question turned out to be quite a journey; I don’t think there is one destination. It is the freedom to explore, adapt and grow as we go. Age 70 probably will look different from age 85 – adapt!

The ‘freedom to’ perspective is forward-looking and expansive. Even if I face physical hurdles someday, I truly believe this perspective will help me focus on what is possible. That is good for health, well-being, and happiness.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Have you left full-time work? Do you feel you are free from work or free to do life your way? What are your thoughts and personal experiences?

Alison Crouch was not surprised when she was diagnosed with osteoporosis in her early 50s. She has family history. Her mother had “lousy bone density in her early 50s” and was put on medication.

Alison herself had measurable bone loss in her lumbar spine in her early 30s that she was able to reverse through exercise. She developed a professional interest in the condition as she became a certified Pilates instructor and started her movement training company MoveSmart.

But her blue eyes go wide and her hands fly open, too, as she recalls her initial response to the diagnosis. “There was this moment of what am I going to do now? I’m a Pilates teacher! I went through a phase of feeling like a total fraud, went through a phase of being afraid to do anything. I’m also a scuba diver. It involves a lot of heavy gear and bending. We have a sailboat. I had that paralyzed feeling, but now what?”

What Is Osteoporosis?

According to the Osteoporosis Canada website, “Osteoporosis is a disease characterized by low bone mass and deterioration of bone tissue, which can lead to increased risk of fracture.” Bone deterioration can occur over a number of years without symptoms. Many people give little thought to bone health until a low-impact fracture of the hips, spine, wrists or shoulders leads to a diagnosis.

Osteoporosis has no single known cause. It may be the result of aging or “taking certain medications and certain other conditions and syndromes which lead to bone loss as a side effect.” Yet Alison emphasizes “this is not an old people’s issue. The way you protect yourself against loss of bone density, is to make sure you have lots of bone density to start with. You want to build peak bone mass while you’re young.”

It’s important to “develop a movement habit that includes a wide variety of movements throughout your life” to protect against inevitable loss of bone mass regardless of gender or health.

Osteoporosis is diagnosed with a bone mineral density scan, called a DEXA (Dual X-ray Absorptiometry) scan. The result is a T-score, a number that compares your current bone health to the average peak mass of a 30 year old, the age when bones are strongest.

• T-score of -1.0 or above = normal bone density
• T-score between -1.0 and -2.5 = low bone density, or osteopenia
• T-score of -2.5 or lower = osteoporosis

A diagnosis can feel overwhelming because of the sometimes negative or confusing messages that come from health and fitness professionals. Alison has heard from women who have been told to “sit down, be quiet and take medication. Everything you do is dangerous, everything you do is risky. You shouldn’t garden, you should go for a walk and take medication.”

She says, “Everybody’s journey through diagnosis and experience of the condition is different. I would love to (…) make osteoporosis less fearful, to [help clients] make sensible decisions about our own lives based on the knowledge that we have about ourselves specifically.”

Moving Through Fear

Five months after Alison was diagnosed with osteoporosis, she had a “fairly dramatic” fall. She was balancing on a branch that was lying on the ground, something she often practiced. This time, she fell directly on her hip and lower back. “I had a lot of fear that I had fractured something. And I’d never felt that fear before.”

As a movement coach, she says she intellectually understood the fear that can accompany a diagnosis. But when she fell, it no longer mattered what she knew about pain science or how her body had recovered from injuries in the past. “All of that was completely erased because of my fear.”

Luckily, she didn’t break any bones. That experience inspired her to create a movement and coaching program specifically addressing bone health and osteoporosis. “I think it gives me a better sense of connection to and empathy for people who are going through this process.”

A Movement Program Designed by Someone Who Understands

Alison has recently rolled out a coaching and movement program called the MoveSmart Method. The program was born from her personal experience with osteoporosis and grounded in years of therapeutic movement work as a Restorative Exercise Specialist and Pilates trainer.

Her method includes a series of self-guided, online exercise modules that offer spine-safe protocols for people at all levels of bone density. And there are 12 weeks of online group coaching calls with “people who truly understand what you’re going through.”

“My hope, my goal is at the end of the 3 months, after being part of the Facebook community and the live coaching calls, each participant will have an exercise program that is not only tailored to them and their lifestyle, but also how their brains and bodies work. And that they canmake changes that are totally personal to their own circumstances.”

Keep Learning, Keep Moving

If you’ve been looking for reliable and accurate information about moving better with an osteoporosis diagnosis, I encourage you to start with Alison’s free guide to Bone Basics for Osteoporosis.

Bone Basics takes you through five ways of moving that everyone with osteoporosis (or bone density concerns) needs to work on every day:

• Spinal unloading
• Joint mobility
• Core (especially upper back) strength
• Balance and agility and
• Spine-sparing, bone-safe hip strength for everyday tasks

You don’t need a diagnosis to benefit from this free resource. If you have a diagnosis and aren’t sure what to do next, start here!

Let’s Have a Conversation:

If you’ve been diagnosed with osteoporosis, how did you feel when you first learned about your condition? What are the movements and exercises that work best for you? What advice do you have for folks with a new diagnosis?