Incentives

I go through long spurts of not being able to accomplish anything. Although my intentions are good, I always manage to talk myself into procrastination. Because of my husband's illness and working longer hours and the dark, grey, depression of winter, I've put off a lot of things that need to be done around here. Things pile up, nothing gets thrown away and I'd clean just enough to not be embarrassed if someone stopped by. I live by the old Erma Bombeck way of thinking, if I clean it up, it'll just get messy again in a week or two, so why bother?! (I love all of her books - she was inspirational when I was growing up, lol).

But then, I go to someone's house that is worse than mine, and I think "how/why would you live this way?!" and I found myself picking things up, throwing things away, and I realized, why don't I just do this at my house? It inspired me like nothing else could. I spent the day throwing things away: junk mail, freebies I had collected from here and there, old straws, matchbooks, and I started finding a lot of things that I had "borrowed" ages ago from people, so I started bagging those items to be returned to their owners (bet they'll be surprised).

I think it was therapeutic in a way. Clutter can bring you down and make you feel like you're buried and when life is a little rough anyway, breaking through the clutter can be liberating and gave me a fresh outlook.