Cleaning under the fridge (Archived)
I spent the morning under the fridge. It’s quite amazing the sorts of things that end up under the fridge, especially when you have three cats. As I swatted out dust-bunnies, stray pasta, cat toys and shards of that cup I dropped months ago, it occurred to me just how much lost, broken, dusty and unused clutter washes up in the corners of our lives.
The floor is a good angle to reflect upon the dusty corners of my creative world and self-management routines, especially when I’m avoiding housework. Where does the dust and clutter collect? Where do the lost and broken things hide?
June draws to a close, pulling us towards the end of the financial year and the half-way point of the calendar year. It’s a time when businesses close down the old and plan for the new. This makes it the perfect opportunity to step outside our busy-ness and do a thorough stock-take of the routines and processes of our creative world. What’s working? What isn’t?
Most of us will be familiar with the concept of spring cleaning our houses or garages. We tear everything out and stack them in piles of what’s useful and what isn’t. We discard as much as we can to make space, tossing out old, broken or unused items. We clean what we intend to keep and set it back in a nice, neat, organised manner.
Spring-cleaning invites in space and light and a productive new feel. It makes room for new projects and ideas and routines.
We need to do the same in our creative world. I don’t just mean the physical space we work in, though that is certainly a great place to start our mid-year de-clutter. Taking a moment to reflect on how functional the space is, how the energy sits, how organised it is and its location is a fantastic way to check how we are valuing and prioritising our creative hearts.
Space is not just a physical thing — it is also an investment of time and energy and resources. How do our creative world and creative projects fit into our day and our week? Does it fit neatly, or has it migrated under the fridge with the dust-bunnies? Do we need to clean the clutter out of our routines, chuck a pile of old habits into the skip out back and clear some fresh clean space for our projects?
There are lots of reasons why we do things: it’s familiar, it’s easier, we were taught to do it this way, someone expects it to be done like that, its more comfortable, we’re too tired… This is how we end up with all the cat-toys and lost pasta under the fridge. We need big, regular spring clean of our plans and routines and priorities. We need to pull the lid off and squint inside and have a good hard honest look to see what is serving us well and bringing us closer to our goals, and what is old and broken and should be discarded.
As in all things, getting started is hard. Once we are in motion, we pick up a sort of momentum. Starting somewhere small like tidying your physical creative space is a good place to begin. Start in an easy corner and work your way through, checking how all the parts of your life fit together and where it bangs or catches or squeaks.
June/July is a chance to hit the re-set button and start again. The re-set button is easier to find if we ditch the clutter and open some space first.
Let’s use the final days of June to clear out all the things that aren’t working, or aren’t the right fit for us right now. Let’s free ourselves from clutter so our eyes can lock on that horizon once more!
(Posted 25 Jun 2020. Follow me at: https://nicolewalshauthor.com/)
