SHED :: A book review

The long-awaited haircut wasn’t the huge change I had planned,
but I’m happy with it and still growing it out

I promised a book review and I’m sorry it’s overdue. First I’d like to share some quotes from the book so you can decide right away if this is something you’d like to read. It was timely for me personally because I feel like I’m in a transitional time of my life, yet some reviews of this book on Amazon indicate that not everybody got as much out of this book as I did.

Clutter, in the context of SHEDing is symbolic of our attachment to something from the past that must be released in order to make room for change

Clutter is anything that no longer serves you

Because something is organized doesn’t mean it’s active and dynamic in supporting your theme.

I learned something about myself with my first pass at de-cluttering a few weeks ago — I was holding on to a lot of stuff simply for “inspiration.” It was clear that I was hoping that the items I had gathered would enhance my creativity in some way. And I’ve been blessed to be able to enjoy several years of freedom to choose creativity as a goal. But the inspirational input wasn’t resulting in a lot of productive output — a lot of lofty thought, yes, but not a lot to show for it. I remember having been more productive when forty of my waking hours per week were already spoken for. Back then, even in spite of having far fewer choices, I actually made measurable progress on my goals. I’ve realized this in the past but I had never actually figured out what my next steps should be.

Thanks to the book, and the author’s strong suggestion that the reader decide on a theme before continuing, I have a clear picture now of what all this de-cluttering and organizing is supposed to accomplish. I’ve been operating under a very broad theme of “creativity,” and gathering about me all the items I needed to foster that. And it’s not been a total failure – it just hasn’t produced much. So I immediately knew what I wanted my new theme to be: Productivity.

First I had to take a hard look at all the STUFF. If it’s not serving me and doesn’t support my theme, it goes. How it goes and where it goes is something that can be figured out throughout this process, but it’s mentally tagged as gone as soon as I recognize it. For instance, I know where I want the old magazines to go and while they’re not physically out of the house yet, they’re well on their way. Same with the clothes. Gone. But the most important idea relating to my theme going forward is that nothing will come in from now on (physically or mentally) that doesn’t support my theme. So yeah, it’s a way of dealing with the OLD stuff (we all need to know what to do with the old stuff), but it’s critically important to know whether something needs to enter our lives at all in the first place.