“Heavy, heavy hangs over your head.” A phrase my grandmother used to say. I wondered what it meant and felt that it had something to do with worry. This is not about dieting your body, but about freeing your mind.

Houses were not meant to become fat with our waste. I mean stuff. We collect, we keep and we packrat away stuff. Do we need all the stuff we keep? Could it be worth something someday, or can we use it again? Possibly! In the meantime, we have cluttered our mind with stuff. ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ is another saying that is not exactly true. It might be out of sight for a bit, or out of mind for a short time, however, when we come across it, or think about what we need to do to streamline our life, the stuff comes back to haunt us.

We have to go through it all one more time and determine how important it is to keep our stuff. If you really feel that you want to keep it, why do you want to keep it? How important is it that you may need it again? Why would you need it again? Can you look up the information on the Internet if in fact you do want to clear out your clutter?

Are you a newspaper clipper? Can you write down a bit of the information you want and keep it in your files instead of the whole clipping? If you have a notebook that is divided into categories, you will have become organized so that if you really need that information, you have it at your finger tips, not in a file cabinet, box, or sack waiting for you.

Hard to do? What do you do that would help you run through the stuff and at the same time do something healthy for yourself? If you walk a treadmill, take a board and lay it across the bars. While you are sorting through your stuff, you can be walking at the same time. Don’t forget to place a wastebasket close by. The main reason for sorting is ridding yourself of your stuff.

Could you reasonably read those books you have been meaning to get to each day at lunch hour. Once read, you can pass them on to the appropriate friend for them to enjoy. If you buy used books, you can take them back and exchange them (for a smaller pittance) for another favored book you’ve been meaning to read.

Do you really need all those clothes? Are there 2 different sizes of clothes in your closet? By the time you get heavier, or lighter, the style will be outdated. If your weight yoyo’s in less time than styles become outdated, you may be putting your health in jeopardy. Do you have a consignment shop where you can earn money on clothes they would sell for you? Or you can donate them to charity. How many clothes do you really need? I know, I know there are some really favorites, but will you wear them again, and if the style comes back in, will you want to wear it again, or are you hanging on to them for the memories? Make a quilt out of the material and enjoy those memories, or take a picture of them and you will always have it at your finger tips without cluttering your house and your mind.

Do you have a nice curio cabinet to display your collectables or a wall unit in which to enjoy those items? A curio cabinet can be anything that you choose, you don’t have to go out and buy something really expensive to display those collectables. They will be all in one spot and you can enjoy them. Also, you will be able to see how to make the collection better by adding to it or distributing some pieces to others who might also enjoy it. By giving away a prize possession of your hobby, others will be flattered and it may give their own self-esteem a boost because you thought enough of them to share yourself with them.

Don’t forget to organize your email and bookmarks in your computer. It takes time, but the feeling of clean and organized in your computer will give you a freer fresher outlook.

Remember how you felt before all the stuff started mounting? It was a good feeling that you didn’t have to think about clutter and how to deal with it. Deal with it once more and open your mind to other possibilities in your life. Life is for living, not for wasting. Clutter wastes your time and puts pressure on your mind that you do not need to have to think about.