I was recently invited to do an exercise where I had to visualize the end of my life and look at my “older, wiser self”. I had to imagine - as if watching it on a screen - where she was; the feel of that place, the smell of it. I was asked to contemplate as a curious outsider - what does her life look like?  What would she want me to know? What would she say were her greatest experiences, joys, sources of gratitude?  What might her regrets be? Here’s what Big Anne showed me:

I was gone for a week, and it wasn’t a total news blackout for me – I got the headlines. Upon my return home, the stressful news of the world hadn’t changed much. Climate change was still making the weather scary. Political parties still sniping at each other and starting culture wars. Bad guys around the world are still being greedy and cruel to the less fortunate. People still frightened by things that they don’t understand about each other. It was not made better or worse by my lack of consuming the details.

Also as a professional organizer for over ten years, I know all to well what it’s like to take too much of your parents' stuff. I can’t count the number of clients whose initial call with me includes the phrase “...oh and I’ve got a bunch of things in my basement that came from my parents’ house that I need to figure out what to do with…”  That was a burden that I did not want for myself. I was very deliberate about what I chose to keep take home with me.

Instead of New Year’s Resolutions, I considered a list of what I’m NOT gonna do. But it felt negative, and I couldn’t come up with a great list. So I flipped the script. Not a list of what I HOPE to do. Not a list of what I WON’T do. I decided to just make a list of what I’ll KEEP doing. Recognize what works in my life and keep doing that. A sample:

You want less clutter in your life.  So do your friends and family! Here is a list of clutter-free gift ideas to help you all achieve that goal.  A couple of them actually take clutter away…

…The voice told me to - but I replied to that voice with: “I’ll do it when I get in the car.” A brief procrastination, but one that made the hour I lost that day an absolute waste of time, instead of the heroic parental gesture it was intended to be.