Purge is the Word for 2019

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but I’m doing a word of the year: Purge

My word of the year for 2019 is Purge. I bet you’re like me and you have stuff you bought but don’t use, stuff you stored or set aside for later but never got around to using, and the sad first-world problem of stuff you forgot you owned because you just don’t need it. Oh, then there’s my treasure trove of stuff planned to sell – – two years ago.

Tired of the same old purging advice

So, how to go about this purge? After living with a family in the same home for over a decade, sorting through and releasing things we don’t need seems like a daunting task. Sure, every “get organized” site and newsletter tells you to break the task down. Make weekly plans, then daily plans. Spend 15 minutes a day chucking the crap you don’t need. Use SMART goals, GTD, yadda yadda. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time (ew, that’s a gross visual).

Purge-itude

If there’s one thing I can do, it’s develop a plan. I love planning! I have a serious addiction to some fantastic paper planners and use my Google Calendar and ToDoist faithfully to organize my time and stay focused on goals. Planning for action is not enough with this daunting project. There has to be more or procrastination will prevail. The Year of the Purge requires internal change. A paradigm shift. A 180 degree turn. Maybe even a 360. I am developing a purge-itude.

Preliminary Purge Plans

• I’ve adopted the attitude if an item doesn’t make me happy or hasn’t been used or I forgot I owned it (yep!), it will be given away or trashed. Embracing this alone resulted in my unloading a lot of clutter over the last week.
• Seeing the purge on the horizon in December, I finished reading a book I bought 18 months earlier, Jeff Sander’s The 5 A.M. Miracle: Dominate Your Day Before Breakfast. The 5 A.M. part fails for me, but Sanders has some great advice for getting and staying organized and efficient.
• I signed up for Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project Experience, a year-long course with monthly themes designed to help participants stick to their goals after doing some self examination. The class runs via the Better app, online instruction and videos – and it’s very affordable. Rubin researched and wrote The Happiness Project, The Four Tendencies and other books on using the way you perceive and react to situations to avoid procrastination and other issues blocking you from large and small victories. While my purge-itude is not a happiness thing, it contributes to happiness by blessing others with the items I no longer need, disposing of crap no one wants and clearing mental and physical space for me. Side note: I’ve been listening to Ruben’s Happier podcast for a year now and it’s provided many “ah-ha” moments and laughs.
• I need to get back to scheduling theme days. I work from home, so I can work on this on my breaks. If I have a basement theme day, I do something for at least 15 minutes (FlyLady thing I adopted long ago) to reduce basement clutter. If I have a laundry day, I sort, wash, fold and actually PUT AWAY the clean clothes. Office day entails plowing through all the paper that makes it’s way onto my desk.

Will the Purge of 2019 Work?

The Purge of 2019 has a good chance of really becoming a thing as the year progresses. I will learn more about making habits stick from The Happiness Project along with concepts I adopted from years of reading “get organized” books and materials. I’ll need some help me get through the monumental task of purging.