August Mixed Bag: Finding the Balance

Finding the balance in life is no simple feat. Things are either too easy or too hard. We have too many or not enough. We want choices but are paralyzed by decisions. I believe that finding a balance that works for you is a key ingredient to productivity, to happiness and to a peaceful home.

In the world of decluttering people often ask: ‘How many should I keep?’. Folks send me super-specific examples and want me to weigh in. But without knowing the person and the situation it’s hard to give a satisfying answer. That is because context is important! Here’s an example from my own life.

I am a person who values variety; in what I eat, what I wear and the company I keep. My closet in particular gets a lot of play when it is featured in pictures or reels. People have a lot of opinions about the closet (you have so many clothes! I wish my closet was that big? Do you wear all of that stuff?) The answer is, over many years I have found balance in my closet. I have enough choices to satisfy my penchant for variety, but not so many that I’m overwhelmed by decisions. I keep to my storage boundaries and when I see that I have too many in a category that is no longer relevant in my life (e.g.high heels) then I declutter to make room for a relevant category that needs more space (e.g. sneakers!)

In this month’s Mixed Bag I’m exploring the concept of finding balance through some recent experiences I’ve had that taught me some important lessons. Oh, and I got hacked again, so I’ll cover that news as well. Welcome to this month’s Mixed Bag!

Moving My Dad

In case you hadn’t heard, my dad is selling his house and moving to a retirement community here in Seattle. Over the past year he has grown weary of maintaining his 1916 home. He’s ready for a new place where he can settle in and enjoy his golden years. This has always been the plan, and now he’s ready to go. Finding the balance between saving and letting go came into sharp focus immediately.

My dad and I have already done a massive amount of decluttering in this house so I was feeling pretty confident that we were in good shape as we prepared to move him out. What I quickly learned as we tackled each room is despite our diligent efforts there was still so much stuff. I should mention that my dad is not a big shopper or collector. He does tend to keep things around that he doesn’t use. Usually because they are ‘perfectly good’ (or my favorite, ‘valuable’.) But against the backdrop of hundreds of Organizing clients I’d say his house was on the less-crowded side. But man, it was still a lot of stuff.

So what we needed to do was find the right balance for what he was going to need in his new place (less than half the square footage) and still maintain the right level of choice. Nobody wants to be callously stripped of their belongings because they are ‘downsizing.’ Here’s how we found balance.

My dad has several hobbies and lots of supporting resources. We didn’t edit down the number of hobbies because they are all still important and relevant for him. But we did declutter lots of old outdated resources (I wrote a blog on this topic) to make the amount of ‘hobby stuff’ manageable. 

We had already massively decluttered his kitchen. However, his new kitchen is really small so things were going to be really tight. He is still going to cook but his new place has a dining room and a meal plan, so finding the balance for kitchen tools was driven by the storage boundaries in his new apartment. In a nutshell, what is important in his life today took precedence over A) the past and B) what he ‘might need’ in the future. I’m proud of the work we did and the lessons we learned. I’ll be writing more about that later this month!

Writing A Book

I’m now a couple of months into the book-writing experience. I’m finding the balance in how much time I need to get going/flowing and how much I need to live the rest of my life. Here’s what I’ve learned so far. What works for my writing ‘sessions’ is very similar to what works for decluttering projects and training for half marathons. I need many smaller blocks of time where the expectation of output is low vs. multiple days devoted to writing where I must write a lot to stay on track. Smaller, consistent efforts across a longer span of time is what works for me.

I need time to warm up and jot down ideas without pressure. Then I need time to get into the flow of writing. And lastly I need time to wind down and note where I’m leaving off so I can pick it up again at my next scheduled session. This rhythm feels very familiar to me because it’s so similar to how I coach folks who are tackling decluttering projects. So the lesson is that starting with small, consistent efforts is super helpful in finding balance. You can adjust as you go based on your needs and your skill level.

Writing this book has been fun so far! I’ve just finished Part 1 and am ready to dive into the meatiest part of the outline. I can’t wait to share it with all of you. But though I should finish writing it come October, the wheels of the publishing world need a full year to market and release it. So stick with me as I continue to share all of the learnings I’m gleaning as I go!

Hacked Again

This has nothing to do with finding balance (though balancing the explosions in my brain has been hard the past week!) but just sharing the sad news that I am again the victim of a hack. This time it was someone posing as the coordinator for a popular podcast and inviting me on. I have been a guest now on multiple podcasts and radio shows so the invite did not seem totally out of the blue. But the others have had much smaller audiences and this one was big. 

I will spare you all the gory details but suffice to say that the hacker messed up the internal system that links my social media accounts together. That system allows me to post seamlessly on multiple platforms and send automated replies with links on demand. Now I’m flailing a bit because there is no escalation path within the behemoth that is Meta.

I feel so stupid and gullible falling for a scam! But it did put me in mind of one of my favorite books from 2024, Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge. It’s the story of a woman in her 70’s who is the victim of a scam but refuses to accept defeat at the hands of her scammers. I’m channeling her energy as I regroup and I definitely plan to read the Sequel, Mrs. Plansky Goes Rogue!

Thanks for hanging with me as I find balance in multiple areas of my life, I hope it helps you strike some in yours! And if anyone knows anyone high up at Meta, please reach out – I’m feeling a bit desperate!