Find peace and quiet while you clean your home
Keeping your home clean and decluttered is a constant battle, but there’s a reward that comes with living and working in an organized space. It’s easier to concentrate on work, you can sit back and unwind without worrying about the mess and your anxiety levels will decrease.
A messy living space can turn into a source of stress in our lives. If you’ve ever felt guilty sitting down to relax when the dishes still needed to be done, you’ll know how unfinished chores can get to you. A mess sends a signal to your brain that you’re not quite done for the day and that prevents you from truly relaxing.
When you declutter your home, you give yourself a chance to declutter your headspace. Here’s how an organized space can improve your mental well-being, plus a few tips for finally decluttering your home (and some ideas for what you can listen to while you get down to work).
Find Peace in an Organized Home
The noise of a busy house can be distracting, and the messes left behind can be too. If you’re trying to block out the noise and find a moment of tranquility, a distracting environment can get in the way. It’s important that your space facilitates mindfulness and creates a calm, relaxing atmosphere.
Of course, in today’s busy world, there’s always something else trying to divert your attention. If you’re having trouble getting a moment of peace, try to connect with yourself through listening to meditation or self-help audiobooks. These titles can connect you to a healthier lifestyle for recommendations.
Learn to Give Up Clutter
An organized home equals a better focus during the workday and more relaxing evenings and weekends, but how do you get there? Fumio Sasaki’s Goodbye, Things is a great place to start for novices to minimalism. He doesn’t teach the kind of enlightened minimalism that Marie Kondo has become famous for. Instead, he’s just a regular guy who one day got tired of owning so much stuff. Goodbye, Things has some valuable lessons for anyone who wants to cut down on clutter.
The rules are straightforward and easy to follow. If you find spiritual minimalism to be a bit much, Sasaki offers some down-to-earth guidelines that will help you clear the stuff out of your life so that you can fill it with a simpler kind of happiness.
Listen While You Organize
Doing things around the house is always better when you have something to listen to. Cleaning and decluttering will go by faster with a voice in the background engaging you in a story. Find the right title that will draw you in and you’ll even look forward to a weekend afternoon spent cleaning up the house. Check out some of these recommendations that should appeal to a wide range of tastes.
###1 Idiot
A collection of comedic essays by YouTube star Laura Clery, Idiot is an honest self-reflection on how Clery went from being broke and unemployable to someone who finally (sort-of) had her life together. If you need a laugh from someone who isn’t afraid to dig up their own dirt, Idiot makes great company.
###2 It Burns
Do you like your food spicy? Can’t get enough hot sauce no matter what you’re eating? Marc Fennell’s It Burns might be to your taste. A love for all things hot is at the heart of a worldwide subculture of “Chilli-heads,” people who show their love for the pepper through chilli eating contests and chilli breeding competitions. Fennell cracks open the scandal-plagued world of international chilli competitions in this stranger-than-fiction documentary podcast.
###3 Pride and Prejudice
For the lover of classics, don’t miss out on one of Jane Austen’s best-known works narrated by Gone Girl-star Rosamund Pike. Pike, who also appeared as Jane Bennet in 2005’s Pride and Prejudice cinematic adaptation, delivers an energized performance that perfectly captures Austen’s signature wit.
None of these catch your interest? Audible has tons of audiobooks and podcasts available that you can enjoy while you clean up and organize your home.
Make Your Peace with Mess
At the end of the day, everyone’s trying their hardest. If you’re living with young kids (or teens who still need to learn to clean up after themselves), that perfectly tidy, tranquil home is nice to think about, but harder to achieve. Sometimes you just have to laugh it off and make peace with the mess.
When you’ve just about had it with the world, shrug it off with a side-splitting comedy like Locked Together, an Audible Original that pairs up stars of stand-up comedy in conversation about how they made it through lockdown. It’s an honest – and hilarious – listen that should make you feel a little bit more at ease with the imperfections in life.
The Tranquility of Decluttering
There’s a simplicity that comes with owning fewer things or simply organizing your living space better. As we move through life spending more time at home, it’s more important than ever to love where you live. That starts with clearing out the mess.
Do you have a favourite audiobook to listen to while you clean? What about something you come back to when you feel like the clutter is distracting you again? Share with us on Instagram. We want to know what motivates you when you’re trying to declutter.
