Welcome

Hi! I’m Belinda and I’m very excited to welcome you to my first blog post about my journey since I found “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin. Please be gentle, this is my first ever blog and I’m a bit nervous! This might be a long post, please bear with me.

A couple of months ago, I found myself feeling a bit “down in the dumps”. I had my latest acquisition in hand – the one that was supposed to fulfil my latest hope of happiness. But what do you know; there was something else I wanted....  There’s always something else...

However, maybe this latest acquisition may in fact be the one to stop the cycle. It is a Kindle. It’s wonderful and I love it. I was searching through Amazon’s store looking for a title to try out on my new baby and happened upon Gretchen Rubin’s “The Happiness Project”. I promptly downloaded a sample and it was like she was talking about me! I bought a copy and haven’t looked back!

Let me start by talking a bit about myself. I am married to the man I believe to be my “soul mate”. He is a wonderful man, he knows me probably better than I know myself. I am Mum to three lovely, healthy, energetic and beautiful children – 5 year old son, 3 year old son and 1 year old daughter. I work part time in a good job. My husband has a good job. We have a lovely home in a good suburb. I come from a wonderful and supportive family. There is nothing about my life that I should be “down in the dumps” about! Sure, there is the odd speed hump along the way but nothing that anyone else doesn’t have to deal with.

As I read Gretchen’s book I realised that my dissatisfaction with my life comes from within – I am always going to be “happy” when I achieve the next goal, when I make the next purchase, when the next milestone in my children’s life is achieved, when we’ve had the next holiday..... There’s always SOMETHING....

So, armed with Gretchen’s book (yes, another purchase!!!!), I wrote out my list of goals for the first month. Gretchen chose to work on “Vitality” in her first month of her project. This involved generally trying to increase your energy by looking after your health (sleep, exercise, eating well) and reducing the amount of physical and mental clutter in your life.

My goals were:

Health – Drink 8 glasses of water per day,

                Take vitamins

                Exercise every day

                8 hours sleep per night

                Reduce alcohol consumption

Declutter – Declutter 1 shelf/drawer per day

                Obey the 1 minute rule (never put off anything you can do in less than 1 minute)

                Identify any issues as to why clutter is an issue in my life

Tackle 1 nagging task per day

Act energetic – Fake it if needed!

Actually, I did quite well in my first month but there were two areas I fell down on.

One was eating well. I don’t have a weight problem (yes, I know I am blessed) so worrying about what I put in my mouth has never been an issue. However, I did worry about what I was teaching my children with my bad habits. I would skip breakfast, get take out for lunch and snack on unhealthy food – very regularly. Maybe I am blessed by a good metabolism but would my children be??? And surely it would catch up with me at some point! I struggled to find a way to find food that was both appealing to them and myself and make it quick and easy to prepare. I never really had a good understanding of healthy eating. Then I found the Michelle Bridges 12 Week Body Transformation and I signed up as a means of education (another purchase!). It was a great decision! I have gotten so much out of the program and I have just signed up to do another round in her next program in January.

The second area I fell down on was the decluttering! At any point in time, apart from toys scattered around the house, my house looks fairly clutter free. That is, until you open a closet or open the door to my dreaded spare bedroom! They are a disaster! I felt so overwhelmed by the massive amounts of stuff that I didn’t even know where to start. I realised that I am emotionally drained by the amount of stuff that I have in my house. Every time something enters our home I don’t know where to put it. So it gets shoved in a cupboard and forgotten. Meanwhile the cupboards are getting more and more overstuffed.  There was too much stuff and nothing had a home. I have no energy for the things that I love and no sense of calm in my life. Time to rethink the situation. I started trawling blogland. I found several sites but the one that has inspired me the most is www.iheartorganizing.blogspot.com . I realised that maybe if I reduced the amount of stuff in my life and gave what was left a place to call home then I might be able to breathe again.

I would love to have you along as I attempt to sort out some of these issues! I welcome suggestions (please be nice!). I’m starting at one end of the house and working my way through and I can’t wait to see the end result!