If you’re putting in long hours at the office—or in the case of Leah (see below), at the office and on the farm—then juggling work issues over your phone and computer (or in the field) in the evening while you’re trying to run a household, it’s not surprising that you would look for shortcuts wherever you can. As I’ve seen time and time again, this often results in stress-filled, cluttered homes, unhealthy food choices, and scales that keep creeping up, putting your health at risk. Luckily, my six-week Cut The Clutter, Drop The Pounds program has been proven to work with even the busiest of people. Take Leah, a Rodale News editor, for example. Leah’s experience isn’t just a story of what she lost over six weeks. She can also measure her success by what she found. She’s a particularly busy woman. During the day, the 33-year-old works as a health journalist. After hours, she grows vegetables and strawberries and tends to the flock of egg-laying chickens on the sustainable farm that she and her husband operate. Until she went through the Cut The Clutter, Drop The Pounds program, Leah spent much of her spare time shifting around clutter, over and over, in a never-ending attempt to clean her house. “Before, I was just spinning my wheels, wasting a lot of time cleaning, but it didn’t really look like I was cleaning. It still looked cluttered,” she says. “Since I work from my home office a lot, one of my biggest clutter sources was the work material that was everywhere in every room. I didn’t realize how stressed that made me feel. I think it kept me from ever getting my mind off work, even when I wasn’t working.” The most profound message she took away from the program is that everything in her home needs to have a place—and if it doesn’t have a place, it needs to go. She donated many of her books to the library, and if she ever wants to enjoy them again, she can just check them out. “I was actually giving things a place so they stayed permanently cleaned up,” she says. “Since I work really long days, this has been a lifesaver.” MORE: How to Save Your Sanity in 31 Days One of the treasures she found once she lightened her household burden was time. She doesn’t have to spend so many hours cleaning now. Plus, with her work materials kept in order, she’s a much more efficient worker. (Want to clear your own clutter? Here’s a 10-step plan to declutter your kitchen.) She also found new reservoirs of energy. Like the other test participants, Leah estimated her energy level on a scale of 1 to 10 before the program and again after it ended. Hers soared by 3 points. With these new gifts of time and energy, she could run more often. She stayed more active than the program required, and she found herself running farther and faster and participating in races on weekends. (She clocked at personal best 1:54 half-marathon time last fall; perhaps this contributed to her improved self-esteem, which rose by 3 points on a 10-point scale.)
Leah also found an improved sense of peace, thanks in part to the mindfulness exercises. Her score on the anxiety quiz dropped steeply over the course of the program. “I’m still trying to practice mindfulness every day, trying to focus on the moment,” she says. “I had a lot more anxiety than I had realized. I still have work to do, but once the rooms started clearing up, I just felt a lot less anxious.” This article How Decluttering Helps You Lose Weight, Ease Stress originally ran on RodaleNews.com.
