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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Stephanie Zimmer, (I taught music in a Catholic school for nine years with a large population of Hispanic families), and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share a lesson I learned from cleaning up the office space in my apartment.
Today’s Fun Fact: I shared that factoid with you because today’s episode airs on May 5th, also known as Cinco de Mayo in Hispanic culture. Here are a few fun facts about Cinco de Mayo:
1) The holiday actually celebrates the Mexican victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. The Mexican army won the battle despite being smaller and ill-equipped.
2) Mexicans observe and celebrate Cinco de Mayo with family gatherings, fireworks, feasts and more: the best place to go for the festivities is the city of Puebla, where the famous battle took place. Cinco de Mayo celebrations are very important for Mexicans living outside of Mexico, particularly in the United States.
3) The world’s largest Cinco de Mayo party takes place in Los Angeles, California! Every year, the people of Los Angeles celebrate “Festival de Fiesta Broadway” on May fifth (or on the closest Sunday). It’s a large, raucous party with parades, food, dancing, music and more. Hundreds of thousands attend annually. It’s even bigger than the festivities in Puebla!
What I Learned Yesterday:
My husband and I are looking to move into our first house together this summer. Those of you who have been through this before know that moving can be a monumental task if you try to do it all at once. I’ve lived in this apartment since I moved from my parents’ house in 2005. I was a few years out of college and eager to have my own space.
A few years later, my parents moved from their house to a senior apartment, and a few years later into assisted living. In the process of these moves, I learned that my mother was a packrat, which she learned from her mother. She inherited this house from her parents and there were years and years and years of things to go through before they moved. She didn’t want to get rid of anything but she knew that she couldn’t take everything she wanted to their apartment and she had to make the hard decisions of what long held possessions to part with, even though it was difficult.
My mom passed away last September. After she died, I had to again go through her meager possessions from her room at her nursing home, but this time very few things were kept. She had given up so much throughout her life and now very little remained.
Over the past 11 years in this apartment, I too have accumulated a lot of stuff. In January of this year I made one of my goals to conquer the clutter in the office room of our apartment. Over the years, shipping boxes, junk and much more had gathered in this space, the space that I am now recording in. I knew it would be important to tackle this room so that moving the important things held here would be possible. I set a goal to accomplish this over a matter of months and to take it one small step at a time. I reported my progress through photos online and was greatly encouraged to literally see how far I’d come just by focusing on one small section at a time.
A few weeks ago, I hit a great goal in this project. I got rid of tons of boxes in the corner so that I could finally access a small bookshelf that contained a collection of Music K-8 magazines that I used during my time as a music educator. These contained fun original and remade songs that I used in my classes which the students loved, especially with the CD accompaniments. I left teaching three years ago and no longer had a need for these so I reached out to a few music teacher friends in the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus to see if any of them could take these off my hands (in addition to some other items from my career I didn’t need). They were delighted to help me out, so I passed them on at the next Chorus rehearsal and I cleared out more things from my office that I won’t have to pack in a few months!
Although I haven’t completely finished this project, I am so pleased with my progress thus far. By setting a goal of what I wanted to accomplish and taking small steps to complete it, I have set myself up for success when it comes time to move in a few short months. I will have removed a lot of junk I don’t want through donating, trashing or giving it away and have a good amount of things to keep that I will actually use.
Here’s what I learned.
There are so many things in our lives that take up space – physical, spiritual and emotional. In my office there were a lot of things that took unneeded physical space but by setting goals of accomplishment I was able to go through it and conquer my clutter one step at a time. I’ve also dealt with a lot of spiritual and emotional junk in the past few months, but with the support of my husband and friends, this load has been lightened.
For me, this project has reminded me a lot of that old joke: how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. This is a good way to handle any project. Whether it’s home organization, a work project, launching a podcast or website or any number of other things, you can’t accomplish it all in one fell swoop. You have to take it one bite at a time. If you try to do it all at once, you may get frustrated because it’s taking too long and you may feel ready to give up. If instead, you start with a small step, then accomplish that, the bigger tasks won’t seem so monumental.
Are there things in your life that need to be decluttered? When I got rid of my junk, I found treasures that were long buried that now have brought joy to some of my chorus friends. So I invite you to look around the space you live in today and see if anything calls your attention. Identify it, make a goal of when to organize it and make baby steps until it is accomplished.
I’m Stephanie Zimmer and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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