I’m on a little bit of a mission in 2022. I’m calling it the Great Curate.
I hate the word ‘declutter.’ None of my stuff feels like clutter. And by stuff I mean physical, mental, and emotional stuff. It all feels important to me. So, if I set out to declutter my space (again, physical, mental or emotional space), I end up not getting rid of much.
Which means that I don’t have room to bring in more of what I really, really want.
I love the word curate, though. It implies choice and intention. If I curate something, I’m making an intentional choice to keep it and let it shine.
In 2022, I want to curate my physical, mental, and emotional life.
In fact, I’ve even come up with a name for what I want.
Curated Maximalism.
I’m not a minimalist. Not by a long shot. I’m actually drawn to and comforted by a little bit of a mess.
But not a gross mess. An eclectic, arty, bohemian kind of mess. The kind of mess where everything I look at is interesting and comfortable and perfect.
Not one where the stuff I really love is buried and lost in the stuff I don’t.
So, I’m on a mission to become a Curated Maximalist. And I’m doing it through the Great Curate of 2022.
I’m not even quite sure, yet, what that looks like. I’m making this shit up as I go along, you guys. But I’m having fun with it. So that’s good.
I started out with buckets, the same way I did for creating an editorial calendar. I mean. It worked, so why not? I came up with four: Mind, Body, Home, and Work. But I’m thinking now that maybe my buckets are really Physical, Mental, and Emotional.
I’m playing around with that a little today.
Physical
My actual stuff stuff. This would be what most people call decluttering.
There’s more to this than getting rid of stuff, though. I’m not a minimalist by any stretch of the imagination. Creating a physical environment that reflects what I want it to reflect.
My physical body. How am I eating? Am I moving enough? How about sleep? My physical health?
I’m anemic—both for iron and B12. I’m also low on vitamin D. I’m on a mission to correct those problems this year.
I really thought hard about where time would fit into these three buckets and as ethereal as time can seem, it’s actually pretty concrete. And it ends up falling right here for me. A physical thing that I actually can exert some control over.
I’m putting money in this bucket, too. It’s definitely a concrete, physical thing.
Mental
I’ve been studying the enneagram lately and realizing that just like everyone else, my personality comes with strengths and weaknesses. Leaning into my strengths (being a natural problem solver with a high-spirited nature) can help me to overcome my weaknesses (anxiety and fear.)
For the third winter in a row, seasonal affective disorder has kicked me in the butt. Winter is rough for me. But there are things I can do to help myself with this. Spending November through April every year hating on winter isn’t healthy.
My attitudes toward some of the things in my physical bucket go here. What are the patterns I find myself falling into over and over?
Emotional
That anxiety.
Learning how to slowdown, at least a little.
Self-care. I know, that sounds cliche. I really suck at it, though.
After some thought, I decided my relationships belong here. My husband, my kids, my brothers and sisters, my dad—they are all so key to my emotional health.
I’ll be working on these buckets and what’s filling them up all year, I think. I’m finding this project to be a lot bigger than I expected it to be.
I thought I’d share at the end of each month how the Great Curate is going for me. And think out loud a little about what I want to do in the next month to move things forward.
January
I don’t really understand the correlation, but I always eat like crap between November and February. I still ate like crap a lot of this month. And I gained five pounds. But, I did cook for my family most nights, instead of relying on take-out. I was more aware of what I was doing—eating more intentionally.
I came up with a silly little game this month. I divided my house into 100 areas. Every drawer, cupboard, closet, and piece of furniture. I made 100 envelopes and put each of those parts into an envelope. Then shuffled them. Every day I pulled a card and my husband and I curated that space. For every 15 minutes we spent, we put $1 in the envelope. So a minimum of $2 a day (15 minutes for each of us.) When all 100 envelopes are full of money, we’ll have a couple of hundred pretty easily saved bucks that we’ll spend on something fun. (My husband is extraordinarily indulgent of my silliness.)
I also came up with a decision matrix this month that’s been very helpful. You can read about that here.
I also used my full-year editorial calendar this month and was kind of spectacularly productive, as far as writing goes. You can read about that here. (Systems are my jam. They work for me.)
I took my vitamins and Iron every single day this month. Go me!
I had a meeting with an enneagram coach that I found very illuminating.
I had a doctor’s appointment and my iron is up (my ferritin is actually down, though, so I’m not storing iron) and my B12 was in the normal range. D is down a little and so is A. But progress.
I started taking melatonin and it’s helping me to stay asleep longer.
February
I would like to work toward making healthier choices now, not waiting until March when it seems to just happen naturally.
I’m just going to put this right out there. I have a solid February goal of curating my working space.
We’re having a low-spend month in February. No auction, which is sad because I love it so much and it’s our biggest form of entertainment. But good, because low-spend months are good in general.
Continue to take my vitamins and iron. My hair is growing back in—yay!
I have a low-key goal of blogging every day this month. I’m not sure I’m going to do it yet, but I saw a nice uptick in my views and income in January from writing more and it’s encouraging me to see what happens.
I’ve had some anxiety lately that I want to work on alleviating this month.
Like I said, I’m still working on how this whole Great Curate thing will work. It sounds good in my head, but I’m struggling to articulate it even to myself. We’ll see.
To me, "declutterize" means putting runaway things back in the places they ran away from! Personalizing them makes me smile.
Shaunta, You are fascinating. Every so often I hire my good friend Violet to help me organize my space, usually it's the spare room. I live with my husband, our cat, and sometimes my daughter in a tiny home of 864 sq. ft. Violet is very good at helping me with hoarding tendencies. Her advice is if you have it, use it. For example, instead of saving an embroidered hanky, display it. That's a great curation guideline, right? I have to gain control over my desk and tall stacks of books.....my next task. Keep curating!