Eric M. Riddle's Blog

In the book Chrysalis, coach and author, Ann Vanino writes about cocooning. The caterpillar knows nothing of what the future holds and yet, prepares a cocoon for a metamorphosis into a beautiful creature that takes flight.

Fifty Years of Clutter Awareness

For over fifty years, since I was a pre-teen, I have been aware of clutter due to my parents’ penchant for saying “yes” to anything that was free and then not being able to let go. Forty-five years later, after my mother died and my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I cleared their home. We’ve all read the stories of apartment-sized dumpsters of possessions being discarded. That was my experience. Forty years after those childhood experiences, and in my fifties, I realized I had a talent for helping others release their own life cocoons created by physical, mental, and temporal clutter.

Eric Riddle joined me, and together we have written articles about decluttering and a book, STUFFology 101: Get Your Mind Out of the Clutter. We advocate the process of S.T.U.F.F.—that is, Start. Trust. Understand. Focus. Finish.

Success Requires Commitment

The truth is, many of us need stronger faith and commitment to the task we set our minds to. Consider all the New Year’s resolutions that are broken long before the change of seasons.

To be able to stand back and truly marvel at one’s success is often the result of dedicated and focused effort. Like the caterpillar, our unyielding effort magnifies into an unexpected magical creation.

Larger Impact for Limited Time

We need to have a larger impact if we want to ensure our limited time is well-invested.

Late last year, I posted, We NEED Your HELP – Please Read and Comment. Surprisingly, we did not receive a single comment or email answering the questions I posed in the article. We did receive one heartfelt and thought-provoking email, which still warms my heart.

While the clutter world is filled with extremes—Marie Kondo’s anthropomorphic approach of imbuing life-energy to possessions before letting go of those that don’t spark joy to the tough love and therapeutic approach with extreme hoarders—STUFFology 101 continues to urge clutter bugs to define an area of clutter and to take the S.T.U.F.F. steps in letting go.

Time passes more quickly, the older I grow. How I invest my time is more important, because it is time I can never get back. The same is true for you.

I know what it means to live without a lot of STUFF. I feel lighter after working through an area of accumulated clutter. I feel JOY after gifting someone with something I no longer need. I find pleasure knowing I have no desire to accumulate possessions.

Do I share these experiences in weekly articles on STUFFology101.com? Bi-weekly articles? Monthly articles? Do I work on another book? Do I totally reconfigure the website? These are some of the questions I will begin asking as I take time to enter a STUFFology cocoon.

In the interim, look for a major announcement Eric will be sharing this month.

The post The Future of STUFFology 101 first appeared on STUFFology 101.

Welcome to 2022. Now what?

The ever-popular New Year’s Resolutions would have you promise a variety of things to yourself, such as losing weight or eating healthier. A trip to your local gym in January will reveal how popular such resolutions are.

What about a less grandiose suggestion, and likely easier to maintain all year long? Do something. Doing something is better than doing nothing. Easy enough to say, but often harder than it sounds.

For example, house cleaning or decluttering. Broadly this implies cleaning up the entire house, which can lead to the daunting task of doing everything to make it model home perfect. A perhaps unrealistic expectation.

Instead do something in one specific area or room completely. Like sorting, filing, or shredding that pile of mail on the counter and washing the dishes. Failure to stay on top of daily tasks or chores makes them harder to complete as each day passes.

You may be different, but I find that letting things pile up makes me want to take care of them less. So, for me doing something is better than doing nothing. That said, understand that you don’t have to do everything yourself. Ask a friend or family member to help. The worst that can happen is they might say no. I have found people are more inclined to say yes when I bribe them with pizza!

The beauty of doing something is that it is simple and specific to your situation. Repeated daily, weekly, or monthly and the results become easy to see.

At the beginning of 2021 I challenged you to define your clutter and START dealing with it. Now that we are at the beginning of 2022, I challenge you to do something.

The post Do Something In 2022 first appeared on STUFFology 101.

During the Fall Season of 2020, co-author Eric and I agreed to redirect our time and effort to write an article every other week. Between the two of us, we figured you would have an article a week to read and digest. We wrote articles that would be timely enough for you to apply to your life.

We thought our investment of time would ripple beyond our immediate circle. We wanted our message to gain traction and reach people beyond our first and second connections. We hoped our words would help more people clear physical, mental, temporal… clutter from their lives.

As we continue spending more time at home, COVID and its variants alter our life plans.

We anticipated delivering coaching sessions via ZOOM while producing follow-on materials to our bestselling title, STUFFology101: Get Your Mind Out of the Clutter.

Progress Report

It has been 14 months since we made and implemented our joint commitment. We are grateful for our dedicated fans who respond and share. Yet, I’ve been asking myself, lately—What impact am I having for the time I invest in writing these articles?

I’m growing older and antsy about time well spent.

We should all seek to manage our limited time more productively—for things that are having an impact. Time is the only thing that passes and cannot be recovered. I want to feel this part of my life’s purpose touching our devoted fans and then rippling far beyond. When more people are engaged and responsive, the energy created is contagious and fuels us to produce more.

Here is Where I Need Your HELP

As we set our sights on 2022, I ask for YOUR ADVICE regarding the following:

What impact are we having?
Your words will help us if you are specific and share the URL(s) of one (or two) of the articles you found impactful and how.Shall we continue?What shall we do differently that will enable us to create wider ripples?
We’re all in this together and can gain insights from one another.

Be brave. (We have been brave carving out time to post for 14 months.)
Post your comment below, or… if you rather write to us, please email EricRiddle@STUFFology101.com.

I will write a follow-up post on January 10.

The post We NEED Your HELP – Please Read and Comment first appeared on STUFFology 101.

As December winds to a close I wish everyone reading this Happy Holidays!

I have an injury (broken foot) that has limited my mobility for several weeks but have discovered some Unexpected Gifts as I continue to heal.

One such Unexpected Gift is appreciation. That is, I have a much better appreciation for mobility in terms of walking and driving. Since I am supposed to keep my foot elevated as much as possible, I cannot walk much. Since I have a splint and protective boot I cannot drive either. Fortunately, my wife can take me where I need to go, so I appreciate her more than usual.

Another Unexpected Gift is simplicity. I enjoy Christmas and particularly like outdoor lights and lawn décor. My injury has restricted my ability to do much outdoors, including using a ladder. I therefore had to cherry pick only a few items that I could easily put out for decoration.

Each has special meaning to me and has the added benefit of a clean and simple yard presentation.

The final Unexpected Gift is organization. I have written about Christmas Clutter in the past. I have made progress with my garage clutter over the last few weeks. My lawn decorations are more organized since I could only put a handful out this year.

What Unexpected Gifts can you find in a less than ideal situation? My injury uncovered three for me. I leave you with a quote from Bill Keane, creator of The Family Circus:

“Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow’s the future, but today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.”

The post Unexpected Gifts for Christmas first appeared on STUFFology 101.

Recently, I reviewed notes I had keyed in my journal, two years ago. At the time, I was packing to leave the rural mountain I called home for 15 years—the home, my then-husband and I said we’d live in until the paramedics carried us out on stretchers.

Time has a way of changing things and we’re each living our own lives. I accumulated many books and a lot of paperwork over my nearly 40-year career. I taught at three universities and one college plus served as a consultant for corporations and organizations. Additionally, I had files of notes and editions of the nine books I had written plus notes of the many speeches I’d given since 1980.

As I write this, I recall a dear friend and prolific author’s words during one of our telephone calls, “I’m embarrassed to admit this, Brenda, but I have notes that almost reach the ceiling for books I have yet to write. I feel overwhelmed.”

And here I am lamenting that I have a half file drawer full!

Clutter is relative. Her tall pile of notes held potential for her future. She had written over 40 books at the time. For me, too many notes drain me of energy. I stop. I feel too sluggish to move.

And so, our lives march on with an ongoing tug-of-war with clutter.

Clutter Tug-of-War – Past. Present. Future.

We must decide how much of the past we let tug at us versus how much energy we devote to our future while we potentially tear apart our present.

That year, 2019, I had to make some difficult decisions. The future would not unfold in the way I envisioned. I had to let go of what I had defined as clutter. It was time to create a present with far fewer possessions.

While I’ve always welcomed having less, it’s an uncomfortable feeling to let go of what I had for so long. It’s almost as if I’m saying, I have no future. While not true, it takes some getting used to when one’s present circumstances necessitates a revision to one’s future.

I also know from working with downsizing elders, that going through the process sooner will make it less stressful than if I had to do it in my later years.

Let Go.

As difficult as it may be to let go now, the process has made me far more conscientious as a consumer. Fortunately, I’m not one for shopping for the sake of seeing what’s out there. If I need something, I’ll buy it. Usually, it’s to replace something that no longer works for me. This means I accumulate very little.

With the holidays coming up, friends hint at the gifts they’d like to buy for me. I remind them to gift me with experiences we can enjoy together. This way, instead of having one more thing to deal with, I will treasure a memorable experience.

I had long welcomed a reduction in possessions. The more stuff we have the more our energy goes to maintaining our physical possessions instead spending time with one another. Based on square feet alone, I’ve given up 80% of living space.

I feel far less stress in more intimate surroundings that are easier to manage. Instead of fixing, cleaning, storing, and maintaining possessions I am enjoying meaningful experiences with people.

Let Go to Let In

Since the age of 10 when I grew aware of such things, I’ve learned how much we allow our possessions—whether physical or mental to control our lives.

When we decide and then take steps to let go, we open ourselves to wondrous experiences, ones we cannot even imagine.

The post Declutter Tug-of-War with Past, Present, and Future first appeared on STUFFology 101.

Clutter builds up over time. We use the acronym S.T.U.F.F. to help deal with that clutter. Today I’ll discus the ‘U’ in S.T.U.F.F., which is UNDERSTAND.

One definition I like for our acronym in STUFFology 101: Get Your Mind out of the Clutter is “to know how (something) works or happens.” In other words, how did I accumulate all this clutter?

Using myself as an example, I have generational clutter in my garage. Sometimes temporarily, sometimes not. Small amounts of my deceased parents’ stuff, small amounts of my kids’ stuff, and variable amounts of my own stuff are in my garage.

While I have made progress, there remain setbacks. The Holiday Season in the United States causes our family to rearrange portions of the house for Thanksgiving guests, Christmas decorations, and so on. Random stuff invariably ends up in my garage until after the New Year.

Since I understand this process, I am not frustrated. I know when we pack away the Holiday Season, we will declutter garage items before returning them inside the house. I am thankful for the clutter in this case. Why?
Because it reminds me of a poem I read by Mary Stuber:

Thank God For Dirty Dishes

Thank God for dirty dishes;
They have a tale to tell.
While others may go hungry,
We’re eating very well
With home, health, and happiness,
I shouldn’t want to fuss;
By the stack of evidence,
God’s been very good to us.

I understand the clutter because it reminds me that we have home, health, and happiness to share with family and friends. That is, I know how the Holiday Season works for our family.

Clearing the clutter in the New Year is a process not an event.

The post Understand Your Clutter first appeared on STUFFology 101.

Consistency is one theme I often write about. Because without consistent action, we lose progress toward our goals.

Say It… Immediately. Compassionately.

In today’s article, I want to encourage those of you who hold things in, to find ways to share your feelings. Consistently. Otherwise, you let your feelings fester too long and then you live with a double-whammy of negativity. Over time, you create chemical imbalances in your body that lead to illness, even cancer. Your behavior also negatively impacts relationships with those who matter to you.

Find ways to share your feelings in a constructive manner filled with compassion. I consider feedback a gift in our self-absorbed world. Don’t believe me? Look around when you’re in a public space. When we take time to figure out how to share our feelings and thoughts compassionately, we strengthen the building blocks of our relationships and live healthier lives.

Forget It. Let It Go.

I’ve been rereading parts of Neurologist, Lisa Genova’s recent book, which I reviewed a couple months ago, here: Remember – The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting.

In Chapter 11, titled, Fuggedaboutit, she writes how we can forget negative and emotionally charged memories. Her words can be especially helpful to people dealing with trauma.

Genova helped me to find a constructive way to let go of some of my own negative memories. While I tend to err on the side of positivity; meaning, I tend to easily let go of negative experiences. I choose not to hold on. Yet, there remain a couple areas in my life that surface now and then. Genova’s advice to stop thinking about and even retelling these experiences, helps us to let go. In doing so, we physically break the connections among our brain cells. Gone. Forgotten. We must stop giving those memories life in order to starve and kill off those neuronal connections in our brain.

Release Mental Clutter

Consistently practicing both–sharing what bothers us immediately, and letting go of traumatic memories–helps us to release the mental clutter in our minds affecting our lives.

Doing so has made me realize one more thing. This involves physical clutter—my books. I’ll say it. Well, I’ll write about it here, at least.

Timeless Tomes of Knowledge? Not Really.

For years, I’ve saved “timeless treasured tomes” of knowledge. As I reread some of these books, they are no longer as timeless as I once believed. Even those books from leading thinkers who with marketing powerhouses have built massive followings. I’ve integrated some of their ideas into my life development.

It’s time to let them go. I continue to contribute my books to other readers. This way, I open up more physical and mental space to embrace newer ideas and ways of thinking.

There are times we don’t know what holds us back. In other words, we don’t know what we don’t know. Two ways to expand our ways of seeing are reading and having open-minded conversations with others. We humans are a fickle bunch—committed intermittently; and thus, our unpredictable results.

When we open the doors for dialog, we live healthier lives. Reading books and having conversations with others, will help us to find ways to express our thoughts constructively and compassionately as we take steps closer to our goals.

More ways to clear our mental clutter

Clearing our weed-filled minds with What’s on Your Mind?Understanding the role emotion plays in our habits in this review of The Secret is in the Mental Codes.Experience solid growth, accept incremental gains by taking consistent steps toward your goal. This is where the magical-compounded results lie:  The MAGIC of Incremental ImprovementThe post Say It! Say What Bothers You and Let Go of Mental Clutter first appeared on STUFFology 101.

Moving presents an unusual opportunity to declutter. Items we had long since forgotten may become treasured keepsakes once again. While other items are destined for donation, recycle, or trash.

Use the packing process to clear the clutter from your life. In “Grandpa’s Garage” I discussed how clutter accumulated in my garage temporarily. My daughter’s move helped me come to a clutter clarity moment, “Don’t move your clutter with you.” Simple but not necessarily easy.

Again, moving presents an unusual opportunity to declutter. Be ruthless with your stuff. Pack what you’ll actually use in your new home. Take another look at those keepsakes. Consider selling them for some quick cash on OfferUp.com. Or donate them to your favorite charity.

Put them in the recycle or the trash if those items are not suitable for sale or donation. While one person’s trash may be another person’s treasure, you can probably tell what realistically can’t be sold or donated.

Only after you have cleared the clutter during your packing process should you load up those boxes for the move. My daughter used a U-Haul van for her move, which was cost effective in her case.

Once again, moving presents an unusual opportunity to declutter. Use it wisely and use it well.

The post Don’t Move Your Clutter With You first appeared on STUFFology 101.

If We Could Accept Progress Step-by-Step

Popular self-help books promote the idea that if we can switch our thinking, we will live lives of abundance (attraction theory, self- affirmations). Things will magically click and we’ll be happy bazillionaires!

Honestly, that’s not the way things work. Sure, you may have spurts of success here and there, but to really see solid growth you need to accept that incremental gains through consistent steps toward your goal are where there are magical-compound results.

Compounded Gains

Finance people and investment advisors have been talking about the benefits of compounded growth. If you’ve missed it, here’s a quick overview.

If you invested just $100 and added only $5 a month for 5 years while earning a measly 4% compound interest, you’d end up with a jaw-dropping 447% increase. If you had instead invested $5 a month (after your initial $100 investment) in an ETF such as Vanguard’s S&P, You would have $637.60 after 16.86% annual compound growth. (This return is as of 9/30/2021 and accounts for that massive dip in March 2020.)  Now, imagine if you had invested $1,000, initially, and added $50 a month. You’d have $6,376!

Most often, we see similar results after we direct consistent effort toward other goals in our life.

Unexpected Gifts

When we take one step and then another, consistently, we compound our progress toward miraculous gains!

Consistency is the key. One step at a time.

We hate it because that’s not the message we get from best-selling books and seminars. Yet, this is how people grow impressive nest eggs. This is how people declutter without suffering trauma because they let go too soon a sentimental memento or family heirloom. Sure, there are stories of seemingly overnight successes; but what we usually don’t hear and see are the months if not years of consistent action. The same holds true for today’s bitcoin millionaires.

Steps repeated consistently over time will yield unexpected gifts. Actually, they are expected because we’ve worked consistently toward them. They’re UNexpected when the magic of compound growth results from small steps taken repeatedly to build upon the earlier ones.

Whether decluttering or building something awesome, it takes time and dedicated effort. Consider the awesome beauty of this medieval castle built using old-style workmanship that now attracts visitors from around the world.

Dario Sattui’s all-consuming passion to build “13th century Tuscan castle winery to honor his Italian heritage and deep love for medieval architecture” began in 1994. He completed the Castello di Amorosa 15 years later. It was his labor of love.

The post The MAGIC of Incremental Improvement first appeared on STUFFology 101.

What do you do when your garage accumulates three generations of stuff temporarily? You start to declutter and get your space back.

We generally have a variety of items in the garage (STUFFology 101: Get Your Mind Out of the Clutter, “A Man’s Home Garage is His Castle“). Vehicles, bicycles, tools, games, and general storage to name a few. Ideally it is organized in a reasonable fashion and each item in the garage is easily accessible. And so it was with my own garage, until I temporarily stored items there from my deceased parents’ home.

I saved a few precious keepsakes, boxes of family photos and slides, as well as select antique furniture in a small portion of the garage to be sorted out in a timely fashion, in the beginning of 2018. Now that it is late 2021, some of that timeliness has been extended. Sadly, I have yet to sort through any of the family photos and slides. But many of the keepsakes and antique furniture have been incorporated into my household. Progress of sorts.

That accounts for two generations of stuff, what about the third? Enter my oldest daughter, who was forced to move back home several months ago due to the disruption of the COVID 19 Pandemic. She has spent that time getting her life back in order and is now in the process of moving to another state. Unfortunately, some of her stuff remains in my garage. Why?

Good question. The short answer is she no longer needs it. She did hold a garage sale where some of the stuff was liquidated, but not all. The remainder is to be donated to my charity. But I have not contacted them for pickup yet. Thus, three generations of stuff is now in my garage temporarily.

Has this happened to you? I ask because life unfolds in ways we cannot always control. I have started again to declutter and am in the process of getting my garage space back. My daughter is finishing her move today. I am setting up a pickup date for my charity today. And another daughter will be sorting through the photos and slides in the weeks ahead.

Decluttering three generations of stuff stored temporarily in my garage is a process not an event. Progress.

The post Grandpa’s Garage first appeared on STUFFology 101.