How Do You Deal With Clutter When Its Constantly Stressing You Out?

How do you deal with clutter when it's constantly stressing you out? This is Rook Wilks, and I'm Kathy Bertoli from thrivingnow.com and we know it.

Can be very stressful, especially if it's somebody else's clutter. I remember it seemed like everyone in the family was using my bathroom, the bathroom that I like to use, and they would undress and they would put all of their clothes right behind the door. So by the time the early afternoon came along, you tried to open the door, and there would be four people's dirty clothes.

And you hit that every day. And even if it's only a small stress, it starts building up.

Now, I, being a very responsible Virgo type, I would take my clothes and I would put them in the laundry hamper, which was only several steps away from where they were dumped behind the door. And this was becoming a problem. No matter how much I asked or insisted or yelled or screamed, it was still happening. And, you know, I had the conversations. I did all of that. But what I really wanted was for my body when I went in to go to have a shower and relax or to use the bathroom, that I would not be so stressed out that my body wouldn't be flooded with emotions of feeling disrespected and uncared for and hating the mess. And so when tapping came along, one of the things that I heard was, if you have something that's happening in your life, go and be with it. Look at it. Look at the clutter. So I sat down behind this pile of clothes in the bathroom on the blue tile floor, and it was cold, and I was angry, and I just started to tap as I looked at it, and I started to cuss, and I started to express how frustrating it was and how disrespected I felt and how I was tired and tired and tired and tired of picking up after everyone else. And I just. I'm tired of picking up after everyone else. I'm so tired of picking up after everyone else. Damn it. Why don't they pick up these clothes and put them away? I can. What's wrong with them? And can you tell? I was sort of stream of consciousness, but I was stimulating these points on the body, which are natural comfort points. And my intention was to be calm and confident no matter what. So every once in a while I would say, I'll just do it myself. What if I was okay with this? What if I just took them with my clothes? And people have different opinions about that. But again, my intention was to calm myself. And what I noticed by having spent 10 to 15 minutes just with those clothes, tapping the points while I looked at them and just allowing myself to express what was going on was that on the other end of it, it never bothered me at a 10 again. Sometimes it irritated me at a two or three. But what I often found was that when I got out of the shower, I would take my clothes and their clothes in just one load and just dump them down the hamper. I like a cleaner house than some people that I've lived with. And what I also noticed was that this carried through the rest of my time. It allowed me, when that feeling came up, to have something right at my fingertips, stress relief right at my fingertips. And it allowed me to be more present. I could still ask for what I want. I could still reflect to other people that this really was not my preference. It's not really something that was acceptable to me. But on the grand scheme of things in relationships, I got to a place where I could take it in stride. And that was what was best for me. And so I offer this as a possibility for each of us because there are things in relationships which are non negotiable, which you really can't tolerate. Like somebody leaving things where they start attracting bugs or rats or something. For me, having stress relief that I could focus in and do it and then have it carry forward for months and years. I mean, this is 10 years later and I still don't react to things the way that I used to.

I think also you can set boundaries if there's. For me, I think when I work with clients a lot, it's about letting myself be uncomfortable first or letting the client be with their discomfort and tapping through the discomfort they're actually feeling. We tend to want to avoid that. Yeah. And then also letting other people in, the families feel their disappointment, their discomfort. So if. If I didn't want to, I did that tapping, I realized I did not want to pick up the clothes. I might fight it. Might put them in the closet where they wouldn't get washed. And you know, then, okay, we're discomforted. There are no clothes. I'm sorry, you're going to work. Dirty clothes. To work or to, you know, like, it was not my responsibility. I did not. We get to say whether we want to pick up after other people.

Sure.

And I've worked with clients too, where I'm like, okay, your kids are old enough now, they should be responsible for their toys. You've asked them a couple times to clean up and we just worked out a scheme where they put them in a box and that box was put away. And they had a week. They were put away for a week. They didn't get to play with them.

And those are all the practical boundaries. And some people have never even heard of that. And that's why we want to share it. And also then the emotional state of being that you come at. Most people that are frustrated by something have expressed that frustration, anger, resentment, and the like to other people in their world. I find that if I've tapped on something, my whole way of expressing and how it's received by other people is different because I'm not in my primitive brain. I don't have that story. It can be more clear, no, this is not acceptable. And here's why it's not acceptable. And you're coming from a place of clarity and boundary rather than rage and resentment.

Yeah. So if you're taking pick, you're like, okay, if you're calm, I picked it. I asked you a couple times. I'm now putting your toys out of reach for a week versus see what you did. You're making me do this or whatever. It's an entire day.

All they hear is, is the energy of what you're frustrated about. Yeah.

People do push back when people are in that energy. So doing some tapping, figuring out where you're actually at, what the story is behind it. Like, you know, they don't love me because they're not picking up their toys or them being disrespected because they leave their clothes versus, wow, they're just not picking up their clothes.

It's not their thing that doesn't register when they're getting out of the shower. And yeah, so we hope this helped and we'd love to hear your comments, so please leave them below.

And, yeah, come back for another video.