The Happiness Project Read Online Free PDF Page B

people are convinced that clearing clutter will boost their happiness—and they’re “laying out money for domestic satisfaction” by buying Real Simple magazine, reading the Unclutterer blog, hiring California Closets, and practicing amateur feng shui. Apparently, other people, like me, believe that their physical surroundings influence their spiritual happiness.
    I paced through our apartment to size up the clutter-clearing challenge I faced. Once I started really looking, I was amazed by how much clutter had accumulated without my realizing it. Our apartment was bright and pleasant, but a scum of clutter filmed its surface.
    When I surveyed the master bedroom, for example, I was dismayed. The soft green walls and the rose-and-leaf pattern on the bed and curtains made the room calm and inviting, but stacks of papers were piled randomly on the coffee table and on the floor in the corner. Untidy heaps of books covered every available surface. CDs, DVDs, cords, chargers, coins, collar stays, business cards, and instruction booklets were scattered like confetti. Objects that needed to be put away, objects that didn’t have a real place, unidentified lurking objects—they all needed to be placed in their proper homes. Or tossed or given away.
    As I contemplated the magnitude of the job before me, I invoked myTenth Commandment: “Do what ought to be done.” This commandment distilled into one principle a lot of different strands of advice my mother had given me over the years. The fact is, I tend to feel overwhelmed by large tasks and am often tempted to try to make life easier by cutting corners.
    We recently moved, and beforehand, I was panicking at the thought of everything that needed to be done. What moving company should we use? Where could we buy boxes? How would our furniture fit into our new apartment building’s tiny ser vice elevator? I was paralyzed. My mother had her usual matter-of-fact, unruffled attitude, and she reminded me that I should just do what I knew I ought to do. “It won’t really be that hard,” she said reassuringly when I called her for a pep talk. “Make a list, do a little bit each day, and stay calm. ” Taking the bar exam, writing thank-you notes, having a baby, getting our carpets cleaned, checking endless footnotes as I was finishing my biography of Winston Churchill…my mother made me feel that nothing was insurmountable if I did what I knew ought to be done, little by little.
    My evaluation of our apartment revealed that my clutter came in several distinct varieties. First was nostalgic clutter, made up of relics I clung to from my earlier life. I made a mental note that I didn’t need to keep the huge box of materials I used for the “Business and Regulation of Television” seminar I taught years ago.
    Second was self-righteous conservation clutter, made up of things that I’ve kept because they’re useful—even though they’re useless to me. Why was I storing twenty-three glass florist-shop vases?
    One kind of clutter I saw in other people’s homes but didn’t suffer from myself was bargain clutter, which results from buying unnecessary things because they’re on sale. I did suffer from related freebie clutter —the clutter of gifts, hand-me-downs, and giveaways that we didn’t use. Recently my mother-in-law mentioned that she was getting rid of one of their table lamps, and she asked if we wanted it.
    “Sure,” I said automatically, “it’s a great lamp.” But a few days later,I thought better of it. The lampshade wasn’t right, the color wasn’t right, and we didn’t really have a place to put it.
    “Actually,” I e-mailed her later, “we don’t need the lamp. But thanks.” I’d narrowly missed some freebie clutter.
    I also had a problem with crutch clutter. These things I used but knew I shouldn’t: my horrible green sweatshirt (bought secondhand more than ten years ago), my eight-year-old underwear with holes and frayed edges. This kind of