Carving a Path

It is just under 9 weeks since I accepted an offer on my house and marked the very first tiny step in my journey. Almost immediately after this momentous event I became paralysed by the task of packing away the house ready for moving out. I then spent nearly 5 weeks contemplating the overwhelming task of sorting through and condensing 11 rooms (my current house) into just 6 rooms (my next house). I found myself wandering through the house looking in each room, scanning every corner, cupboard and inch of floor space and wondering how I was going to do it. Then followed some spectacular (even by my standards) procrastination.

Knitting...... Facebooking............eating lots of sugar............... and just sitting looking out of the window..... a lot!

I have noticed that when I am tasked with something big I tend to look at the whole thing, I see the enormity of it and feel overwhelmed by the enormity of it and just sink into avoidance mode for as long as possible. I always seem to find something really important to do, like cleaning the skirting boards for example ( this was a favourite task when revising for my finals at university).

So when we finally agreed a completion date for the sale of the house two weeks ago I was forced to take action. What to do? The only thing to do was to break things down into manageable chunks, in order to pack the house away I would need something to pack things in.

First stop the local shops to collect empty boxes; fruit and veg boxes are the best, they are shallow so that you don't overfill them, they are strong, they stack neatly for transportation and best of all they are free.

I then started to pack away all things that I needed but didn't use every day, I sold, donated and threw away anything I hadn't used for a year or knew for sure would not fit into my new house. This helped to clear some space in the house, but more importantly it helped to clear space in my head.  I made a point of setting myself a small task each day, "Just fill four boxes and then stop" seemed to keep me motivated  "Just clear that cupboard today" helped to keep the task in perspective and things never got out of hand. My moving house mojo was released!

Before I knew it I had emptied nearly half of the house and started to feel in control of the move and a lot less overwhelmed.

This week I nearly had a blip in my mojo, why? Simple, I allowed myself to think about the next stage of the move - taking everything out of storage and onto the new house - no, no, no that is not a clever thing to do, that leads to way too many thoughts happening all at the same time in my brain.

Staying focused on each individual task has been so important in keeping this move on track, without this focus I would still be sat worrying about how I was going to do this (mostly by myself) rather than actually doing it.

Today is my last day in the house, a van is booked for the furniture in the morning and I am clearing and cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms. I am smiling quietly to myself as I have finally put into practice what I have been coaching others to do for many years. With small business start ups I have always kept them focused and on track by helping them to draft a business plan and breaking down the business development process into manageable chunks. Keeping them focused on the next step rather than 10 steps down the line.

Unravelling actions has been like clearing this very disorganised and messy cupboard, I have had to do it one thought at a time, one task at a time, clearing a path like a walkway through a forest. This cupboard will be cleared one item at a time.

This house will be empty in the morning, because it was cleared and sorted one room at a time and tomorrow I will have completed the first step in this journey. I will take a break, breath some fresh air and prepare myself for the next step in a few weeks and complete that before I consider what to do next