Garbage out...

Many times when I set goals, I find that I keep adding things.  I am encouraged to do this by the zeitgeist:  in just minutes a day I can become thin, flexible, smart, sexy, and have perfect eyebrows!  My house can be pristine, my children creative, and my meals organic, free-range delicious.

Maybe so.  That kind of thinking has its place.  But I would like to suggest a slightly different idea.  As I looked over what I wanted to accomplish on my list of goals the last few times around, one way to summarize all of them was:  Keep Taking Out the Garbage.

Things might be different at other people’s houses, but in our house, things make it to the wastebaskets really well and then nothing happens.  One more can can cram into the recycling, right?  I’m kind of in a rush… I can empty the bathroom trash later.  And then things overflow and I get cranky and it is just totally unpleasant.

Taking out the garbage makes space.  It makes a pleasant environment.  It builds community, smells better, and improves morale.  And that is just in the literal sense. 

In the metaphorical sense, we can take the garbage out of our eating habits.  We can drop the waste out of our schedules.  We can remove the ideas that hold us back out of our minds, leaving us with a nice clean basis for what we really want to spend our time and energy on.

Take out the garbage and find the treasure.