Remember the high bar on your elementary school playground?

The one you ran to at recess so you could climb on top and perch like a gazelle, one leg in front, one in back, arms gripping the bar, smiling at the crowd below before whipping your body forward and around the bar in one smooth, nobody-is-cracking-their-head-open-today whirl?

If you were a girl who could do this, I salute you. I was not that girl.

I was the girl picking through the bubblegum ice cream, pulling out all the pieces so I could chew them all at the same time like a cow in a field on a summer day.

And at some point, I’d been doing the bubblegum for so long, I couldn’t imagine being a whirling gazelle.

When you’re settled into one way of being, it’s hard to imagine another kind of life. And when you can’t picture yourself living it, it’s easy to feel discouraged about even trying.

 
That feeling shows up at home, too.

Because one of the cruelest things clutter does is it trains you to feel defeated the minute you look at a space.

And the worst thing about clutter is that it doesn’t just steal your space, it steals your vision.

A room can get so full for so long that you stop seeing a room at all. You just see a problem that you can’t seem to solve. Like the room has the upper hand. And the stuff is winning. And maybe this is just how you live now.

 
The problem with a space that feels overwhelming isn’t just that it’s hard to use. It’s that it’s hard to use and you can’t imagine it being any different. You can’t see yourself inviting people over. You can’t see yourself exhaling when you walk in the door. You can’t see the room helping you live your life instead of draining you before it even starts.

It’s like those magic eye pictures where you can’t make heads or tails of it until you step back from it and relax your gaze. And right now, between the clutter and the overwhelm and your work schedule and family obligations and the decision-fatigue you’re feeling before you even start making any decisions … Stepping back and relaxing your gaze? I don’t think so.

So you feel stuck.

Which doesn’t feel great, but also isn’t fatal. Because stuck is not lazy or failing or final. Stuck is a town you have passed through a hundred times. It has never been a place you settled in. And there is no reason to believe that this time will be the exception.

If clutter has stolen your ability to see what’s possible in your home, what you need most is a fresh set of eyes on the room. And the life you’re trying to live there.

 
What if, instead of blocking off time to move things around and figure out what to drop in a donation bag, you took a morning, grabbed a cup of coffee, and thought about one room or one closet or one space in your home:

✨ What would you love for that room to be?

✨ What would you love to use it for?

✨ What kinds of things would you like to do in there?

Then imagine your life if you could do those things.

 
Sometimes the first step to getting your home in order isn’t doing. It’s dreaming.

Because before you can set up your home so that it supports the life you want to be living? You need to know what life you want to be living.

 
You want a life where you come home after work and roll out your yoga mat for an hour with Adrienne? Maybe.

You want a life where you sit at the kitchen table on a Saturday morning with a cinnamon roll you just pulled out of the oven and your journal? Perhaps.

You want a life where your best friends gather with a glass of wine at the kitchen island while you toss a salad to go with the lasagna that’s in the oven? Lots of nodding.

You want a life where home feels like a place you get to be. Not a problem waiting for you when you walk in the door. Absolutely.

Once you can picture the life, the room starts to make sense. And you can start to make decisions about what belongs in the room so that your life can happen there—and what doesn’t.

That’s where you have to begin.

Before the moving things around.

Before the figuring out what to get rid of.

Before you can do any of that.

You need to be able to see the life you want clearly enough that you can build a room around it.

Because once you know what you want your life to hold, it becomes so much easier to decide what your home needs to hold too.

And easy is exactly how home should feel.

(Not like a high-bar routine that could end in a head injury.)

 
Your favorite bubblegum chewer with a magic eye,
Vivian

 
P.S. Here’s a real-life example.

A client asked me to help her with a room that had gotten a little out of control. She thought she wanted help putting it back together as an art studio.

But as we stood in the space with our coffees and talked about how she wanted it to feel and function, it turned out she really wanted more than a place to paint and teach. She wanted a room that could hold a bigger life.

A life where she hosted a crowd for Thanksgiving dinner. A life where she could curl up on the sofa on a random Tuesday and watch what she wanted on TV. The kind of life where she could walk into her studio and paint in the middle of the night if that’s when inspiration struck. She wanted a life where inspiration struck.

I mean… Same.

I dropped the before-and-afters below because sometimes when your own room has been yelling at you for long enough, it helps to borrow somebody else’s hope for a minute.