I am living light

In order to be living light, I must make some changes.  I had been living as a heavier person for years.  There were lots of reasons for the heaviness:  having a Dad who loved me but really didn’t believe in me (or certainly didn’t make that very obvious to me) was one.  Another was being attached to physical objects and having a hard time getting rid of things.  I was depressed for a number of years, doing the obligatory counseling, anti-depressant meds, trying to ACT positive…  It could have been much worse than it was.  After pregnancies it was particularly difficult adding in the post-partum stuff, so I’m sure you get the idea.  I had tried so hard to stay thin, but I just kept gaining – every time I lost, there was an equal or greater gain.  I stopped the cycle several years ago.  You can go to my website to find my weight loss journey story at http://www.light-r-u.com/Heart_to_do_It.html  Now I am maintaining, building my life coaching business and staying in alignment with my purpose and goals – staying light.

My new challenge is to lighten my surroundings.  When a person has been overweight/depressed for a period of time, there are often issues that get “stashed” – boxes, closets, attics and garages.  Well, I think you see where I’m now going with this…

I have a buddy who is also keeping me accountable, as I am also doing that for her – it helps to have someone to check in with.  I have also made the decision to post it here so all the world will be keeping me accountable.   I decided to take pictures as I progressed through the house and the different projects that I have to tackle.  I began today!  I am putting my intention out there to complete a minimum of a one hour project each week (which doesn’t sound like much), but it’s a lot more than I was doing before.  If I do more, so much the better, but the minimum is one hour a week (unless I’m away on vacation)!

Here is my FIRST project.  I had cleaned out my bedroom last month and taken stuff from under my bed (old picture frames that I wanted protected and some clothing of my husband’s) but the stuff didn’t make it any further than the front upstairs hallway.  Today was the day to tackle it.  I called my “partner in clearing” but she wasn’t presently available, so I went ahead and got to it…    Here are the pictures to prove it!  I’m taking baby steps at first – bigger projects later!  I had to decide what to throw away, what to keep (and where to put it) and what to donate or have a garage sale with…  It took me a little longer than an hour – an hour and a half to be exact, with about 5 minutes where I got distracted as I was putting things away… (I did something not related to this front hall project – but it was still cleaning, so does that count?) I even added a picture to the wall in my front hall – even though the colors don’t go at all, but at least the picture will be protected from getting damaged just laying around.

After all this clearing, my gift to myself will be to redecorate and paint!  Yay!  So here’s the before and after pictures to prove it!

Front hall - before clearing

After picture of upstairs hallway

Before picture at top of stairs

After picture at top of stairs