The inner and outer world, have much more in common than what most of us would like to believe and admit. When we apply this idea to organising and decluttering, we are organising for the inside out.

This topic came about as I was having a very interesting conversation with a councillor the other day. She was stating that people who have gone through trauma (and this could be any form of trauma) - their mind is pretty much overloaded. Information doesn’t stick or doesn’t get in at all.

One of the techniques councillors and psychologists use is creating (imaginary) boxes in a cupboard or on a shelf inside your head. This allows trauma survivors to ground some of their memories; bad ones go in a box that is only opened when we feel we are able to deal with it. Good memories need a spot as well.

After those initial boxes are created, the most interesting thing happens; boxes are created for daily life. So we could have 1 box or multiple boxes for; work, home, friends, family andstudy. Taking study as an example, this means that a school box could be purple, a reading box could be green, and a craft box could be poker dots. In your mind’s eye, you can create different boxes for the different things that need your attention.

This goes hand in hand with physical organising. You could even make sure the colours in your mind’s eye or in reality (whichever comes first) match each other. The great thing with boxes and organising is that it calms the mind. Yes there are still a lot of items, possibly a lot of colours and they all require our attention at one stage - but not now. We can deliberately choose to quickly pop something in a box (put the lid back on it – especially in your mind’s eye) and go on with something else.

It also means that whether you are starting on the inner road or on the physical road towards getting more organised, both will benefit the other as they form part of a holistic approach - helping you towards a more vital life.