Dealing With Life's Little Distractions

Our world is filled to the brim with distractions. Texting, emails, zoom, traffic, exercise, shopping, politics, cleaning, money, online schooling, COVID, etc, etc! It's no wonder we're so stressed, cranky, and unfocused.

Now, throw in “tolerations.” Tolerations are little, persistent distractions that we try to ignore. They're mostly physical things around the house, like dangling computer cords we never bothered to tie up, items that don't have a home so they just sit on the countertop, clothes that don’t fit anymore but stay in our closet, ugly art we wish we hadn't bought, a ding in the drywall we never got around to patching, and so on.

Tolerations sneakily add to our stress, and most of the time we don’t even notice the stress until we remove the distraction. Then we breathe a sigh of relief and wonder why we didn't do that sooner. That's why home staging works so well -- it creates a calming, distraction-free environment that makes buyers feel good.

You can grab a little of that peace yourself by turning your spring cleaning into spring calming this month. Here's how:

Sit in one spot at a time in your home, office, or car. Make a note of everything you’ve been tolerating…anything out of place, cluttered, dangling, ugly, or annoying. Then tackle as many items as you can in an hour. Set a timer if it helps. Do this in every location you spend time. You’ll get a lot of quick, easy wins that make you feel “ahhh.”