My goal for April is to tackle the clutter in the house. However, a lot of the clutter (like 90% – he would agree) belongs to my husband. He wants to get rid of it too, but the process of getting rid of it has dragged on a bit. Some of the issues of the past have been that I’ve held a lot of resentment and don’t trust him to be his word on getting rid of stuff that he says he wants to get rid of, but that he makes no time to deal with. E.g., I ask him about something he wants to get rid of, he says, “It’s on my list of things to do this weekend.” But then it doesn’t happen. I did TDL and models around that one and I saw how I had a huge fat manual about how he should just get things done when he says he will do them. I’ve changed my thought from “yeah right, I don’t trust you to be your word” to “He loves me and our home and works hard to keep it up the best way he can.” The result is more partnership, love, and we’re actually getting things done, little by little.

I know I can’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to do, so I am not sure how to approach this work. I do have things I can get rid of, and some things that are both of ours. Do I set a goal to eliminate specific areas of my clutter and not worry about his or ours? Or can I set a goal to eliminate my clutter plus ours plus some of his, with the goal of being in partnership to support him in getting that done? In which case, part of my list of tasks is things like “talk with Bill to ask him about how I can best support him around xyz.” However, until after I talk with him and he tells me how I can help (typically it might be things like “work with me for an hour on this so I can go through this box of stuff,” or “handle dinner and dog walk so I can focus on looking through these old computer parts”), I don’t know exact details of everything that will need doing. Would like some feedback on whether you recommend doing this type of time management project that involves another person, and if so, considerations on how to enact that.

I’m very excited about this opportunity to do the brain work and action around not judging/accepting how he is, while working with him and with my own brain to accomplish something that will make our home lives much happier (uncluttered home)!