I am brand new this week to SCS and when I saw that this month’s topic was organizing, I felt a bit stressed. This is a hard place to start. 2 Questions:
1. We just painted and recarpeted our house and moved everything out and then back in. My house is full of boxes and need to be put away. Can I start my sorting with boxes instead of the closet? (This feels like an immediate need – to get the boxes out of the way.)
2. When I read the section in the Oct coaching manual about “Can you imagine keeping broken items, etc.” my stomach dropped. I actually do keep broken items because I feel guilty throwing them away. I have intentions of repairing them or even if I can’t repair them, I often want to keep them. The ones that are very difficult to throw away are gifts (it feels as if I would be saying I didn’t care about that person that gave me the gift – I also feel guilty that I didn’t take care of it well enough so that it didn’t get broken) and things that I have made. I am sentimental about these items.
Lots of thoughts going through my head that maybe I won’t be able to do this b/c I definitely have some strong OCD about THINGS (it has ALWAYS been an issue for me).
Do you have suggestions about how to put these thoughts into the model and/or where to begin? Panic mode has now set it and I’m struggling to even read the materials or think about it because I don’t know how to work around the strong emotional attachment I have to things. Please help!