Organizing Your Health: 9 Ways to Reduce Stress

Do you remember "Schoolhouse Rock?" I bet you can probably sing me a few of the songs... "Conjunction Junction, what's your function?"

I just interviewed my friend, Dr. Mache Seibel, who is the founder of HealthRock®. After being on the Harvard Medical School faculty for two decades, he is currently a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and he writes and performs songs about health that are fun and catchy in just the same way. He even opened a show for Big Bird!

We talked about how disorganization contributes to stress and all of the ways getting organized improves your health. Here are Dr. Seibel's 9 tips to reduce stress that were shared on our recording:

1. Don't overcommit. Know your limits and don't spread yourself too thin! Overcommitments are clutter in your schedule.
2. Finish your tasks. When you leave things incomplete, you create stress trying to remember them all and juggle them until they are done. (See my related post on The Bookmark Principle.)
3. Set aside a few minutes of downtime each day. Take some deep breaths. Deep breathing is very relaxing, and you can do it with no special equipment and nobody has to even know!
4. Have sex! Experts say a healthy sex life is very important to relieving stress. (This is my favorite tip ever on the blog.)
5. Listen to music that relaxes you. Music calms the savage beast!
6. Schedule breaks in caregiving. If you are caring for small children or elderly relatives--or both-- make sure that you have some time just for yourself. Remember that you cannot serve others effectively if you are worn down and depleted.
7. Decrease clutter & get organized. Of course! Clutter represents delayed decisions and actions.
8. Get a massage. Massage is underrated in terms of the significant role it can play in your health.
9. Take mini-vacations. Reserve at least 1 day a week for rest, and every three months take a long weekend where you completely check out from your email and phone and work.

The full interview is available as a download in our member area, where we have hours of audio interviews, many of them with friends of mine in the organizing industry. Our Clutter Diet members have told us they enjoy getting motivated and learning from these interviews while they are in the car or while they are doing tasks around the house, or even while they are organizing! Members can click here to go to our audio page and download the interview. If you are not yet a member, you can check out the whole program--including this interview, all of the others, our video tutorials, and access to our team for personal advice-- for just one "Abe Lincoln," $4.95 (UPDATE July 2011: We now offer the FREE 7-Day Quickstart which includes seven days of focused guidance from me plus an additional 7 days of full access and support!). Read more about that here.

How does disorganization contribute to your stress? Share in the comments!

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Comments

[lily]

Easier said than done when you are a single disabled mother of 2 boys under 5 AND taking care of your elderly grandparents houshold TOO! I WISH I could get a job so that I could get away from everyone... Haha

[Kay Day]

My house and life are in order except for my office. Paperwork on every horizontal surface! The stress is high because I have to go through all the papers to find the one I', looking for. I usually know approximately where it is, but the stress until I find it is horrendous. Today, before I read your blog, I spent 10 minutes looking for a piece of paper I needed. But.......instead of just piling it all back the way I had found it, I sorted the papers as I went through into separate stacks. And then put each stack into a labeled file folder. It's a beginning. And it only took 15 minutes.

[Donna G]

I'm the opposite of Kay. At work everything is organized and I can find any paper within 5 minutes. But at home I get tempted into every evening being down time. I am tired when I get home, then get distracted by family and prepering supper. So I often dump my briefcase papers on top of where the mail goes. However, I DO open the mail over the recycling bag and toss the junk mail directly in, which feels great.

[Karen]

Lily - I hear you!!!! I'm not disabled and I don't have children, but I DO have a 3 - 4 night, 12 hour (7p-7a) shift job that I drive 30 min one way to. And, I take care of my 87 y/o wheelchair-bound mom, has some dementia & has to have everything done for her & can't be left alone. I am her POA so I do all her bills, finances, dr's appointments, schedule & pay for caregivers when I can't be there, etc. I also have to help pay her bills as her ONLY income is $620 SS check per month. I'm working on getting her house (& 4.5 acres with huge garage, barn, etc) ready to sell & my house so that we can get into a house together to cut down on expenses & work. It's daunting, exhausting, overwhelming & discouraging. Her house is too small for me to move into & mine would need alot of expensive remodeling to accomodate her needs. VERY few so-called 'friends' stick around when your life becomes like ours, so I really have no support system. My heart go out to you with empathy because no one knows how hard it is unless they are in our situation. God bless you for taking care of your parents. I work hard at organizing my life so everything will be easier, but there isn't much time, energy or money left any day. Mostly we can just pray for each other and others in similar circumstances. I clip coupons, watch sales, do without alot - as I'm sure you do. If I could just afford a few days home from work here and there maybe I could get all this organized and feel less stress. With God's help I will, but it won't happen too quick for me! Good luck, Lily - keep up the good fight and may God continue to bless you every day!

[Lorie Marrero]

Karen & Lily, bless you for all you are doing! Your situations sound difficult, but I know you can be resourceful and figure out some solutions that will help... Karen, it sounds like merging households will be very worth it when you get it done. Both of you feel free to contact us here: http://www.clutterdiet.com/contact.php and we'd like to give you one complimentary month of Clutter Diet to help you. Obviously, other readers, I can't do this for everyone, but I was moved to help and wanted to do it this time. - Lorie