Spring Cleaning...for Your BRAIN!
Have you done any mental decluttering lately?
My favorite fucklings: a belated Happy St. Patrick’s Day to those who observe! Here in the Dominican Republic, there was at least one expat bar going strong on the shamrocks and green shimmer curtains, though I myself abstained from celebration after having had a rather hectic weekend of fundraising events for the Dominican Joe Kids Foundation, which I wrote to you about a couple of weeks ago.
I’m pleased to report that we had an extraordinary final night at our gala, with wonderful performances by many of our students, a heated live auction with all proceeds benefitting DJK, and much general merriment to raise everyone’s spirits in the wake of the fire.
A HUGE thank you to all of you who made donations online! As a result of our collective efforts, we’ll be able to rebuild what was lost and also sponsor every single one of our 266 students plus our 18 college kids for the coming year—truly an epic weekend all around.
And now, on to today’s main event…
Mental Decluttering: 101
As longtime NFG Newsletter readers will know, my first book, The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck, was intended as an affectionate parody of the bestselling Japanese decluttering guide The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo.
Eventually, TLCMONGAF took on a life of its own in the self-help space and spawned the entire No F*cks Given® Guides series. But it was a lightbulb moment that I had in the summer of 2015 that started it all.
I’d just quit my job/career of fifteen years in order to go freelance, work for myself, wear fewer items of restrictive clothing, and attempt to recover from too many years of corporate ladder-climbing burnout bullshit that had left me anxious, depressed, and overall, deeply unhealthy in both mind and body. Oof.
And then, just a month or two into my new life, I was feeling so loose and carefree1 that I decided it would be a great idea to write a whole book!
LOL, yes, I am a glutton for punishment.
What happened was that I picked up a copy of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, intending to send it to my mom, but then that seemed kind of passive-aggressive, so I wound up just reading it myself.
After I put the book down (and organized my husband’s half of the closet), I realized that all the tips Marie Kondo was giving for decluttering your physical space—be it your attic or garage or just your sock drawer—were similar to what I’d been doing during the year that I’d just spent preparing to leave my job and, indeed, to “change my life.”
Except I’d been doing it all mentally.
I’d started sifting through the crap—the tasks, obligations, relationships, etc.—that didn’t (in Marie Kondo’s parlance) “bring me joy,” but rather (in my parlance) “annoyed the ever-loving shit out of me,” and made a conscious effort to clear it all away.
I stopped caring about what anyone else thought about my life choices; I stopped going to “networking” lunches that left me scrambling to catch up at the office all afternoon; I stopped raising my hand for extra work (eldest daughter, here!); and I started dialing back on some friendships that had long ago run their course.
It was, in a word, LIBERATING.
Like physical decluttering, mental decluttering has two steps:
DISCARD
ORGANIZE
You take an honest inventory (of your brain, not your sock drawer), decide—based on that joy vs. annoy metric—what you no longer give a fuck about, and discard it from your mental load. Then, you organize your life around whatever’s left.
So simple! So satisfying!
I’ve written about this on Substack before, but for those who joined recently (and anyone who could use a refresher), here’s a quick look at how mental decluttering works:
First, note that your three most precious resources are TIME, ENERGY, and MONEY. In the book, I refer to these as your “fuck bucks,” and together they make up your “Fuck Budget.”
Mental decluttering involves sorting all the fucks you’re being asked to give—again, be they professional, personal, or even cultural—into JOY vs ANNOY, and then deciding whether to continue spending your fuck bucks on those things.
(Currently, it’s my energy that feels most in need of protection,2 so I keep that foremost in mind when deciding to accept invitations, take on projects, get up especially early or stay out especially late, etc.)
And if, with all of those potential fuckspenditures spread before you, you’ve gotta admit that, say, attending that toddler birthday party next month is a big ol’ check in the ANNOY column, then perhaps you should remove it as a line item in your Fuck Budget?
Just imagine: you could decide to stop giving a fuck about—and giving your fuck bucks to—birthday parties for anyone under the age of five!
Or honestly, fifteen!
Or, you know what? How about NFG to parties of any kind?!
It’s your world, squirrel.
And note that the act of RSVP’ing No falls under Step 2: organizing your life around the fucks you do and don’t want to give.
Step 1 of mental decluttering is deciding that you no longer care what people think about you saying no the party—or the promotion, or the third date, or participating in the group chat.
It’s realizing that you’re no longer willing to let guilt or people-pleasing or FOMO rule your life; that you’re ready to cast off whatever peer pressure or societal conventions have, up to now, been stretching your Fuck Budget well beyond its limits.
THAT’S the clutter we’re looking to sweep away like so many piles of hair from the salon floor.
To offer you a zeitgeist-y example:
Step 1 is Pamela Anderson deciding that engaging in an hours-long makeup routine before going out in public is fucking ridiculous; Step 2 is walking the walk. In her case, on the red carpet, secure in the knowledge that she saved three hours today to spend on other things (not to mention a hefty glam squad fee).
Once you get into the groove, you’ll start realizing what’s most important to you, and what is therefore most deserving of your precious fuck bucks.
The “deciding” step will get easier, and the “organizing” step more fun and fluid.
Your Fuck Budget may change with age or other seasons of your life, and that’s okay; it’s YOURS to grow, shrink, and tweak as you see fit. As I say in another of my books, Get Your Shit Together:
The great thing about mental decluttering is that it’s a solo mission.
If you live in a home with family or roommates, their physical clutter becomes your physical clutter. You have to compromise about how many limited-edition Pez dispensers get displayed on the mantel and which ratty old hotel slippers qualify as “keepsakes” from your honeymoon.
Whereas with mental decluttering, you don’t have to sort through or trip over anyone’s shit but your own. Even if you live on a Disney cruise ship with 7,000 other people (which I sincerely hope you do not), you have complete and total dominion inside your own head.
You’re the boss! You are the Tony Danza of your mind.3
So there’s your wee primer on mental decluttering, just in time for the vernal equinox and all of your spring brain-cleaning needs.
Turn down the annoy, ratchet up the joy, and—if you care to do a deeper dive—check out the posts below for more on harnessing that sweet, sweet life-changing magic of not giving a fuck!
Until next time,
Sarah
Well, as loose and carefree as a recovering perfectionist gets, anyway.
Thank YOU, perimenopause!
Or the Judith Light? I don’t actually know which one of them was the boss.
I love your articles, Sarah, thank you so much for sharing them. Every time I read one I give my head a shake, and I remind myself that I choose where I give my fucks. No one else! And when I forget that, I always sing the lyrics from Radiohead, “you did it to yourself, just you, you and no one else.” 💕
“It’s your world, squirrel.” This did not merely speak to me, it grabbed me by the throat and shook me hard enough to rattle my eyeballs. The matter-of-factness of it (no !, just . ). F*#¥ing. Brilliant. Thank you.