The Art of Pruning

I love to prune. While other people enjoy mowing their lawns, planting bulbs, and plotting the placement of their flowering annuals, I yearn for a sharp pair of pruning shears. It's terribly refreshing to clip old twigs off my grapevines, or attack my numerous rosebushes, dreaming of the flowers they will soon produce. Having a yard of my own is the culmination of years of wishing I knew the art of bonsai. Now I practice my own brand of bonsai: taming and shaping a yard instead of a tiny potted juniper.

My late father loved his chain saw, which enabled him to prune with abandon, and on an even larger scale than I can accomplish with pruning shears. I remember when Dad first attacked the yard of my childhood home. He cut back bushes along our property line next to the vacant lot. The owner of that lot then decided it looked big enough to move a little house in there (which he did).

Dad took down the ancient, non-producing apricot tree in the side yard. He ripped into the towering silver birch in the front yard, and he took out the blue spruce in the back. That opened up the yard and let in more light to our home. And the spider count inside the house dropped drastically, too.

As a child, I felt sad at some of the pruning my Dad undertook. Removing the bushes and spruce tree made the backyard open and less private. Of course the neighbor moved that little house next door, which didn't help. There were fewer leaves to rake into a huge pile and jump into in the fall without the birch tree out front. But the absence of the birch tree enabled me to see, unobstructed, the bright Christmas star on top of the grain silo across town from my second-story bedroom window. A fine trade indeed. And birch leaves are small anyway; we had plenty of maple leaves left to enjoy.

As a grown-up homeowner, I appreciate the many reasons my Dad pruned around my childhood home. The biggest reason, which is just as delightful as the sheer excitement of pruning, is that THERE ARE NOW FEWER PLANTS TO TAKE CARE OF. In pruning the whole yard, my Dad eliminated hours and hours of yard work per year.

Multiply that number by the 30+ years since his first chain saw rampage, and that's a tremendous amount of time and personal energy he saved for himself and my mother over a lifetime of home ownership.

Decluttering your yard is more that just raking leaves and sweeping up pine needles: It's deciding if removing particularly high-maintenance plants would be a better way of cleaning up your yard, permanently, freeing up hours of your LIFE in the process.

During this budding spring season, please consider the areas of your yard that could use a good pruning. Ripping out that miserable-looking shrub, or digging up the non-producing butterfly bush will open up space and leave more room for the plants you love.

Go ahead. Call the arborist to come remove that aging pine tree in your backyard, which has dropped sharp little brown needles and cones all over your lawn for decades. Call the wrecking yard to haul away the '78 Chevy sitting broken and forlorn, dripping oil in the driveway, which you have to clean up every few months. You don't need that stuff taking up your life. Get out your pruning shears! What a great sense of relief and openness you will feel!

A New Definition of You

Perhaps you've carried a vision of yourself year after year, a vision of being messy. Your childhood bedroom was trashed from the time you graduated from a crib to a twin, and the only time it was totally clean was the day you left for college, carrying your clutter with you in your old beater car.

You have lived through a messy messy house no matter where you have lived, and you dream of the next house you will move to, knowing somehow that MORE space is all you really need to get your clutter cleaned up.

It's a LIE.

Clutter is a symptom; living messy is a behavior. And behaviors can change in an instant. All it takes is personal choice and a decision that YOU AREN'T GOING TO LIVE LIKE THIS ANYMORE.

Go ahead and get mad enough to change: make that decision to change right now!

Here are a few steps to help you change your behavior right now, this instant. YOU DON'T HAVE TO LIVE WITH CLUTTER FOREVER!

1. Always, always, every morning, make your bed. It takes me one minute to make my bed. If your bed takes longer to make, then simplify the coverings. Get rid of some of the fancy frou-frou pillows and wrinkle-free shams.

2. If you don't like some object, and it's yours (not your child's, your roommate's, or your spouse's), then THROW IT AWAY. Get over the guilt; you aren't ruining the environment! Go here and read how your trash can be turned into CLEAN energy. http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2007-03/prophet-garbage?page=1

3. Keep your car washed and free from trash. I can't tell you how keeping your car washed on the outside and the fast food fallout picked up on the inside will give you a daily lift. A car is much easier to keep tidy than a home (smaller square footage). So it's a great place to start learning new behaviors.

4. Quit buying so much. The super stores are the worst culprits for aiding and abetting the shopping clutterer. It's so easy to add one extra little thing (funky bath mat, rice cooker, game for the kids, DVD) to your cart during the weekly grocery shopping trip. Cut down on those little purchases and you will have less clutter.

Following these tips will help you begin to permanently change the behaviors that cause the clutter in your home. Blessings on you today!

New Year In, Old Clutter Out!

Every new year, since the mid-1990's, I have spent part of December 31 and January 1 getting rid of junk in my home. I love this annual ritual: making space for the future while honoring and releasing the past. I go through almost every possession in my home and life and decide if it has fulfilled its usefulness to me. If it has, I either throw it away, recycle it, or place it in a bag to donate to a charity thrift store.

I am always amazed at how much I have to donate, and I'm not a compulsive shopper! It's amazing the volume of things that enter the average American's life in a year's time. I declutter as I go about living my life during the year, but still I can always find things to let go of as the new year rolls in.

Why not pick an area of your home right now, perhaps the coat closet or your Christmas CD collection, and make some room for 2009? You will feel rejuvenated!