The weather in San Francisco has been beautiful lately. Bright sun, warm afternoons…the kind of weather that makes you want to call in “sick” to work and head to the beach.
I don’t know about you, but when it’s 80 degrees and glorious outside, I find it very hard to stay inside and work on little projects around the house.
Over the winter, a few things started quietly stacking up around the house…
…a pair of boots I want to polish after wearing them out in the rain. A box of jewelry and accessories I never unpacked from my move last year. A new planner I can’t wait to use, but that I never quite feel ready for.
Plus, each of those little tasks comes with a pile of stuff meant to help me get it done. And for better or worse, I do what most people do…
I leave things out so I don’t forget to finish the project.
But lately, those projects are starting to get a little loud.
Not in a dramatic way, but in a quiet, persistent way that makes it hard not to feel a twinge of guilt as I head out for the day to enjoy the sunshine, instead of staying home to be productive.
And when I stop and check in with myself, I realize that I don’t actually want to give them my attention right now.
Spring has a funny way of amplifying this.
Everywhere you look, the outside world starts getting excited about spring cleaning. Suddenly, there are messages everywhere telling you it’s time to declutter, reorganize, deep clean, and get your life together.
And look, I’m not here to stop anyone from decluttering. I’ve built my entire career around helping people get organized.
But I do want to offer a small shift in perspective.
Instead of thinking about this “spring cleaning” season as fixing something that’s wrong with you or your home, what if you thought about it as quieting the noise?
Clutter is one of those words that can feel surprisingly judgmental. It’s a term we tend to assign to things that make us uncomfortable. Things that feel loud or noisy. Things that require something from us that we’re not able or willing to give right now.
But when we look at it through a softer lens, clutter isn’t a failure.
It’s just information.
It’s a reminder of the project you thought you were going to do. The project that just quietly lost its priority status on your list. The task that keeps getting shuffled around because you feel like you “should” do it someday, not because you actually want to.
And that “should” can get loud.
One of the reasons people feel overwhelmed when they start organizing is they think they have to do everything all at once. They believe that if they can’t complete the whole project, then it’s not worth starting at all.
When something feels too big, too layered, or too complicated, we bench ourselves. We never get started because the task feels too big.
But forward motion doesn’t have to look like a full transformation. Sometimes it’s just making one simple decision.
Maybe it’s looking at a project that’s been circling your house for months (like my boot polishing project) and saying, “You know what? This isn’t a priority right now.” And then either outsourcing it to someone else or putting the task away for some future date when it is a priority again.
Maybe quieting the noise looks like taking action on something small, like sending your friend a belated birthday card (even if it feels “too late” or imperfect).
You don’t have to tackle the whole house…or even a whole room.
You just have to quiet a little bit of noise and create some space to breathe.
So today, wherever you are, pause for a moment.
Take a breath. Look around the room you’re sitting in. And gently ask yourself:
What is one thing in this room that feels a little too loud right now?
And then, take one small step towards quieting that noise.
You don’t have to solve everything…you just have to take one step.
