Homebody Organizing
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Care Package Archive

Rejuvenating and practical frameworks for creating Clarity and Wellness in all areas of your life.

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Care Packages🤲🏽

You know when someone who loves you sends you a parcel with a bunch of goodies in it? I’m endeared to the care package (in whatever form it comes) as a way of making, way of caring, way of sharing. There’s no shortage of possibility as to how a care package presents, what it contains, what assortments are collected, how it’s delivered, how it’s received, and what it might mean to it’s recipients.

I value that this orientation toward making and giving can bring together items that you don’t always see together. You’re simply giving what’s needed and what might land as care. I like when a care package is a sweet collection of some practical stuffs and also things for pure enjoyment (maybe highlighting the functionality of joy and pleasure to our survival); a mix of things you can use in the long run plus some things to use right now. A box containing socks, a nice notebook, some chocolate, a bag of rice.

I like both mail and creating with the intention to give, so the Care Package holds a place in my heart. I send the people on my list a weekly (email) Care Package 🤲🏽. I write them with the intention of both holding space for all the positive possibility that you radiate, and to be of real tangible use. Ideas that you can grab onto, that make a difference in your life.

I created the Care Package Archive to collect these packages all in one place. Sign up if ya wanna receive em straight to your inbox.

CP15🤲🏽 CLUTTER DOESN’T EXIST- thinking it does keeps you disorganized

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I know… you’re like “What? I know it exists because I have it!” But it doesn’t exist and thinking it does actually keeps you disorganized.


I’ll explain using a natural truth that happens to be perfectly analogous: weeds in a garden. Nothing is innately clutter in the same way that nothing is innately a weed.


I remember when I first learned this it kind of blew my mind and I was multidimensionally grateful for the clarification. No plant is innately a weed. The determination of a weed is situational and entirely dependent on your intention within the garden, because weeds are simply the plants that pop up that are not what you’re growing and that are interfering with what you’re growing.


Which is to say- you know what you don’t want by knowing what you do want; knowing what you do want clarifies what you don’t want, because clutter is the opposite of clarity. (This article will help you really understand and benefit from this paradigm shift)


There’s no such thing as a class of plants that are “the weeds”. You determine what your weeds are by knowing what you’re doing with the space (what you’re cultivating) and identifying what plants are interfering. The same plant that in one garden is a weed might be what is specifically being grown in another garden.


It’s the exact same with clutter in your home.


Weeds are analogous to clutter. There’s no class of stuff that is ‘the clutter’. You can’t google which items are clutter and which items are not. Clutter is entirely dependent on what you’re cultivating in your space and what might be interfering with that. 


So to make use of this grand metaphor: Your home is your garden. But unlike in the garden where you might be cultivating string beans and tomatoes… in your home you’re cultivating energy and life. Every single choice you make in your home ought to be in service of your energy and life.


Let me demonstrate exactly why and how thinking in terms of clutter keeps you disorganized.


Clutter is (un)unpackable and unactionable. Imagine you enter a garden. And imagine it’s one influenced by permaculture, a philosophy that learns from natural flourishing ecosystems. Permaculture tends to have a broader capacity of sustaining various life and appreciates interactions and energy exchange. Two of the design principles from permaculture that I find most inspiring are integrate rather than segragate and use and value diversity. In this sense it’s quite the antithesis to monocrops (miles and miles of one crop).

(If you like thinking about how organizing extends beyond the home, here’s some more of that)

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So say you enter a cultivated space like this that mimics the layout and harmony of natural flourishing ecosystems. The growing space is bustling with life and since integration is a principle there may not be clearly defined rows. Say you know nothing about plants. And say someone told you to weed…


Where would you even start? How would you know where to begin? How would you know that what you were uprooting wasn’t an intentional and valuable plant?


You wouldn’t know! Understandably.


And it’s the exact same with clutter and decluttering. For this reason, with your decluttering aspirations, you’ve probably done one or both of the following:

1) not started because you don’t even know how or where to begin

2) started but feel like you’re on an unending wheel of perpetually decluttering and getting no where.


But if you knew what you were cultivating, you’d know how to navigate the space. You’d know exactly what to do. And here’s the thing: you actually do know what you’re cultivating. In fact, the mere impulse to declutter contains within it the seed of clarity about what you want.  You’re cultivating your life and energy, your wellness, health, happiness, prosperity (add what is meaningful to you). You know what you want. Make a list.


Now… anything that does not contribute to that… that’s your clutter! You know what to do! (More on purposeful organizing and relationship-building with your environment here)


Dreaming up environments for your energy and clarity,

Loretta

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Loretta Barrera