midlifejourney.com

Author: Marjorie Salad

I have discovered that learning to deal with clutter is a big part of the recovery process. Managing clutter is just another part of getting your life in order. Many of us deal with more than on thing in our lives that are out of control and we learn to tackle these things one day at a time and one task at a time. But we all know that it is not always that easy.

When it comes to clutter, many times it is the symptom of something else that is going on in our lives. Often it has become so overwhelming we do not know where to begin to correct the problem. Here are a few simple tips for getting started-remember to take it easy. Take it one room at a time and one corner at a time, if necessary.

Sort-put like things together so that you can begin the organization process. Put all your clothes together, all your papers in one place…well you get the idea.

Purge-If you have not used it in the past 6 months, chances are you don’t need it. We live in a society of excess. We like our possessions and some of us have not learned to part with material things that are holding us back. Be aggressive when it comes to purging. You will soon learn to appreciate your space as much as you do your possessions.

Assign a home-one of the biggest problems with clutter is the things do not have a permanent home. Assign a place for the things you are keeping. As long as your things are in their assigned places, you should not have things lying around. All it takes is a few things out of place and the next thing you know you are dealing with major clutter again.

Containerize-purchase the necessary storage devices to keep your possessions organized. Many storage items today are decorative and serve a dual purpose. You can purchase items that can be used as a table or seating that also have storage capabilities.

Maintenance-this part is very important. Take 10-15 minutes each day to maintain your main living area. This daily maintenance will keep your from having to ever be overwhelmed with clutter again.

Clutter can hold you back. It will affect other areas of our lives. It is essential that you get to the root of why you cannot part with things in order to move forward with your life.

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About the Author: When you begin the process of decluttering it is not easy to know where to begin, but fortunately there is help available. Find out how you can declutter in one day.De

Milestones in life happen once in a while. They are markers on our journey: a birth, a death, a wedding, a divorce, new job, retirement… we all have them, and in midlife they seem to happen all the time. Everytime I turn around someone is hitting a milestone, or their children are, or their parents.

How do you celebrate the milestones in your life? How do you mark this significant moment? Alone? or with friends? Do you spend a lot of money to show how important the milestone is? (Throw a big party, buy a monstrous gift, take a long vacation?, send the biggest floral arrangement?) Or are you the type to lo-key these events… send a card, call on the phone, do not much of anything?

I remember when my parents finally paid off the mortgage on their house we had a “burning” event. Wasn’t really a party, just a few of us in the backyard setting the documents on fire. Small but meaningful. And memorable.

How do you celebrate those meaningful moments?

There is nothing so satisfying in the early morning as the perfect cup of coffee. Hot, but not too hot, strong, but not too strong. It’s a relatively simple thing to brew: a matter of finding the right balance between water and bean. I have discovered the French Press serves up a fine cup of jo., and use that without fail when I am home.

On the road, you are at the mercy of the one who prepares the brew. And it can be a disaster. Muddy coffee, weak coffee, flavored-ugh!, sugar?-never. More often that not, a disappointment. How can such a simple process go so wrong?
It makes me want to stay home.

Author: Christine Phoenix-Green

Since 60 is the new 45, and 35 the new 28, it is a little hard to gauge exactly where “midlife” starts and ends. Today there are all kinds of options and variations in how people live out the different phases of their lives.

For instance, each of my daughters are mid-lifers if we count ages 35-39 as a midpoint, but each of them have just become mothers for the first time with the enormous and focused responsibilities that that entails..and in that respect, they are at a different midpoint stage than I was at at their ages, seeing kids off to high school and college, being freer and just getting ready to look to new creative horizens for myself. They, in their mid-to-late thirties with small children and full time jobs, are now going to bed exhausted at 9:30 pm, and I, a grandmother, am out dancing Irish sets until 1:00am!

Where, exactly IS “mid-life” and what are we supposed to be living out? The different topics here on this site open up wonderful avenues for sharing stories about how to find our way through the now-extended passage of mid-life with great information for practical use, and humour for the journey we all share in common that sometimes makes us reflect on the foibles and challenges faced in a culture that idealizes youth, fame and wordly success.

What I have found in my practice of certain modes of Spiritual Guidance, which includes astrological insight, paying attention to dreams (personal “gifts of the night” ) and participation in the creative arts for self-expression or prayer, that there is another aspect of “midlife” that also, for many people, starts to focus us away from the glitter in search of the Gold…in otherwords, in a sense, an occassional, if not persistent, turning inward to question if the life we are living or have been pressured to pursue reflects our deepest desires or truly uses the gifts and talents we came in with to live fully, lifting the culture around us to its highest potential.

The culture can be sometimes “glitter”, but living an Authentic and Soulful YOU life is pure Gold, and mid-life is the opportunity to consciously reset your priorities and chart a course that is more soulfully in tune with your own personal destiny from the Inside- Out rather than from the Outside-In. Sitting with someone and their astrological chart at this time, is an amazing tool for dialogue and reflection on what is most natural, harmonious, and peaceful for you. This “mystery” modality can guide you personally as we all move through the haze and maze of culture that has tended to homogenize life’s experiences, feeding us images of what should be important, that may not reflect you at this time, or indeed, at all!

Christine Phoenix-Green can be contacted at cphoenixrising@earthlink.com for information on personal Insight Astrological, Dreamwork or Spiritual Guidance sessions.

Read more articles on the Spirit page of this blog.

Christine Phoenix-Green
cphoenixrising@earthlink.net

I prefer to come at this question from the angle of what is not the point… i.e. what’s the harm in sharing experiences? ideas? opinions? and advice from the boomer point of view. Traffic to the site is growing!!!

From our beginnings over a year ago, we have gone through several iterations of the site. We started first as a static website with lots of pages, lots of clicks and subjects… content supplied by a wide variety of specialists in fields from dining to business consulting.

Blogging then became the way to go. The website was transformed to this blog, going through a couple of design transformations… but now it seems to have settled down.

We are always looking for good content: submissions from our readers with an expertise. Christine Phoenix Green has begun to contribute on the Spirit page. Check out her latest article.

Kathy Ekdahl continues her great articles on fitness. And we are beginning to add more articles on dating and relationships, travel and of course, money. Check back often to read the latest.

This morning I woke up as I often do, to the broadcast of Morning Edition on npr radio. The voice was that of a social worker from the Bronx. He was telling how, on his way home from work, he had been robbed at knife point by some young kid. I expected the voice to tell me how angry he was, how victimized he felt… but no.

The story he told was totally unexpected and had me sitting up in bed, listening intently. I can’t do the story justice. You have to read or listen to this for yourself.

Go to A Victim Treats His Mugger Right at npr.org. Let us learn by example to treat each other well.

I don’t know about you, but I have a heck of a time trying to cram in all the things I need to do between the time I get up in the morning, and head to work.

I need an hour at the gym, plus twenty minutes to get there and back, a half hour—at least—to write, 45 minutes to eat breakfast, get in a shower, dress and get out the door. It’s the juggling of time that drives me crazy and if I am not totally disciplined and move quickly from task to task… I’m lost. And it doesn’t seem to matter what time I get up. I need just about two and a half hours from the time I get up till I’m out the door.

I’m sorry, but I can’t move before 6am. Any suggestions?

I dont know about you, fellow midlifers, but I find keeping up with all that is new a pretty daunting task. The discipline of constantly updating, and learning new skills, is exciting yet overwhelming. After 10-12 hours a day on this computer, I just want to chuck it in and veg in front of the TV for a few hours. Thanks to OnDemand and HD-TV Recorders, all my programs are recorded and waiting for me to view (fast forward through commercials, of course) when I finally step off the computer merry go round.

One of the best ways to keep up with everything is an online service I discovered not too long ago: lynda.com. They have experts who present online tutorials on just about every software package out there. It’s worth a look.

Years ago, an Irish woman and I were out shopping. Suddenly she stopped me and said, “I must go spend a penny.” Puzzled, I asked her to explain. She leaned over and whispered, “I have to go to the bathroom,” and off she went to find the nearest rest room.

It turns out that in her home town back in Ireland, anytime you visited a public rest room you had to “spend a penny” - i.e. put money in the door lock of the stall in order to use the facility. Suddenly I remembered. When I was a kid, it was always a pain in the neck to use a public restroom. They had these door locks that required you to put in a dime in order to open the stall door. The reason was to pay for the “electric seat cleaning gizmo” that was installed on each toilet. After each use, the toilet seat retracted into this hole in the wall that was lined with bright blue neon lights. The idea was that the electricity, or heat, or light… whatever it was, would “sanitize” the seat for the next person. The dime in the door was to help defray the costs I guess.

The dilemma for a kid… do you pay the dime to get into a stall? Do you hold the door for the next person, so they don’t have to pay the dime? Do you wait and wait for the one free stall to open up so you wouldn’t have to pay at all? And if you used the free stall that didn’t have the electric blue seat, were you taking a big chance of catching some horrible disease???? These were major ethical dilemmas.

Anyone else have these issues?

This morning I was watching the second half hour of the Today Show. Focus on happiness in life and the middle year slump we all fall into. Seems there is a lot of research that focuses on happiness. Check it out here.Our happiest years are when we are young (before 30) and when we are old-er (after 60ish). We are either full of hope and promise with great dreams, or as we move into those later years, we become satisfied that what we have is ok. It’s those #$%@ middle years, when reality sets in and we know that those dreams we held so dear are unlikely to come true, that we enter the slump. And we stay there for years!!!!

Our bodies begin to change, relationships change, work changes, life changes… We drag ourselves around until finally, when it is clear that nothing is going to ever stay the same, or bring us back to those happy days of youth, we finally resign ourselves to reality, look around and say “This actually isn’t so bad.” that we snap out of it and become happy again.Well, do I buy this? I’m thinking about it.