When I need to get a job done, I often start by clearing the decks.

In the mornings when I prepare a packed lunch, if there are clean dishes on the bench from the night before, I put those dishes away before I start rather than just sweeping them to one side in a big messy heap. If I’m going to fold clothes on the bed, the chore works better if the bed is made. When I’m under the pump with work, I clear away extraneous papers and the jobs they contain so I can attend to the single most important task of the moment.

It’s not only that I dislike working in a mess—it has to do with the brain’s visual processing. Everything is more complex when there is too much in your line of vision. Your brain has to process that picture, whether you consciously realise it or not. The cluttered view makes it harder to start, harder to accomplish and harder to clean up afterwards.

Having clear space is cleaner so that’s a good reason to get rid of the excess clutter. Even more important is the fact that when you have clear surfaces, your head works better. The items you need to use, and only those items, are all there perfectly visible in front of you. When you’re finished, you know which bits should be put away because you just keep putting items away until the surface is clear again.

There is something paradoxical about being surrounded by a plethora of stuff. You’d think that because it’s all there in plain sight you’d want to deal with it. But no, it’s just the opposite.

When the freezer is so packed that you virtually have to dismantle the insides to get to something, it’s pretty overwhelming. You’re probably going to take the easier option and leave it all there for another day. If the fridge is overstuffed, it’s sadly easier to have takeaway. If you virtually have to unpack the cupboard to get at an item, you’re much more likely to shrug your shoulders and walk away.

Cleaning is harder with a house that has stuff on every surface and spilling out onto the floor. Twenty things on the dresser? I don’t even want to try to dust. One object, beautifully placed? I can pick it up in one hand while dusting with the other. Easy, quick, satisfying.

It’s very gratifying being happy to start a task. Making lunch? Pull the one plastic container out of the fridge, put it on the clear bench and dive straight in, knowing the container has every fridge item inside it for that one job.

It’s so much simpler when there’s wriggle room in the fridge, when you can see what you need in the freezer at a glance and can pull it out without starting an avalanche. Sitting down at a clear office desk makes you more prepared to dive into your work. It truly is so much easier for your brain to work when it’s not being bombarded by the sight of teetering piles.

So if clearing the decks works so well, the obvious next step is to create a lifestyle where the decks are clear all the time. That may require considerable thought and preparation. It may mean clearing out. Deleting. Editing. Downsizing. The secret is to have a proper home for every single thing, and simply put all items away in their home when they’re not in use. Simple. Even if it takes a couple of months to implement, this has the potential to be life changing.

So now it’s time to stop thinking and do something about it. Prepare a green smoothie for energy, then start. Where? At the thing right in front of you. Hmmm. Looks like it’s the fridge, then …

Stories. We have so many stories. We live our lives telling them, repeating them, believing them.

We make up stories to help us understand something that has happened which is simply not comprehensible to us otherwise. We create stories to tell a great tale. We expound (and expand, let’s admit it) to be entertaining over the dinner table or on our blog or anywhere else we tell our tales. Sometimes our stories are so positively powerful that they can change lives. But often we create stories that limit us. These stories define us by reducing us. They also stop us from living in reality because we are wasting our precious present by rehashing the past.

We all have stories that we trot out. I’m not good at this because of something unfortunate that happened in my youth. Whenever I try this, something goes wrong. I can’t do that because my addictive personality makes it too difficult. We let these stories have dominion over us. We believe them. They gain a terrible potency that if we could look at them clearly we would never allow. Whoever among us wants to limit themselves and their abilities simply by giving up because of something that might have happened in the past?

As I grow older, I am becoming more of a fatalist. Not for what might happen in the future, but for the events of the past. So I’m a kind of backwards fatalist, I suppose. That thing happened, therefore it was meant to be. Seeing it from this standpoint takes away all the gnashing of teeth and wishing it could have been otherwise. Believing that it’s fate means that we don’t need to doubleguess what might have been, could have been, should have been. But the secret sauce is this: It happened when it happened. Not now. If I’m telling a story about it, the storytelling might be in the present but the event is firmly in the past. The story is not the thing. The thing, whatever it might be, is gone. It happened at a certain time and should not now be a part of my present.

This can be used for everything, including the kind of food we choose to eat and the kind of bodies we choose to have. What we have now may indeed be from choices we made in the past. We can’t do anything about that, but now, this moment—that’s alive. That’s something we can work with. In fact, that’s all we ever have.

Many times it would be better to let our stories go. To allow them to sleep in the past … where they belong.

2015 is International Year of Light. I’m going to have my own personal Year of Light, and considering health is a topic near and dear to my heart, you’d be forgiven for thinking that I mean that I want to lighten my bodyweight.

But this year I want to lighten a different load—the weight of the contents in my house. I think that how a house’s interior looks has a huge influence on how you feel, day in and day out. So I have happily decided this year to make my house look light and airy. Every single thing in it will have a proper home. I will concentrate on the things that are important to me now and keep them in such a way that they are easy to access and to enjoy. This is going to be an exciting time. I will be cleaning up little messes that I’ve had hiding away in corners for years. When I have finished, my possessions will be a much more accurate indication of what I treasure in my life.

That will lighten my spirits as well as the house, I’m thinking! I am expecting this experience to be one of joy and peace. Sounds a bit like a Christmas message, doesn’t it? But joy and peace should reign in a house all year round, not just at Christmas.