People don’t often ask me why I call my business Curating Interiors, because it seems safe to assume it’s my way of saying “interior decoration.” It’s actually a play on words; a double entendre. The concept does include mindfully selecting the objects and furnishings we 
place in our physical environments. But it also involves examining the beliefs we hold that influence our behaviors. Much of the time, our beliefs and behaviors are tied up in the memories or stories attached to our belongings. But before I get ahead of myself, let me give you the backstory. It starts 20 years ago with a bewildering prescription.
In 1996, a corporate transfer to Chicago had me working out of my home for a large company. My boss believed sharing was caring, and he did so by forwarding every voice mail, every email, every fax! I was the newest and youngest member of his group and this volume of information was too much to handle. It felt like I was being bombarded with words, but my marching orders were still hazy.
After a few months on the job, I was stressed to the point of paralysis. It didn’t feel like I would snap out of my funk alone, so I called a doctor.
In all honesty, I expected to walk out of the doctor’s office with a prescription for Prozac. Instead, the doctor looked me straight in the eye and told me to go home and clean out my closet. He wasn’t kidding.
At this point, I was overwhelmed and furious.
When times get tough, we often go in search of solutions outside ourselves. I admit that I was looking to this psychiatrist to alleviate my pain—probably with a pill of some kind. Looking back, I am so grateful this particular doctor stayed aligned with a truth I now respect deeply. He was not there to fix me. He was there to assist me in realizing that I wasn’t broken
None of us is broken. But most of us are burdened by our belongings and the stories attached to them. Often, we even take on the stuff and stories of others. We feel scattered and overwhelmed, so we lose productivity and perspective. It’s like we’re stuck under something heavy. If we could just shift out from under, we’d escape, breathe, and start moving toward our desires.
Eventually, I took the advice. I cleaned out my closet and insights and inspiration trickled in. Life started to flow again.
Today, I would call the process I went through Consciously Curating. I hit the pause button and took a careful look around. My closet became a metaphor for my life. It was overcrowded with things that didn’t make me feel good. I desperately wanted to feel good.
In the simplest terms, I shopped through all my stuff, tangible and otherwise. I selected what I loved and sorted the rest into piles. You know the drill. And, by the way, I temporarily tuned out the incessant voice mails and emails that were drowning out my own inner voice.
It’s remarkable how much goodness we bury beneath the detritus of daily life. It’s also fascinating to experience the creation of so much more goodness simply by making room for it. Reclaim some space, and that space acts like a vacuum for something new. I’ve been stuck plenty of times since 1996, but now I know that I can help myself conquer inertia one space, even one shelf at a time.
