5 Cleanses No Gut Involved
5 Cleanses That Don't Involve Your Gut
Cleanses
are all the rage these days. Amazon.com carries over 1,000 books on the
topic and there are thousands more on the web. A good cleanse can have
numerous health benefits for the body by eliminating toxins. And just as
the body benefits from an opportunity to detoxify, see if these areas of your life could benefit from a purge:
1. Books and magazines.
Do
you have piles of magazines and books laying around your house? Perhaps
you have read them once and kept them just in case you want to read
them again?
Or maybe you subscribe to more
magazines than you actually read. So they pile up in the corner or
nightstand waiting for some magical day when you will have time to catch
up on them all. But if you're totally honest with yourself you realize
that day may never come.
Instead, they sit there collecting dust and taking up space, a reminder of one more thing you intend to get done but never do.
Try
selling the books you don't read anymore at a used book store or
online. I recently got $12 for 3 bags full of books and cleared a whole
shelf of space. Or put them in the donation bins found in grocery store
parking lots. Or try recycling them.
Consider
which magazines are important enough to make time to read and stop
subscribing to the rest. This cleanse could put some money in your
pocket and clear up some space on your night stand (and save a few
trees).
2. Tivo/DVR.
The
beauty (and danger) of DVR's is that you can record your favorite shows
without actually being in front of your TV. It's so easy to add season
passes for all the new primetimes shows every fall, but before you know
it, you have hours of television to watch everyday.
This
may not seem so bad at first, but eventually watching all that TV may
begin to feel like a chore. At some point it becomes difficult to keep
up and the DVR begins displaying messages that it is nearing capacity.
Americans average about five hours of television per day and all that
TV actually results on lower life satisfaction and happiness.
Buck
the trend by narrowing down your season passes to the fewest amount of
shows that you really want to watch. This cleanse free up time for other
things (for example: reading all those magazines or books).
3. Cabinets/Pantry/Refrigerator/Freezer.
When
was the last time you cleaned out one these spaces? I don't mean just
the things in the front; I'm talking about all the way to the back. Do
you just keep pushing back last month's groceries with this month's
groceries? Do you fear the things that might be growing in your pantry?
It's
time start over and pull out everything. Decide what is worth keeping
and what needs to be thrown away. Consider updating your storage
containers for basics like flour, sugar, tea, and coffee to keep them
organized and last longer.
This is also a
great time to replace staples with healthier options such as replacing
white rice with brown rice or quinoa. You will have better access to
what you keep and more space for what you buy in the future.
4. E-mail.
This
cleanse has two parts, one or both of which could apply to you. The
first part is dealing with all the email you don't really want. Do you
wake up every morning to a slew of new emails that you don't care about?
Do you get e-mails for stores you don't really shop at? Perhaps you
have signed up to receive various newsletters but you just don't want to
make the time to actually read them.
Instead,
everyday you spend a few minutes deleting all these emails or letting
them sit in your inbox for that magical day when you will have time
(this will also be the day when have time to read all those books and
magazines).
Begin unsubscribing from the lists
that you really don't care about or don't have time for. It may take a
few weeks or even months to whittle it down but there will come a
morning when you only have a few new emails and they will be for things
that are truly important to you.
Once you have
minimized all the new email, the second part of the cleanse is to
organize all of your old email. If you are you one of those people who
never, EVER, deletes any emails, this will be challenging.
This is the electronic equivalent of hoarding. Consider which ones can be deleted and use folders to organize the rest.
5. Facebook, Twitter, and other Social Media.
Facebook
and Twitter make it so easy to friend or follow people. Just one click
of a button and you increase the size of your social network. It's so
tempting to collect "friends" like kids collect comic books, the more
the better. Thanks to Facebook you can be friends with all of your high
school acquaintances.
Before you realize it,
you are connected to hundreds of people. But have you stopped to
consider how many of these people you speak with on a regular basis or
if you even care about what they are up to (or their new high score on
Zynga Bingo)?
Is your newsfeed so full that
you have trouble picking out the stuff from the people are actually
close to (or want to be)? Unfriending or unfollowing those you are
honestly not interested in connecting with. If this feels too harsh, on
Facebook you can change settings so their updates won't show up in your
news feed.
If you find these cleanses
challenging consider what you get out of clinging to the things or
people which no longer serve you as you intended. How does holding on to
these things serve you (i.e. security, familiarity, popularity) and
what are they costing you (i.e. time, relationships, health, space)?
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