Brown Sista

Hey Brown Sista Fam. Hope you had a great wknd! Many readers have asked GT questions on how to handle clutter. Last week focused on the actions of starting small. This week will focus on the emotional benefits of getting it togetha.  Now GT understands that this may turn some people off; but clutter is a sign of unfulfilled living.

 Almost like living your life in a mouse trap and feeding yourself Cheeze Whiz; eventually you’ll feel sick to your stomach. So this post is dedicated to the emotional benefits of de-cluttering.

• Getting a handle on your surroundings opens you up to more possibilities for yourself.
• You’ll feel lighter and freer.
• People will want to visit you more often.
• If you have children you will teach  and model to them the vital lesson of taking personal ownership.

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Many of you sistas have written to me about solving your clutter issues. GT hears you and this week you’ll get answers. But GT wants to first start off by saying that a messy house and clutter are not one and the same. A mess can be cleaned up quickly. Clutter on the other hand is emotional baggage. Some baggage is light and some heavy heavy. But that’s for another post.

With that said here are some clutter bug tips to get you started:

1. Clear out your Cyber clutter. Clear your desktop icons. Get rid of old Word and Excel Files and empty your Recyling Bin. Organize your e-mail. 
2. Clean out a drawer or three. Your toenail clipper and an old sock should not be in the same drawer as your cutlery, post it notes and your beloved Jagged Edge CD. GT’s not talking to you of course.
3. Clean out your wallet. Shred over the limit and abused credit cards, tear up those receipts to the drugstore, and put your change in a jar or your kid’s piggy bank. Trust. This alone will unwind you.
4. Write it down. People say they write things down; cause it sounds good to say so. But truthfully many of us don’t and that’s why wer’e scatterbrains. Commit to writing things down and you’ll get a whole lot more off your mind and on where it belongs: on paper.
5. Open your mail. And if you don’t have one; buy a shredder. It’s a quality investment cause it saves you time. If you’re afraid of creditors; they will keep writing; even if you leave the country. So be proactive. Call them and set up a plan. To opt out of junk mail click here.
6. Clean out your medicine cabinet. This one is fun and easy. Old nail polish, old makeup, cheap-fix perfume, eyelash glue, hair products that didn’t quite work out…all trash. Keep only what you love.

Cyber Hugs to my Brown Sistas and Fellas.  What a week right?

If you’re anything like GT you were probably on needles and pins Tuesday night only to breathe a sigh of relief at the good news: that we now have our country’s first African-American President elect. Even saying it sounds strange. GT thought for sure that she would be drinking a bottle of clorox if Barack didn’t win; but now I’m eating Obama O’s for breakfast; just beaming with pride.

This week’s Get Togetha/Brown Sista post is dedicated to Michelle Obama; a woman who stood behind her man through thick and thin and looked great while doing it. GT absolutely hearts her. Isn’t she an inspiration? Black Love is real and we saw the result of it on November 4th.

They say behind every good man is a good woman. Do you agree or disagree? How can a woman make a man better without being his mama?

Cyber-Hugs Brown Sister Fam.

In light of the tragedy that has happened to Jennifer Hudson; we all can learn an immediate lesson from it and that lesson is that tomorrow is never promised. And trust. GT is just as sad, angered and shocked that there are people on earth that continue to be so cruel. But tomorrow is never promised is real talk. How can we give that truth more meaning and less lip service? Well for starters we can say I love you daily to our loved ones, we can share a hug, a passionate kiss, adopt a pet, write a poem, see a movie together, eat lunch with our best friends, wink at the bus driver, write in our journals, forgive someone, go for a long walk, take an even longer bubble bath, sing in the shower, cook a meal, watch “The Color Purple”, and cry.

Brown Sistas and Fellas. Name one thing we can do to give our lives more meaning?

Cyber Hugs and Happy Monday Brown Sista Fam. Hope your weekend was great!

Reading all your comments about Bee and RhiRhi lead GT to write about this week’s topic: success. Success is a quality of life issue and it means different things to different people. Everyone has their own standards of what is enough for them.  Some people’s aspirations are high, some low and some are in between.  Some people are happy with meeting societal expectations: a job, kids, a house, a car, a man. But is it ok to want more than that? Our society tells people to dream sky’s the limit; but then when people attain astronomical success some people can’t wait to knock you down a peg or two.  It’s not funny but LOL. For GT success simply means accomplishing personal goals that will help you live a life with as little regret as possible.  

Raise your hand. What is success and what does it mean to you?  

Cyber-Hugs to the Brown Sista Family. Hope you all had a fantabulous weekend.

To jumpstart your Monday GT is curious to read about what you ladies and gents think.  

Think back to when you were 15, 16, & 17. You know…those years when you thought you knew everything and nobody couldn’t tell you squat. When we were tweens and teens we all had an idea of what we would do once we became adults: make ridic amounts of money, answer to no one, look fly, have our hairlines tight, have our own place, and have the perfect career with the perfect man to boot. For GT it was a life checklist and had to be done by 25.

But its funny how our lives don’t quite turn out the way we expect them to. I for one thought that I would be a bajllionaire by now. 

So raise your hand.  What surprises you most about your adult life?