Life has a tendency to get full, and when that happens, we all need the same thing – more time. But how do you get more time? We can’t buy it, we can’t make it…and this is where my favorite analogy comes to the rescue.

Time is a lot easier to understand if we compare it to an organized – or disorganized pantry. A disorganized pantry, for example, has too much food. Some of it is old, some of it is expired, and there are usually a lot of duplicates, such as multiple jars of open peanut butter. And in a disorganized pantry, there aren’t a lot of clearly defined zones. Things tend to be haphazard, and we stash things inside wherever we can find a spot. This makes it difficult to find what we need, put it back, or put groceries away after shopping.

On the other hand, an organized pantry makes using the pantry easy. It contains only the food we really want to eat and divides into sections that are easy to find (the snack shelf, the breakfast shelf, etc.) This means that when we come home from the grocery store, it’s easy to put things away, and when it’s time to cook dinner, we can easily find the ingredients we are looking for.

This is a great way to look at our time. If we could look at our week as a 7-shelf pantry, where each day has its own shelf, we might notice that our days are too full of old, expired, tasks that we don’t enjoy. Or that we don’t have any zones where certain tasks belong – we just kind of stash them wherever there is open space in the day or the calendar. Or, we may notice that we have eliminated a lot of calendar clutter, and we have enough space for what we need to do. We have zones for different commitments or to do’s, so when we have a task to do we know right where it will fit into our day or our week. Which means when we have new commitments arise, we know right where we can fit them into our lives.

Well, everyone’s life tends to get too full, and there are times when we have to declutter them. In this episode I share about some of the things that have suddenly showed up on my pantry shelves (planning a wedding for my daughter, remodeling the basement, replacing our cars, and all the other regular life commitments.) These big Costco-sized items that need to fit on my pantry shelves in my life means that I have to let go of other things that are taking up the space, or my time. And so I am announcing that for the next 4 months, the thing I will be clearing off my pantry shelf is regular weekly podcasting. Though I love podcasting and it’s hard to let go of it, I am sharing this personal example to help support you through the process of making space for big, new commitments.

For the next 4 months, podcast episodes will come sporadically, as I can fit them into my life. And I am encouraging you to look for ways that you can also “clear the shelf’ of your own life to make room for things that are a priority, such as spending more time with family, taking care of your health, or organizing your home. We must get the time from somewhere, which means letting go of some current commitment – even if it is hard.

Until the holidays are over, please keep watch for new episodes. And if there aren’t any, re-listen to the old ones! New things will stand out and you it will feel like a brand new episode.