Getting rid of clutter makes you more patient

I'm writing about patience in the first chapter of my new book about parenting. Here's a little bit on how to get more of it.

This picture doesn't really go with the post, but I thought it was amusing. Here at our house we get burned meat flavour pretty often, but not in biscuit form.It's a fact that my brain can only really hold three or four things it at one time. If I'm cooking dinner while at the same time making cupcakes for a child's birthday the next day as well as checking Facebook  (yes, it's true – I often burn things for this reason) I will snap at my husband when he comes in and wants my opinion about which car he should take to tennis later that night.

The more things in my brain and the more interruptions I get, the more impatient I am.

When you have children you can guarantee that there will be about 50 million more distractions in your day than before you had them. And when you have more children the interruptions grow exponentially! Your brain will be busy. So you need to get rid of unimportant stuff in your life.

Prioritise. Declutter. Whatever. Just make more space in your life to process the important things. You might find this means you go through your house and physically remove objects which are taking up space or energy or emotion. Or you might need to de-clutter some emotional stuff from your past.

There are many things which take space in our brain but which are really not important. Making space grows patience.