Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight (44 page)

WEEK TWO: YOUR BEDROOM

I
've come to realize that the single most important room in any home is the master bedroom. I know that's a huge statement, and I'd invite you to take a couple of moments to ponder the significance of what I'm saying.

The master bedroom is the room that sets the emotional tone of your household. It is the central place where you build and maintain a healthy, strong relationship with your spouse or partner—which has a huge impact on your overall happiness. It's where you're most intimate and it's also where you engage in the mysterious process of sleep.

I honestly believe that the master bedroom should be treated as sacred space in a home. It should be respected, honored, and cared for in a reverent way.

The master bedroom has only
two
proper functions:

It's the space where you focus on the intimate elements of your relationship.

It's a space where you replenish your body and spirit with rest and sleep.

That's it. That's the ideal function of your bedroom. Unfortunately, my experience has taught me that many people seem determined to use this room for everything else.

The master bedroom's proper role is not to be your home theater, communications center, or child's play area. Plenty of other rooms are better suited for those purposes.

It should not serve as your home office or the hub for checking your electronic devices. Or your dining room.

Your bedroom should not resemble a workout center. Even a single treadmill with pants hanging from it doesn't belong there.

Speaking of clothes, your bedroom should not serve as a room-size clothes hamper for all your dirty clothes or as a storage area for your clean laundry that you haven't put away.

Finally, your bedroom is not the place to store weird stuff, like car parts stacked up in the corner, which I was once puzzled to see in a home.

In many homes, the master bedroom acts as a catchall for clutter and activities that flow into it from elsewhere in the home. Unfortunately, when these take root in the bedroom, they can harm your physical and emotional health.

When you take steps to set up a bedroom with only two very specific purposes, you'll make a profound change to the foundation of your well-being. The fixes you make to your bedroom this week can improve your:

Mental health and focus

Energy levels

Weight

Family relationships

But first, you'll probably have to rethink how you've been using your bedroom for your entire adult life (and possibly even in your childhood).

Permissible Use for Your Bedroom #1: A Quiet Space to Focus on Yourself and Your Partner

Your master bedroom is typically the one place in your home where you can truly be yourself without interruption. Even if you derive a lot of your identity from the gardening you do outside or the cooking you do in the kitchen or the woodworking you do in the garage, these are things you
do
, not who you
are
.

In your bedroom you share your most intimate self. You can gaze at the ceiling and ponder your place in the universe. As you sleep, you become completely vulnerable, shielded from the outside world by the safety of your bedroom walls.

In the rest of the home, you have many other roles. In your bedroom, you
can simply be yourself, both as an individual and—if you're married or partnered—as one part of the relationship at the center of your household.

In the bedroom, you completely expose yourself to this other person, both literally and metaphorically. You connect on a deep level. You retreat to this room to develop plans that affect the rest of the family, without interruption. The bedroom is the quiet, unhurried space where you do the things that feed your relationship. I strongly believe that how you treat your bedroom is a good metaphor for how you treat yourself and your relationship with your partner.

Stress is running high among married couples, and this stress creates a heavy burden in an already overstuffed life. The American Psychological Association's 2014
Stress in America
report noted that relationships (whether with a spouse, romantic partner, or kids) were a “somewhat” or “very significant” source of stress for 56 percent of respondents.

An earlier survey from the organization found that:

32 percent had argued with their spouse or partner in the previous month (a number that seems comically low to me!).

For 45 percent, stress had a negative effect on their relationship with their spouse or partner.

Close to half—43 percent—said they'd eaten too much or had eaten unhealthy foods during the previous month due to stress.

Your bedroom can be a reliable—and unbeatable—refuge for addressing concerns with your spouse before they become a source of stress, or simply for escaping life's challenges if you're the sole occupant of your bedroom.

However, judging from the bedrooms I typically see, most people aren't using this room as a quiet space for improving their emotional health or their relationships.

When I visit homes with kids under 12 or so, it's often hard to distinguish between the parents' bedroom and the kids' bedrooms. The master bedroom will have toy cars and plastic building blocks underfoot and stuffed animals on the bed. DVDs of animated movies orbit the parents' television, and neon-colored snack food wrappers peek out from under the pillows (both of which are a problem for another reason, as we'll soon see).