A few days ago, I wrote a post about my three major goals for 2010: (1) blog regularly, (2) practice French, and (3) learn to fly a plane. What I didn’t mention is that I’m also working on a lifestyle makeover — changing little things about the way I live and think one day at a time.

My lifestyle redesign project actually started a few months ago — and it’s something that Brandon and I are both working on together. In a nutshell, our objective is to reduce clutter, be creative, and own our time.

REDUCE CLUTTER

For us, clutter is anything that takes up space and time and money that has no value. And after doing a quick inventory, we realized we had a lot of clutter.

A couple of years ago I read an article about the “100 Thing Challenge,” an idea and activity created by Dave Bruno that helped him declutter his home and “fight American-style consumerism.” Like Dave, I never want to have the feeling that things own me. And like those shows housecleaning shows on TLC and A&E (i.e. “Hoarders”), I never want to have a messy, junk-filled home.

Obviously Brandon and I can’t limit ourselves to 100 things — but late last year we started doing our best to eliminate the “stuff” that we didn’t need and to really think about things before we buy them. (Brandon’s much better at that than me. When I see something that looks cool or unusual, I usually want it. So it’s a struggle, but I’m improving.)

To date, we’ve completed two major decluttering projects. The first was to get rid of our books.

I know that is shocking considering the two of us have graduate degrees in English, but we realized that we had too many books (a lot of duplicates, too, because we took so many of the same courses). One day we became honest with ourselves and recognized that we were never going to read those books again.

We didn’t get rid of everything, but we did take about 3/4 of our library and donate/sell the books to a local used bookstore. As a surprising result, we actually received enough money from the sale of our boxes and boxes of books to purchase a Kindle. Now we have one slim device that serves as our library (it can hold 1,500 titles), and it’s portable. Also, a lot of the classics that we had as paperbacks are free downloads from Amazon, so we were able to replace a lot of the classic lit with digital copies. And, best of all, we have regained space in our home. The book boxes and all of the shelves are gone.

Our second project was to cut our cable.

Comcast is horrible. That’s just my opinion, but I know many people like myself who have yet to experience decent customer service from Comcast. After years of poor cable TV service and billing errors, Brandon and I decided that we had enough. There was no reason to continue paying for cable television when all we would see was a black screen that told us the channel was temporarily unavailable. After four consecutive days of seeing nothing but this screen, and after numerous attempts to have our service fixed, we cut the cord. We didn’t even like TV, and all it did was suck away our time.

We’ve been without cable television for almost four months now, and we’re not missing a thing. If there’s a show we want to see (like “Saturday Night Live” or “The Office”), we can catch it on Hulu. Also, we can stream Netflix to our television — so if we’re dying to watch something, we can. If we want to see the news, it’s all online. And we don’t need Comcast cable for any of that.

BE CREATIVE

This is definitely a toughie for me. I spend nine hours of my day in corporate communications, and when I get home at night, I sometimes feel too tired to think. But now I realize that it’s important to force yourself to do one creative thing a day (or else you become a corporate zombie). And what I mean is to think or do something outside the box. Currently, I’m forcing myself to blog at least every other day — which is a nice way to get myself into a writing groove and become more confident and proud of my thoughts. (After all, it takes a lot of guts to publish your thoughts for the world to see.)

I’m also working on music again. Writing, playing, singing — and I’d love to record at least one song before the end of the year.

When I was in college I used to write music all of the time. I had a band — lovingly named “Sunday Punch” — and my bandmates were the most amazing musicians ever. They challenged me to a better musician, and playing with them made me feel on top of the world.

I’m determined to get that feeling again back in my life. In 2007 I took a songwriting course at UTK. I wrote one song, but after the class was over, I sort of left it behind. But the other day I pulled out my four-track recorder, plugged in my mic, strapped on my guitar, and just played around — and it felt great.

The four-track recorder is now out of the closet (it’s not hiding anymore), and in a couple of weeks I’m having my baby grand piano moved from my parents’ house (where it’s been while I was away in college) to my home. I can’t wait. I already have one song that I desperately want to learn: “Comptine d’un autre été” by Yann Tiersen.

OWN OUR TIME

This is by far the biggest challenge for us. We have so many commitments and projects (work, freelance, community, home) that we hardly have time for ourselves. Ultimately, we want to get that time back and use it however we want. Whether that means creating a raised bed garden in our front yard or traveling to Istanbul, we want to create time and have the freedom to use it for anything.

While my other lifestyle redesign projects are already in motion, I’m still learning more about time ownership from two lifestyle design rockstars and sources of inspiration and advice: Tim Ferriss and Chris Guillebeau.

Tim Ferriss describes me well. Time is my currency. And Chris Guillebeau understands my need for world travel. He knows that I like to spend my “money” (time) on “experiences” (travel).

I’ve read The 4-Hour Workweek once before, but I’m rereading it — and this time I plan on doing all of the activities suggested by Ferriss in the book. I’m also looking at Guillebeau’s “Manifestos,” which include: “279 Days to Overnight Success” and “A Brief Guide to World Domination.” Maybe I can make one of my 2011 resolutions world domination.

Both guys are motivating, and I love the “you can do it!” attitude. When I read their blogs, I do feel like I can achieve the same things.

Okay, so how am I going to do all of this? I don’t know. Just like Bob Wiley says in “What About Bob?” — it’s all about baby steps.