Mental Clutter of Taking Home Work Stress

My recent posts have talked about my goal to declutter and this got me thinking about the big bag of work related stress that I usually bring home with me at the end of the work week. This mental clutter is the accumulation of everything that has happened during the week, every decision I raised an eyebrow to, every situation I thought that someone (including me) could have handled differently and every expectation that that next week I would have to deal with the events of last week.

What do you do to leave that bag of clutter at work? Some people probably have a nice glass of wine on a Friday night. Some people probably go to the gym. Friday nights, after my web class, I usually come home and figure out my banking. I do this because Saturday is the only day I can actually go to the bank. I also do this because it helps me to visually plan how much longer I will be in my current job. I love my students. I just hate all the office politics (and those who cause the office politics would wonder now, "What is she talking about?") and the mental clutter it leaves in my brain and on my soul every Friday afternoon.

Since my blog is about frugality, it might be helpful for me to confess that my frugality goals are all centred around leaving institutional employment before I am institutionalized myself. I am frugal not because I don't like amazingly nice things (which every frugalista knows you can have anyways, even if you practice frugality), but because I worry about my ability to tolerate this mental clutter for the next 18 years. I will soon be 47. I hope to leave my job in the next year or two and to replace it with a job that provides a similar income until I am 60. Then I would like a mcJob that allows me to make a bit of cash but not get so entrenched in the world of work. The key to my happiness is to make my next job (from 49 to 60) one outside of institutional employment. That is a hard thing to achieve when you are use to making a certain amount of money. I designed this blog to help me flesh out the things I need to do to make that happen and one of the most important of those tasks is to adopt the frugalista mindset.
Write me if you have any ideas about how to reduce the mental clutter that makes it home with me every weekend.