Living the Simple Life
I love a clean home….I feel like to some degree it speaks of my character; in fact, just two nights ago as I rummaged through my daughter’s messy car I was explaining that disorganization reflects a chaotic life—and we DON’T want to give others an impression of that. There are days where dishes are left in the sink; there is clean, unfolded laundry piled throughout the house, but if you drop by unexpectedly, you can guess that I feel a personal shame about myself when things are “undone”.
Embracing the fact that I know these truths about myself, over the years I’ve learned some things that have allowed for less stress, and fewer opportunities where I’m found running top-speed through the house shoving messes in closets at the ring of the doorbell.
It wasn’t enough for me, though, to have the house always clean….after I managed to conquer that, for the most part, the visions of stuffed drawers and closets began to creep in and I determined that I needed to deal with it once and for all. My plan started with one room—dedicating myself to a stress-free zone with nothing on the agenda other than “me time”, crank the music to an 80’s mix of hair bands and get to work. I resolved that each room would require a semi-empty closet, and to accomplish that, I would go item through item and PURGE what wasn’t absolutely necessary. For those things that were considered “memories”, they’d go in a container marked appropriately, so long that it was ONE container per room. Sure enough, a few weeks later, I felt a calm come over me like never before—there was nothing to clean—other than you typical house chores—meaning, no drawers containing stuff to “deal with”, no embarrassment when I had a guest stay over who might need a closet, and no lost items that “I could swear I put somewhere…”
Moral of the story—I like nice things, but I don’t want to be so surrounded by things that end up CREATING stress at the end of a day, when I want to walk in my home and feel a CALM. It doesn’t take a superhuman effort to live simply, minimally…it just takes a day at a time….and the allowance to not keep everything, and most importantly….a good jam on the radio to keep it real.
Share the post "Living the Simple Life"
