Cleaning House

I have been on a de-cluttering streak lately. My husband, I'm sure, will scream if I ask him if I can throw one more thing away. Although the house is still in a mess, things are starting to find a place and I can finally breath. How is it that we go through life with so much stuff that we don't even know what we own? I was blessed to be raised in a home with a mother who kept absolutely nothing that wasn't needed. She never had the "we may need that someday" mentality that fills boxes of junk in a home. Junk stresses me out. If I don't even know where something is, or where to find it, how am I ever going to use it? Cleaning out my house this week has not been at all sad or difficult; it has been freeing.

There is a lot of freedom in living with less. Less toys (as mentioned in my last post), less "sentimental" things that really will mean nothing to anyone in a few years, and less stuff that we never even knew we had. In the past weeks I was spending most, if not all of my time, cleaning, only to find the house a disaster 5 minutes later. The stress of not having a place to put things was about to put me over the edge. Now, it's true that we live in a very tiny 1200 square foot home, but hey, that's what we are given right now. My new outlook is if we can't fit in the house we live in, then we have too much. For the first time in a long time I feel a weight lifted from my shoulder. There will be no more dread when opening a closet and seeing mass amounts of disorganization and clutter. From now on we will know what we own and where to find it. I have reserved two small storage boxes for my husband and I to keep sentimental things we want to hold on to. If the box is too full to place another item in, it's time to get rid of something else in the box. It's time we start setting boundaries on ourselves in the way we live and the stuff we own. I want to use and enjoy the things I own, not be consumed by it. Most importantly, I want to teach my children that stuff is just that: stuff. I want them to make their attachments to the things of eternity, not the objects in our everyday lives.