My house is a mess right now. Over the weekend, I took down my Fall things and put up my Christmas decorations. I don’t have a ton but I have enough to make the house feel festive and warm. And while I made some progress in cleaning and organizing, in doing so, I uncovered more areas that need to be cleaned and organized.
Have you ever run into that problem? You clean up one space only to find two more that need cleaning, or you purge your closet of old clothes only to realize that you also need to sift through all the old things in the downstairs closet as well.
I’ve also found that when I start clearing out drawers or decluttering countertops, I often just move everything I haven’t found a home for to a different surface. All the junk on my desk in the study? It goes to the dining room table so I can look through it later and determine where it should go. The extra cords and old nail polish and Q-tips? They go in a small bin that goes into a new drawer, which I intend to organize at a later time.
It is hard to get rid of things. I might need them later. I don’t want to be wasteful.
But I think the only way to keep my spaces organized and light is to ensure that every item I own is specifically necessary or desired, and that each of those items has a place, a home.
As one of the biggest shopping weekends of the year rolls to a close, perhaps it is good to ask yourself if all the items in your home have a place and if they bring you joy, to steal a thought from Marie Kondo. Having more things just to have things won’t bring joy, and will actually create more stress because it is just more we have to keep clean and organized.
Our homes are a reflection of ourselves. What does yours say about you? What does mine say about me? Mine tells me that I still need to do a lot of work, but that is okay. There can be joy even in the process of growth.
