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Thursday, January 7, 2010

I've spent the last several days decluttering and deep cleaning around the house. It's so therapeutic. I don't enjoy cleaning or organizing (especially the organizing.....yuck!) but it's so rewarding to see the results and I love the peace it gives me to enter a 'really' clean room.

Theres a cruel cycle I live in. Before each semester, I clean and scrub and declutter and organize so I can reduce the chaos in our home. It looks lovely and feels great. As the semester proceeds and my assignments stack up, my 'free time' disappears, and my stress levels raise, I cease to care about the organization in our home. I enter the coping method of focusing only on school work and family needs, and the house cleaning is the only variable without a deadline or emotional status. As a result, at the end of the semester my house looks horrid. The clutter zones have been growing slowly over the past few months and finally they come alive and mock me each time I enter the room. My goal this winter break was to deep clean and organize the worst spots in the house.

The worst room was my own bedroom, merely because this is where everything goes that doesn't have a 'place' anywhere else in the house. If it's too important to throw away, but I can't figure out where to keep it, then it joins the pile on my dresser (aka: the Black hole). I cleaned for hours on my room, and I'm so pleased with how it looks. I didn't take a before and after picture because I didn't want the atrocity documented forever.

I've worked on several other areas of the house as well and I love the way my home is feeling. Have you ever noticed that the Spirit is almost always stronger in an orderly home? I love it.

Invariably it will gradually return to the previous state of entropy, but I'm happy to soak up all the good vibes now. At least in the few select rooms that have been worked on. I keep trying to forget the "toy room-food storage-electronics workshop-art studio" room. It's simply too much to tackle this week. I'm happy to curl up with a great book and enjoy the vacation....like they say, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. I agree.

1 comment:

Kathryn said...

I am totally with you on that. Although, I am sure my home is not as clean as yours and I am not going to school! But it feels so wonderful and relieving to have a "really clean" home or room. I would say it is almost refreshing.