Thoughts on Clutter

I've kinda gotten into the "cleaning out" frame of mind lately, as I have a pile of yard sale stuff junking up the garage, that is prodding me to get organized and get it out of there. I decided (after multiple hints from my dear hubby about how TERRIBLE the garage looked), that I would work on getting it organized and cleaned out.

While most of the stuff in the garage (most) is already organized and just sitting there waiting for a semi-permanent home in storage (ya know, like the totes of winter clothes that are packed away for the summer, the totes of camping gear, and those sorts of things), there is no storage place ready for those things. We have room in the basement, but we need to level out the dirt down there and put some gravel down to keep things cleaner, plus KC has been working on building some pallets to stack stuff on to keep things from getting damaged since it is still just a very large crawlspace. So, suffice it to say, the stuff in the garage may be sitting there for awhile unless we come up with an alternate solution.

So on Thursday, I decided to go up to the attic and see what I could do up there, b/c I'm sure I could probably get enough room to store the totes of clothing and camping gear for the time being, and MAYBE even get enough space to park at least ONE car in our TWO car garage. LOL.

My main goal in the attic is to clear out stuff that is not needed and either trash it or yard sale it, and then label what's left so that it's not a foraging effort every time we need that elusive item that we stuck up there last summer.

The attic was a fairly easy thing, b/c generally speaking, if it's been up there for two years and I haven't missed it yet, it's not too difficult to toss. And it's gotten me in a mood to clear out and organize the rest of the house, too.

So as I was at the library today, this book on the New Releases shelf caught my eye. It's called Downsizing Your Home With Style. Although it's more for folks who are moving into a smaller home, it was very interesting. I should know. I sat here and read the whole thing tonight. (LOL) For one thing, it's written in a very conversational tone and for another, it's very to the point. Don't need it? Get rid of it. *grin* Needless to say, it added much fuel to my "get organized" fire.

One thing it mentioned about clearing the clutter in your home was that often times we don't classify clutter as "clutter" b/c we're just used to it being there, consequently, when we tidy up, we just tidy around it as part of our house, even though it really has no purpose, just because it's there and we're used to it. This is SO true. I could list several things in our house right this minute that could fall under this classification, and my goal is to change that.

After reading this, it occurred to me, that this could apply spiritually, as well. When I do spiritual housecleaning, do I go around a certain bad attitude toward a person or situation, just because it's always been there and I'm used to it? When I'm dusting my spiritual house, do I have to dust over that habit that has always been there and I'm used to it?

While I'm cleaning out the clutter that keeps me from feeling peaceful in my literal house, God help me not to hang on to clutter that disturbs the peaceful feeling in my spiritual house.