Cleaning My Room

For weeks I have been shoving piles of stuff into my spacious bedroom, promising myself that I would sort and organize on the weekend. Somehow the weekends come and go and I barely manage to squeeze the household chores and running errands around the PrayerSong rehearsals and concerts, the seminary readings, the prep work for going places.

Just when I think I will catch a break and have some time to organize, I end up traveling to Arizona or Kiel comes in on the train or there is a commencement happening. My plan for this holiday weekend was to figure out some way to get Kiel's stuff home from ENC. Since the good Lord provided a way for that to happen without involving my time, my next agenda item was to finish my usual seminary reading and paper and begin the final, a 20 page review and reflection paper due at the end of June.

But somehow when Saturday morning dawned, I just couldn't take the clutter and confusion any longer. Realizing I had one extra day of not having to work in the library, I gave myself permission to address the mess. I started in the closet and weeded out clothes that were too small, too stained, too ugly, too wintry and stacked them in piles.

Now the room looked worse than ever! It was discouraging. But after I got the excess clothing taken care of, everything else zipped along well, and I was beginning to feel lean and trim again until I hit the paperwork. Good grief, I could have drowned in all the stacks of letters, ads, documents, articles, and shot records. I pulled fully five bags of expired paperwork from the floor, the dresser, the files, the minitramp, the boxes. The sheer magnitude was daunting.

Afterwards, I felt like a new woman. I knew exactly where everything was, and I even packed three boxes for the move. It took the better part of the day, and I knew I would pay for it somewhere along the line, but it was wonderful not to have all that stuff interfering with my ability to function!

In the new place, my room will no longer be the catch all for everything not kids. No more Christmas decorations, camping gear, power outage supplies, seasonal gear or white elephants in my room! What I can't pawn off on someone else will go downstairs in the storage closet. Simple is definitely better.