October 18, 2019
Category: Home, Regenerative Permaculture
I have always had a fascination with both self-sufficiency (like homesteading) and minimalism. I have been part of many minimalism groups on facebook and have read many books/articles about it. I think it all became even clearer to me recently.
I have been reading a great book called Free to Focus by Michael Hyatt. It is about “how to win at work and win at life”. I may write a book review on it at some point but one of the large themes is that balance in life is important and will even help you be more successful at work. You have to have “margin” in your life to make room for the important things – business, family, friends, health, faith, etc.
So recently it all just kind of “clicked” for me. I started watching a show called The Art of Tidying with Marie Kondo. I have never been a very tidy person. I’ve always kept too much stuff and I may be one of the worst housekeepers. My personality is more creative and with that comes a comfortableness with mess and clutter. My mom is a professional organizer (yes…I’m an embarrassment hehe). She has always been telling me that a clutter-free space makes a clutter-free brain. When I do clean the house thoroughly, I have felt that but it still didn’t motivate me to clean the house often!
For some reason all of the things I have learned in the last few years really started making a change in my mind after I started watching that show and read that book. I have been putting more effort into keeping my house clean, decluttering and organizing.
One of my main motivations that stemmed from this “new church” venture is that I want my house to be presentable (and not totally embarrassing) all of the time. Not perfect but not embarrassing. I want the “margin” to be able to people over without planning it. I want people to be able to just swing by without me wanting to bury my head in shame.
BUT all of this leads to minimizing the junk in our house. The more “stuff” we have the more time it takes to clean, organize and put away. I don’t think I can maintain a clean house (especially since I am cleaning-deficient) without really reducing the amount of stuff we have. We have been seeing how the minimalistic lifestyle isn’t really common and may be a tough thing for our daughter. That’s a blog for another day.
Here’s to going down the road of de-cluttering and having (permanent) a clean house! Yikes!