Surround Yourself with Loveliness

Philippians 4:8 

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

If we surround ourselves with things that are lovely, true, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy, don't you think we'd be more likely to dwell on such things? 

When you picture heaven, or even your own favorite place on earth, is it lovely? 

When I picture those places that made me feel at ease or content in the world, they are beautiful. The clear blue-green waters of my favorite quarry, the ocean view on family vacation with mountains kissing the water, and even my favorite quaint, clean coffee shop in Korea all have something in common; they are all lovely, welcoming and peaceful. 

View from a glass house in Ubatuba, Brazil. 

When we were fortunate enough to stay a couple nights in a glass house in Brazil we woke in the morning to the sun painting the sky in warm colors. We ate breakfast as the rain drizzled and saturated the forest around us. I could not help but be thankful and joyful. 

The feeling of calm and gratitude is what I want to create in my own home. 

When I see mess, or excess I just think about what needs/should be done and not about all I have to be thankful for. In my bathroom I like to have the things I use everyday readily available and thus they tend to be on the counter. This, however, was becoming a problem with my toddler getting taller and being able to reach more and more things. Everything was just pushed as far back as possible to be out of the toddler grasp and it looked awful.

It came to me that this spot was easily salvageable. Some of the things on the counter were no longer needed every day and could be put under the sink to store, some things I could put in the medicine cabinet and the rest were things I use daily.  I remembered I had a wire cabinet shelf that wasn't being used and voila- extra space and everything is still accessible. 

It's still not beautiful, but it's no longer reminding me of a chore I need to do. Instead of clutter, I can see all I have and it's all I need. 

Trouble Spots

Paul talked about people who fell away from the important things in life (namely God) and had this to say about them: 

"Their end is destruction, 

their god is their belly, 

and they glory in their shame, 

with minds set on earthly things." 

Philippians 3:19 

I don't want my mind to be set on earthly things or to think my glory comes from things.

So why is it so important for me to attack small spots of clutter and mess in my house?

Mainly, I've found that when my space is clean of clutter, or visually pleasing I feel more at ease and less distracted. When there is clutter, I always feel like I have something else to do, some project that needs attending to and it is frustrating and distracting from my time with family and peace of mind. My temptation is to BUY new things to stow stuff away or hide things. I continue to believe the lies that just this, or that will make it all better. I want to stop believing that. My challenge is to use what I have and purge my life of excess.

With that in mind I've decided to tackle one 'trouble spot' at a time.  Today it was the spot on a counter that some how ended up being a kind of junk drawer.

Here is the before:

In tackling small spots there is the temptation to just move the clutter from one trouble spot to another. I admit, I probably did that a little bit. But I took stock of what I had and dealt with as many problems as I could.

Here is my toddler 'helping' the situation. 

And this is what was in the box: 

-Teas, some of which I will never drink (sorry ginseng, but you just aren't my flavor!)

-Games

-Streamers

-Hand sanitizer wipe

-Korean box of coasters

-Coffee filters

-Money/money rolls

-Bag of candy I'll never eat

-One hot cocoa packet

and yes, that white square is a pad (to make matters weirder it's from Korea! Hello, four years ago...*insert embarrassed emoji*)

As a retiring pack-rat throwing things away is always hard and it take practice and it gets easier and even enjoyable. I'll post more on specifics another time. 

Today, I threw a few things away, placed others to give away, put things with other like items in the house and repackaged my filters and tea box to hold a bit more and take up less space. I then dealt with bills and threw away trash, then stood them vertically rather than horizontally. The majority of this clean was putting things where they should be or getting rid of them. 

This is the result:

Yay! So fresh! So clean! And it may even be sustainable...we shall see.