Five days ago I could not see my floor.
I have a clutter problem. I can't seem to escape it. The stuff is EVERYWHERE. And it keeps coming. An endless flood of things that I don't have the capacity to deal with in the moment, so they just get put somewhere "for now."
I mean, why does the mail have to come every day???
Actually, I like getting mail. But my kids seem to have an innate gift for producing stuff. I mean, they could go into business and be millionaires in weeks. Where did they get this talent? (Don't answer that.) I mean, if my kids made a book out of every single piece of paper that they drew or colored or wrote on, I am not lying when I say that we could fill a bookshelf in a week. Not even lying. So how can they be so good at creating stuff, yet simultaneously PROfessionals at thwarting well-intentioned attempts at decluttering?
Mommy [opening mail]
Child who just put his drink in the fridge 20 min ago: "Mommy, where is my driiiiiiink???"
Mommy [sets down mail and gets drink out of fridge]: "Here you go, buddy."
...3 days later...
"What is this pile of bills sitting on top of the washing machine?"
Or another scenario:
Daddy [with much enthusiasm]: "Okay kiddos, we've got way too much stuff in our downstairs, so we're going to get rid of some of these toys today!!"
[waits for cheering and applause]
[children groan and make sounds of dying animals]
Children then proceed to counter every fatherly attempt at rediscovering the color of the carpet with proclamations of their deep personal and spiritual connection with each.and.every.toy. The 8-year-old is even willing to write a dissertation on why the toy horses are essential to healthy emotional development. No wonder my husband walks around the house with a trash bag in the middle of the night.
Oh, those kids. If only they weren't so clutterful.
Ahem.
[crickets chirping]
[polite cough]
Okay, okay. I killed Professor Plum with the wrench in the library.
It's not my kids. (Although they do create a lot of stuff.) I am the one with the problem.
Hi, my name is Beth, and I have a serious clutter problem.
And when I say serious, I actually mean serious. I know we all feel like our houses aren't clean enough or organized enough or whatever. But we were literally having trouble walking around and finding floor space in much of the house for daily activities. So long story short...The house had gotten pretty bad. So we planned for the hubby (who seriously has a gift for throwing things away...I just don't let him most of the time) to take a week off from work just to watch kids so I could try to clean and organize and get the house back to some semblance of normal. The problem is...we have to schedule weeks like this multiple times a year.
Confession is good for the soul.
But this time, I "just happened" to listen to a podcast with Joshua Becker on his book The More of Less in the days prior to my scheduled week of righting the house. And accompanied by nudges from the Holy Spirit, Joshua revealed to me the hidden truth of the countless HOURS I spend cleaning and organizing stuff instead of actively pursuing time with the people I most love and the activities about which I am most passionate.
That one kind of feels like a punch in the gut.
So, this week, instead of simply finding homes for all the clutter, I made it my goal to get as much of the stuff out of the house as I could. And I was excited about it. This was going to be a good thing.
And it was. The first day.
I plowed through that first day in our living room area and filled bags and bins full of stuff to throw away, give away and sell. We were rolling. The second day, I got bogged down at the bookshelf (I have a problem with books), but we picked up steam a bit as I dealt with the mountains of boy clothes that needed to be stored for younger brothers and mounds of stuff that just never made it up into the attic.
But on day three, I met my two-fold match. The first was the bags upon bags of too-small girl clothes that I kept saving, never knowing if I would have another baby girl one day. Now, having four little bodies to cloth (but only that first one a girl), the bags could very well be bags of gold. I look at them and see the dollars I could make if I consign them. You know, put each individual item on a hangar and come up with a reasonable price and write it and all the other info on a tag and figure out how to attach said tag to the garment in the best possible and most secure fashion. Over and over and over again. Oh, and did I mention that I have a clutter problem? Yes, that applies to having waaaaay too many clothes for every.single.child too. Which only translates to having waaaaay too many clothes to wash and store and then, full circle, consign. Whatever was I supposed to do with all these clothes? Every now and then I would just stand there, hands on hips, glaring at these bags, having a mental showdown in my mind. Which one of us will draw first blood?
The other insurmountable obstacle to my clutter-free mission was the piles of schoolwork from my daughter's first two years of school. I knew we were going for keeping as little as possible, so I painstakingly went through each piece of paper filled with her first letters and numbers and sentences and stories and decided to *gasp* throw away as much of it as I could. I spent hours trying to decide what was worth saving.
Eventually, I had what I thought was a reasonable pile. My husband knows I need reminders that my family still knows I exist during weeks like this, so he had come up to check on me, and I proudly showed him my small pile. But then he asked the simplest and most difficult of questions:"What are you going to do with that?"
Thus began a short conversation about the amount of space we have (or don't have) for small piles of stuff, and he shared his new plans for displaying the cards and mementos he receives in meaningful places for a season before completely letting them go. Enjoy them, and then make space for what comes next.
I never would have expected that the hardest things to get rid of would be made of paper.
But to me, these papers were all I had left of the little girl I lost when she started to grow up. Her drawings and stories and random writings all seemed to share the same themes of mommy and daddy being the center of her universe and a love for her brothers that seemed to eclipse every other friendship. There were two memories that kept popping up in her stories and drawings: playing at a playground in the rain and a camping trip she and I took together. I was so afraid that in letting go of these drawings and remembered stories, I would one day forget that they even happened. That there was a day when I was with my kids, playing together, and that by God's grace, I took the unexpected rain shower that threatened to steal our precious moment of together, and repurposed it into one of her favorite memories of adventure, joy and connectedness. That there was a day when she and I adventured off together, setting up a tent by ourselves and hanging out with our college students, intentionally choosing to not let the restrictions of life with little brothers keep us from the fullness of life together and in community. That there has been a season where all she truly wants is to be with us, telling stories together or sitting next to us on the couch while she reads or helping in the kitchen or coming along on an errand simply because it is time alone with us. I kept thinking that one day, when she is a teenager, I might need a reminder that these days ever even existed, the ones in which she actually talked to us. Or that the day I have to come home from dropping her off at college, and the house just seems so much quieter and emptier, I might need something to hold on to that she actually touched with her own hands. Or that on the night before her wedding, I might desperately long to look back and remember every single day that her heart belonged to me.
But when the Lord asks for something, we must obey. Always. And as I looked at the small pile of papers, knowing that I must let them go, and read through them each one more time, heart aching and beginning to grieve, I heard the smallest of whispers from the most gentle and patient Father. He whispered to the broken and bleeding places in my soul...
"There will be more."
There will be more. Thank you, Jesus, that there will be more. I can let go of the mountains of too-small clothes, and instead of giving countless hours to the zip ties and pricing tags and dollar bills of consigning, I can trust the Lord to provide in His abundance. I can soften my heart to His teachings of simplicity and self-denial and generosity. I can receive His gifts of contentment, Kingdom-treasure, and time with the ones I so desperately love.
I can even let go of the paper reminders of yesterday so that, instead of having to spend the time cleaning and organizing and storing them, I can repurpose that time in making more memories with my girl, while I still have the chance.
