Choosing a Little Less

Clutter seems to multiply.  At least, in our home, it does.  Does it in yours as well?

When 2012 began, I had a plan.  It was a once a month plan.  Once a month we would purge and organize one room or area.  With an entire year to complete the whole house available, this plan seemed great from the beginning, 

until I started. 

Organizing items really wasn't too complicated.  We already had a plan in place which worked somewhat well.  Items were already grouped into categories and located in the appropriate place for the most part.  These systems just need a little tweaking to make them fully functional. 

However, the problem was really that we had too much stuff. If you visited our house, then you may or may not agree with that statement. For us, too much stuff means having items we really did not need or were not adding any value to our lives. Decreasing the amount of stuff in our home was our challenge. There are the sentimental items, the family memories, the 'maybe we'll need/use this soon' stash, etc. {Perhaps you can relate?}

Before we could begin, we needed an attitude adjustment, a change of heart. And, the Lord did just that for us. He showed us the blessing of less stuff, less clutter, less things. Don't get me wrong. It was difficult at first getting rid of what we thought was 'important' {turns out we really didn't need as much as we thought we did}. However, as we kept purging, it became easier and easier to part with our stuff. It was, after all, less things to clean, maintain, and replace, but it was more than just that. We began to feel a sense of freedom and release.

What we didn't realize was all this stuff we were holding onto was really holding us down, keeping us from enjoying life to the fullest.

Years ago, we had done something similar with our food.  We chose to eat better, less processed foods, foods with ingredients we could pronounce, organic foods, and more raw vegetables and fruits.  There were incredible health and energy benefits from these changes.  Yet, it is not always maintained, and sometimes, we don't follow through.  Through our food choices, we have learned we have to keep making the proper food choices to keep reaping these benefits.  It is a lesson we will carry over to our newly purged home. 

We have to keep making the choice for less. 

Otherwise the items in our house will increase and become the distractions and weights they were.

~ Dorie