Just Keep Cleaning, Cleaning, Cleaning....

For two weeks now, we have filled our garbage and recycling (same size as garbage) bins to the brim. We took our first van-full of goods to Salvation Army yesterday. This is serious. I am in the process of deep cleaning the whole house, and I anticipate that this journey I am on will take the better part of the summer. So far, the kitchen, the main floor bathroom, the two main floor closets, and the dining room are done. I am hoping to complete the living room this week, before we leave on vacation. The goal is to consider each and every item we own and either keep it, throw/recycle it, or donate it. Along the way, I am reorganizing what I keep and scrubbing every surface of the house.

Our first load for Salvation Army

The house – well, the stuff in it – has really gotten out of control. In general terms, I am not the neatest person. I have mentioned before that paper tends to win every time I try to fight it, but the cleaning I am doing now goes deeper than that. I have held on to “things” out of habit rather than necessity, and I hope to change that tendency. Cleaning has been extremely humbling and has helped expose a few facts about me.

1.       I tend to abandon half-full purses rather than transfer contents when I get a new purse. (Ex: I found three old, half-full purses in the hall closet.)

2.       I am banned from buying any more paper/plastic cups. (We don’t use them except on special occasions or when camping, but I tend to buy more each time such an event occurs. We currently have enough of them to supplement the economy of a small country.)

3.       Same thing for small cloth bags, and these are from before the advent of Thirty-One bags. (I donated most of these, but I have to be careful not to collect more….)

4.       I am pretty sure I would never have been able to find my social security card, if I had needed it in the past few years. (Yes, it was in one of the purses I abandoned.)

5.       It’s very easy for me to let go of some things (like old purses or bags), but hard for me to get rid of any kind of picture or note. (Ex: I donated many old picture frames, but the stack of pictures in those frames is still sitting on a chair, waiting for me to sort through it. I just don’t want to do it.)

 

Non-garbage contents of one abandoned purse

My cup collection

My bag collection

Before we go any further, I need to confess my dirty little secret. For YEARS, whenever the guy from Feature Films for Families called, I said yes.

“Yes, I would like one of your movies.”

“Yes, it sounds wonderful.”

“Yes, send it right out.”  

Not so terrible, you say? Well, the thing is I never opened one of them. The movies would come, and I would toss them up on a shelf in the closet to look at later. When I cleaned, I found TWENTY-ONE DVD’s, stashed in the closet, unopened. People, I have a problem.  I find this embarrassing (and at the same time wildly hilarious), and it is also an example of terrible stewardship of our resources.

This journey has humbled me in many ways, including when there was a knock at the door right when I had all the winter coats, snow pants, hats, and gloves spread all over the entry way – on June 2. This endeavor is ongoing, and I expect to be humiliated again and again along the way. I am laying it all out there and am ready to take the consequences of my neglect of this house. The path to better stewardship of what I have is a part of my “Summer of Surrender” from my last blog. I am grateful for all the things I have, but there are so many of them that I just don’t need. They are weighing me down, and keeping me from experiencing the best that God has for me. I truly hope to do better in the future.

Speaking of the future, I have been choosing paint colors for when we are done with all the cleaning. For those of you who know me, you might know that I have been saying, “Maybe this summer I will paint,” for a number of years. We moved into our house in 2001, and it has many (extensive) cute stencils, a faux finish (probably sponge painting) in the entryway, and textured, painted stripes in the upstairs bathroom. I really did like all the “extras” when we moved in, but that type of thing begins to wear on a person after a while. I am done with it all. I want plain paint on my walls – no stencils. I hope that painting will be my reward toward the end of the summer, if I finish strong and get that massive, looming family room under control, as well as the storage-nightmare-basement. By then, I’m sure I will have many battle scars.

For now, I have an offer for all of my local readers. Here’s a picture of those twenty-one, unopened and unviewed movies I have. If you want them, or any portion of them, they are yours. I have one stipulation: you must pledge to actually watch them. 

All to Jesus I surrender;
All to Him I freely give;
I will ever love and trust Him,
In His presence daily live.

I surrender all,
I surrender all;
All to Thee, my blessed Savior,
I surrender all.

“I Surrender All” by Judson W. Van DeVenter, 1896