Clutter

It's a problem.  Back in February, my husband surprised me with a garage re-do that he started while I was out of town on business.  It was amazing, and spontaneous, and needed, and appreciated...and not finished.  The guy who is doing it for us does it on the side because he enjoys doing it in his spare time.  Lately his spare time has been hard to come by and so my garage has continued to reside in my living room.  Which makes me b-line upstairs, where there is more clutter because I'm so overwhelmed, so I just withdraw into myself and knit and play with Roman until it’s time for bed (yeah, and we do eat at some point).

This is a small snap shot of my pantry and assorted items in my living room...I TOTALLY felt like a hoarder!  It was a terrible and dirty feeling, but I felt like I couldn't do anything about it, so I kept pushing through. 

Here is a picture of the garage in process...we have over head storage, a closed in pantry, an enclosed hot water heater, a place for the freeze, and a work bench with extra storage coming...but the process IS KILLING ME.

I've been working on some storage in my home, but what was becoming more and more apparent was that there was TOO MUCH CLUTTER.  We had too many possessions because we weren't letting go of things.  Just in case you don't know me well, let me tell you something, I LURVE to be prepared...did ya read about my couponing?  I love to have the answer, the perfect container for something, the ingredients for a recipe without going to the store; I want to have what someone needs before they know that need it.  Yeah, I also wish I was clairvoyant; it would help.

Well, I've been doing a lot of emotional, mental, and spiritual house cleaning too.  Over the past two years, I've been battling depression.  I lost a baby in June of 2009. . .it seems like eons ago and yet just a couple of months all in the same breath.  Since then, life has really tackled me, pinned me down, given me a nuggie and then dragged me to the bathroom for a swirly.  It's been hard.  A full time stressful job, a baby turning into a FULL TIME toddler, a husband, a husband in school, a husband who's a police officer with odd hours (all the same man mind you), grieving my loss, and still living.  There are SO many women in my same position.  To cope, I poured myself into my family, eating, and shopping, all of which soothed my broken soul. 

I accumulated a lot of stuff.  In my house and in my heart.  My sewing room was claustrophobic.  I had so much fabric that I had bought for my business or for this craft or that, that I couldn't sew it up in a million years...I was so paralyzed when I went in there that I just didn't sew at all.  My living room, I covered.  Roman's room, had so many toys that he couldn't find what he wanted to play with and I would end up having to find it for him.  We recently transitioned him to a queen size bed and it additionally cut into his space.  My bedroom had basket after basket of clean clothes for Jasen to put up (that's his job :), that lived in baskets because we had so many clothes, many of which we didn't even wear, there wasn't room for the ones we DID wear to go.  My guest room closet had decorations for holidays, boxes and boxes of memories ready to be scrapbooked, pillows, some ugly clothes, and all sorts of randomness. . .and on top of EVERYTHING was an unhealthy layer of dust, great for people with allergies, ya know. 

Because I haven't purged what we didn't use, it was just piling up on top of us, and I felt like it was smothering me.  I felt ashamed and guilty because I am a working mother and don't have time to be the housewife I want to be and additionally guilty and ashamed because in the few hours that I did have to be a housewife, I would rather just run away because my task was insurmountable.  I can't even describe the feelings that would course through me.

Here is the thing, the old me, about 3-4 years ago, though I still had a lot of stuff, I would just get fed up with it, go through it, chunk it, organize it, clean it like a maniac, and then it would be better and I would keep living.  The present me, it just further made me sad, feel bad, guilty, depressed, and because I didn't want to give into these feelings I just ignored them and the clutter and poured myself into my family.  All the while not only ignoring the mess, I ignored myself as well.  Well, I finally got fed up enough that I started throwing away some things but got overwhelmed so quickly.  God heard the cry of my heart that I couldn't even put to words.  An amazing friend that He placed in my life gave me a call.  She said that she and her mother had a proposition, and all I had to do was accept and agree to participate.  I had NO idea what she was talking about so I said, spill it. . .they wanted to come to my house and help me de-clutter and organize so I could get my life functioning again.  I could only be silent in disbelief as I cried.  It was exactly what my heart and soul were crying out for, and I couldn't even ask for the help I needed.  But God heard my need and he sent me the aid I needed.  She said that she and her mom just wanted to be a blessing to me.  How humbling.  How amazing.  I couldn't believe that they wanted to do this for ME.  The funny thing is that I would do this in a HEART BEAT for her or any one of my other friends, but the fact that someone wants to do this for ME was almost incomprehensible.  Isn't that how Grace works?

SUPER SUPER long story just a bit shorter, they came, ready to work.  I was nervous and excited all at once.  I totally felt that I was about to live a recent episode of Hoarders I'd seen where a woman had to go "scream it out" in her car.  But it was AMAZING.  Giving those things up that had been a comfort when I bought them wasn't hard, in fact it was exhilarating and freeing.  My sewing room has become a beautiful haven, my closet actually has clothes in it THAT I WEAR!  Roman's room is a little boy's room, and he can find his toys.  I can actually look at craft blogs and not feel smothered by other's creativity that I can't execute...I can actually get inspired and then GO CREATE. 

It was an amazing gift that my friend and her mother gave.  It lightened my house, it lightened my soul, and mind.  It brought to light some baggage that I've been carrying around that I need to rid myself of as well.  It's so hard to not be self-flagellating during this process.  Holding on to things is what I was taught.  My mom still has fabric from when I was a kid; my dad has SHEDS full of things, just in case. . .I come by it honestly, love you both. . .I can't punish myself for not doing things I didn't know about or wasn't taught.  I HATE learning things at 29 that I wish I'd known at 7, but that's life.  Life is one huge lesson.  I'm trying to learn through this, that it doesn't matter WHEN you learn the lessons just that you DO learn them.  And one of the biggest that this experience has taught me, I need to embrace God's Grace for me, give myself that grace, then let go and give my stuff to Goodwill and give my burdens to God.  The last part rings kind of hollow for me as I type it. . .because I realize that I'm still holding on to a lot, but day by day, I'm trying to let it go.