Over Christmas break, you might have noticed on my facebook page that I did a bunch of purging/cleaning/organizing around our house. Truth be told, some of these areas hadn't been touched since we moved in 6 years ago. Here I sit, less than 10 hours before school starts again and all I can think about is how many more rooms/cupboards/closets/drawers could use some of my good TLC, or rather "rough lovin'" because I'll tell you what: I threw out and donated SO MUCH STUFF!!!
And now I can't remember why I even started talking about that.
Which is often the case in my life.
I'm hoping my memory gets BETTER as I get older...
Ha! Yeah, we'll see about that!
Ah, yes.
Sanity.
I was going to talk about sanity.
This whole purging/cleaning/organizing thing is not something I enjoy doing. It requires time and a bunch of determination to tackle some hefty messes. I like the end result and currently I needed the end result: organized sanity.
When I'm overwhelmed, I find that I typically go to my kitchen and clean it up. I can whip that room into shape in no time. The rest of the house might be a Lego/slime/dirty sock warzone, but I can handle it all if I have just a bit of sanity in one place in the house. It's usually the kitchen. Probably because I spend 75% of my waking moments in there. So that means I have restored sanity to nearly 75% of my (awake) life!
You could say that over the last 6 months or so, life got a little overwhelming. My mom had numerous health issues in conjunction with a cancer diagnosis and that'll interrupt life a bit. But she's my momma so life had to be interrupted. But that meant that many things around here kicked into survival mode, especially the cleaning aspect of life. Things piled up, got shoved in closets, were hidden in rooms that weren't used very much, and eventually the messes contaminated nearly every room in the house. Some of them we just got used to, but as the house got less organized, my sanity began to disappear as well.
After Christmas Day, I wrote a list of all the places in the house that I could think of that needed to be put back in order, otherwise I would avoid those spots for the next 6 months...or more. And eventually I wouldn't want to be in my house anymore. And then I jumped in, starting with the pantry. Actually, that's a lie. I started with a drawer in our kitchen that we had given over to our daughter for her slime creations. That was a terrible mistake and she now has an area out in the garage dedicated to her stupid slime mess... I mean creative slime mess. I took back ownership of the slime drawer and currently store our essential oils in there. Organizing that drawer made me walk around the kitchen like a proud chicken. I don't know why. It's just a little drawer! But it felt good and THEN I moved on to the pantry. My pantry is like a dream right now. I still like to walk in there and just look around, admiring the organized beauty of it all...
Please don't be mistaken: I'm not one of those amazing Pinterest ladies who likes to clean and keep her house looking magnificent (if you think that's the case, just check out our bathroom!) I'm one of those moms who found herself hating her house because it had become such a place of unrest. I knew that in order to take better care of everyone else around me, I needed to do some cleaning up for myself.
And this is how I know that God has granted me a bit my of sanity back: I'm on my couch, writing my blog. I have tried numerous times and found my brain clogged and jumbled and a mess, just like my house. And this evening, even though there are still places in this house that need some work (just like me!), things are functioning so much sweeter around here.
I'm not telling y'all to clean your house. But I think it's okay to do something for yourself to get your sanity back. The world is a better place when our brains can function again.
But check back with me in a week.
We start home school again tomorrow and then WHO KNOWS where my sanity will be!!
KC
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