Clearing Out the Clutter

I finally began a job I should have started a long time ago. I'm sorting through all the junk in my living room in an effort to make it feel more livable again. The hardest part is not the cleaning but the determining what I need to keep and what to throw/donate/give away. There is just too much stuff for the available space. Even when I clean the room, it still looks messy. No more! Just like I am cleaning out the emotional/mental/spiritual baggage I carry I also need to clean out the physical baggage. The living room is just the first step. I truly need to do all the other rooms in my home as well.

Having too much stuff has many drawbacks. First of all is the guilt factor. My difficulty in throwing things away is thinking that I may need the item again someday, and I don't want to have to buy a new one. Waste! Waste! Waste! Maybe I wouldn't have this big of a problem if I more accurately judged what I really needed in this first place.

Another problem clutter brings is the inability to find things you really do need to use. I know I left that book in the stack of books by my bed, but by the time I actually find the one I want I have already wasted a lot of time. Then there are the times when my memory is very faulty and I look for something in the wrong place. This leads to looking in several other locations. Consequently, a great deal more time is wasted, and sometimes I still don't find the item I need!

Like physical clutter, emotional/mental/spiritual clutter has the ability the waste our time and energy. Finding the peace and calm we need to recenter ourselves is hard to do when the business of our lives gets in the way. We find ourselves working, doing chores, chauffeuring our children to their activities, attending meetings, surfing the web, etc. at breakneck speeds. It's amazing we aren't all suffering nervous breakdowns!

Somewhere, there needs to be a balance. I am working on trying to balance mine. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do know God has given me the time I need to sort out not only the physical clutter, but the emotional/mental/spiritual clutter as well. My purpose in life should be much more clear when I am no longer distracted by all that is unnecessary.