When I was a new mom (which seems like just yesterday, but my “baby” is 15 and has a learner’s permit – insert mom in denial emoji here), I felt like the lesson in “letting go” was a bit of a baptism by fire.
Prior to G coming along, I liked to run a tight ship. I cleaned on a regular schedule, everything had it’s place, and was always in it, and I decluttered all the time. I also got into Feng Shui in my early 20’s and was all about it (still am, though, truth be told…).
BUT, once G was born, there was no way I could keep up with a newborn, working full-time, laundry, errands, and keeping my house spotless. And, to my own surprise, I didn’t care. It was probably the only thing that could have happened to me that helped me chill out and finally let something go for the first time in my life.
I remember thinking that I loved this little girl so much, that I really didn’t care about having to get up in the middle of the night several times, that the laundry piled up in mountains, and that the dust collected on the glass. I wholeheartedly embraced the overwhelm because the disruption, becoming the mommy to this sweet baby, was (still is) the greatest thing I’d ever experienced.
The Zen of Decluttering
I feel like we can approach decluttering and organizing our homes the same way. The whole point of decluttering isn’t so that your home ends up looking like Restoration Hardware. It’s so that you can reclaim your spaces and start living in them, rather than just moving through them.
Your home should be a sanctuary, somewhere you can retreat, you can entertain, you can love on your people. I know it might not feel like that right now; maybe it doesn’t even feel remotely like that. That’s okay.
Rather than resisting the clutter, and making excuses for it, and cursing it, and being frustrated at it, and covering yourself in shame because of it, what about embracing what is?
What about saying, yep, this is what’s up right now. This is where I’m at right now. I accept that this is the state of things.
Once you embrace things as they are, you can move forward.
I know I say it a lot, but it’s because it’s TRUE: We’re aiming for better, not perfection.