“Let all things be done decently and in order.”
I Corinthians 14:40 NKJV
My house feels like a lot right now.
Every room is messy. Every surface has clutter. Every room has visual chaos. I’m overstimulated by the volume of stuff in my house. Add in the volume of my children’s voices and I am ready to run away to seek solace.
But nowhere feels calm enough to do so.
My room is a sunny reprieve on a good day. I have sunshiny windows, light-colored curtains, and some of my favorite flower paintings on the walls.
But it’s a bit too real right now. There are books on the floor and every table. Laundry in and out of baskets. Baby equipment I’ve been meaning to sell. Backpacks, kids toys, outgrown clothes, hand-me-downs to send, pictures that fell off the wall, and all the bits and bobs that I have become clutter-blind to but suddenly can’t stand.
At least my bed is made.
I’m trying to make one sane space today. Because I know the power of finishing something and that it catches on for the rest of the house.
Last week, I helped a friend get one sane space in her house. Six days later, she told me her whole house is close to being finished. That one sane space was a motivator to finish the next space, and the next space, and the next until she and her husband had sorted through their whole house.
The power of one sane space is that you get to see, feel, and breathe in the calm of having everything in its place with nothing extra. It feels finished, complete, whole. And our brains are so happy when that that happens.
Am I hoping to hack this into getting my whole house to a clutterless beauty? Yes. But also, no. For now, I am just needing one sane space. The rest of the house can wait for another day.