This weekend I celebrated our country's freedom by cleaning. Not just any cleaning, but determinedly ridding my home of four of its largest clutter Hot Spots/eyesores. I sit here tonight tired and sore, but totally happy and thankfully reminded once again how good it is to trust and follow the LORD.
You see, I didn't start out to do something so big. I started out kind of small. Saturday morning I really felt like I needed to clean out an overstuffed bookcase in my bedroom - not too big of a deal, it would give me something to do for the day and it would be a blessing to my husband. What could be better? Well, the LORD totally knew what would be even better -- but he didn't let me in on it because, you know, sometimes if I know how much is ahead of me I probably wouldn't even start, right? Oh, sorry, I'm sure you aren't that way. at. all.
La-De-Da, humming along and cleaning the bookcase/paper-magnet, sorting everything into happy piles to be thrown away or put away in its proper place, plus a box for storage and a box for sale/giveaways. It's all emptied and the thought hits me (or the Holy Spirit whispers to me) "Why don't I just get rid of this altogether, get it out of the bedroom, and then it won't be a clutter trap and our room will be cleaner and roomier!" Hey! what a great idea. Hmmmm, wait a minute. I have this box of stuff that was going to go back on the shelves - and these piles here and there. What about them? "Well, all of that would be solved if you just went and got the nice bookcases that you've been wanting for a while and put them in the living room."
Now, I have to say right here that shamefully I am a terrible housekeeper. And I mean Terrible. I see that vision of order and beauty in my head but am never able to make it a reality for longer than three days. Just ask my husband, or my children, or my mother. But I've had a vision, an ideal, for the way I would like our home to be, and it has been getting clearer as the months pass. Things are starting to "gel", if you will. But that's not what I started out to say. I wanted to say how shameful it is that if the bookcase is out in the living room instead of our bedroom, it is less likely to attract every single spare piece of paper or stray book or unopened 'gotta save this for later' mail that comes into our home. Why is that? Because I care more about what strangers/visitors think and see than I care about creating a space of peace, order and beauty for my husband and I. And my heart screams out THAT'S WRONG!! My priority should be to make sure that my bedroom/bathroom is a place of rest and retreat instead of a battlezone of open boxes and disheveled papers and stacked binders and rummaged discs and dirty socks and wet towels and splattered mirrors and chaos. I'm ever-so-slowly learning these lessons, and hopefully passing them on to my daughter so that she will not struggle with them as I do.
Okay, so, it looks like everything will be solved by getting a set of bookcases for the living room. Except I have to let you in on another secret. The only place for the bookcases to go is near our entry where my grandmother's beautiful Singer Hemstitching machine currently resides but no one can ever see the machine because it is so cluttered and piled with STUFF! Well, after working all day on that bookcase (in the bedroom) I took a break and took the rest of the night off. Luckily, my husband is a fairly patient man - as long as he knows the process is still happening - and so I was able to leave my piles where they were for the time being.
Sunday morning dawns, it's a gorgeous day even if we had to turn on the air conditioning before noon, and the piles are still there staring at me. In for a penny, in for a pound! I've started and I'm going to finish! We all load up in the car and begin our search for The Perfect Bookcases. At our first stop we have no luck finding a bookcase but there's a great couch for a great price. Put that on my mental list for later. It also seems that (sleeping late + being preoccupied with piles of stuff) x (totally skipping breakfast + almost 1 p.m.) = a family that is near to starving, i.e. Lunch Break! After lunch we try another store, and by that time husband is worn out and ready to go home. So I drop him off with the two younger ones and DS2 and I continue the search. Our next stop has a very promising possibility but I don't want to buy the first thing that catches my eye. Knowing that I have a few more options, storewise, we head back to the car and down the street. Oh, an abundance of options!! We measure, we call home, they measure, we discuss, we call again for another measurement, a little more discussion and the deal is made. Hooray! Four separate bookcases perfectly fitted together to fill and make the best use of the available space (all securely anchored to the wall) and with a flash of the checkbook and a scroll of the pen we are out the door and on our way home. (Don't tell, but we decided to reward ourselves with a trip to Wendy's. DS2 got a Frosty and I got a cold Coke. Obviously,we took the long way home.)
Now the fun begins. I set the boys to work putting the first of the bookcases together while I take a deep breath and face the sewing machine/dust bunny refuge. I'll spare you all the gorey details and fast forward to after dinner when all of the bookcases are together and in place and anchored. The children are in the process of getting showers and even though I said I wasn't going to put any books on it until morning, sitting there and staring at all those empty shelves was more than I could stand. So, I start by moving the encyclopedias from the Hoosier. Then a set of Handyman books from the boys room. Next are the books from my keep pile; from another bookshelf in my room; from the children's bookshelf in the hallway; cookbooks from the top of the refrigerator; more books from the children's room; our school reading books; reading story books; hymnals; curriculum I want to keep but am not currently using. It was then nearing 11:00 p.m. and the bookcases were nearing full - which each of the children had to come and see for themselves. They could not believe that I had already almost filled up "all those shelves!" They also all told me how beautiful the bookcases are, how clean it is and how nice with all the books together. 
Honestly, the house is still a major mess. But you know what? With just a little bit of cleaning and straightening up tomorrow I will have rid my home of a cluttered bedroom bookcase, a hallway bookcase/catchall, an entryway eyesore, and cleaned off the top of my refrigerator (another Hot Spot!)
As I said at the beginning, I'm tired and sore and a bit dusty, but so SO thankful that I followed the Holy Spirit's leading. I'm looking forward to waking up tomorrow and getting busy on the rest of the house!
Congratulations! I'm impressed! And I love it how sometimes just making a small step to get started leads to great achievements.
Posted by: Mozi Esme's Mommy | July 07, 2008 at 05:55 AM