Pay Offs

It's been exactly a week since my last post. Last Friday at this time I was excited about the trailer of boxes coming so that I could finally begin packing.

Not long after I posted, a friend called to offer her help for the afternoon. I accepted with one condition: You may not try and talk me into keeping something I'm trying to throw out! Well, I needn't have worried about that...

We plunged headlong into the task of purging clothes, beginning with mine. We discovered that I had more black shirts than anyone should be allowed to have. And my friend was quick to encourage me to "toss it", and even pointed that one shirt I was a bit iffy about was "kinda ugly". I love my honest friends!

By the end of the next day, I'd put my hands on every single item of clothes we owned, including those that were in bins. Two big loads went to consignment that very weekend, the rest were packed onto the trailer, and the few left over are hung neatly in what now look like barren closets. To me, they look like heaven, so uncluttered and minimal.

The rest of the week has been productive, but in a more stop-and-start kind of way. The purging aspect of packing requires that I personally look at every item. This is far more time consuming than throwing it all in boxes. I would've been done by now if I could do that! And of course the everyday stuff of life with four kids makes it impossible to just power through (which is what I so long to do!).

Today, a week later, the clothes are completely done. The bedrooms are pretty much ready to go. Every book in the house is packed, and that's saying a lot! Today I will finish packing the homeschool closet and will hopefully make it to all the "miscellaneous" cabinets and drawers. I do not look forward to these! Whether they actually get sorted through or swiftly dumped in a big black trash bag will depend on how late in the day I get to them. In other words, how tired I am!

Right now, as I type, my floors are COVERED in boxes. Some are empty, just lying around waiting to be filled. Others are half full. The rest are all taped up and ready to go. ALL of them are in my way! The weekend's goal is to move everything possible into the trailer outside.

Moving on to the actual topic of this post, one thing I've realized is that the years of being a chronic declutterer are paying off! As crazy as things are in here right now, I can't imagine what this job would be like if I didn't purge on a regular basis. I would encourage anyone who doesn't declutter regularly to start doing so. It really simplifies the day to day, and then when something like this comes along, it pays huge dividends.

In all the chaos around me, I've recognized another, even bigger, pay off: the ability to keep going. My mom came by yesterday and said, "I can't believe your house actually looks like this. And I can't believe you're not just beside yourself over it." I laughed and told her I was screaming on the inside. But then I thought about it, and realized that actually, I'm not.

Yes, I get a little huffy toward the end of the day, or when I just don't know what to do with a particular item, or when I can't walk across a room without tripping. But for the most part, it's just about moving from one thing to the next, not allowing myself to think about how much I DON'T want to be doing this (because I don't, in case you wondered).

In the earliest years of tiny babies, beginning homeschooling, and learning to be an un-shrew-like wife, a dear friend shared with me a quote from Elisabeth Elliot that became my mantra: "Do the next thing". For years these words have been a constant reminder to just keep going, an exercise that is paying for itself now.

I've realized that the years in which I struggled to focus, to just do what's next, to just keep going when I want to do nothing more than go back to bed, that I was actually training my mind! What a blessing it is, when things then come along that could easily overwhelm, to just be able to do the next thing, because you've been training to do so!

I did want to share with you these pay offs I'm seeing from seemingly mundane tasks performed over days and months and years. I also wanted an excuse to sit at my computer and drink coffee and for just a while, ignore the task in front of me (actually all around me). But I've rambled enough and my coffee is cold, so I guess I'll be forced to get to work now.

Time for me to "Do the next thing".

Hope you all have a great weekend. If you get the chance, reflect on some of the ways you've trained yourself over the years to do certain things, and the pay offs you've reaped. I'd love to hear about them!

Blessings,
Em