Simplifying Life – A Dominican Conviction
- Choose a room to organize
- Choose a place in that room and start your search from the inside out – meaning start with closets, drawers, or cupboards before open spaces.
- Ask yourself these questions:
- Is the space orderly
?
- Are there things here you can get rid of?
- Is it easy to find everything?
- Does everything have a home?
- Do you keep only things you use?
Another little tidbit of advice was from a section of the book called To Keep or NOT to Keep? Boy, that is the OVERWHELMING question I have go through my mind everytime I try to organize something. And I’m sure you do too! The question I personally ask myself is “if I were to move today, would I want to take this with me?” That usually helps. In this section though, there was some wonderful advice: Keep only the things you love, things that light you up, things that you use and enrich your life. But here are some other wonderful questions to ask yourself:
- Do I love this or do I just like it?
- Do I like it enough to keep it?
- Can I live without it?
- Will I miss it if I don’t have it?
- Will someone else love it or get more out of it than I do?
- Is the space it takes up worth it to me?
- Am I keeping it out of guilt?
I just thought these were some excellent questions. They have really helped me these past few weeks as I have gone through almost every single room of our house. Some things got pitched. Some donated. Some repurposed. Some just put in a different spot. But through all of it, I can now walk into these rooms knowing everything in there I am either using currently, have used in the past year, have a purpose for it, or is a memory that I want to hold on to.
So how about YOU? Do you have areas in your house or apartment that need a complete makeover? Spring time, to me, is a GREAT time to do all this because you can open the windows, let some fresh air in, turn the radio up a tad, and just go to town. Personally it gives me such a feeling of accomplishment after those big tasks are done. And I also know that I am confronting the conviction I had in the DR, of wanting to simplify life. Of course simplifying life doesn’t just mean simplifying “stuff.” I think it needs to happen in the heart too – but that’s a whole other blog posting :). Until then, I hope this has given you some drive to maybe go through your belongings and simplify your life one step at a time.