Cleaniness Might Be Next to Godliness, but Organization Would Seem to be the Path There....

I have come to a realization about myself recently thanks to a friend's personal observation.  After a Facebook post stating my latest project of organizing and clearing out with her response that she does the same thing when she needs to think, I discovered so do I!!  Thanks to her personal observation I have recognized a pattern to my cleaning schedule!  When I'm fairly content with where things are not really challenged to think or maybe I'm just plain feeling sorry for myself, my apartment shows it!!  I suppose I should be thankful God sends life changing events to turn my life upside down every so often so the place gets a good cleaning! 


This year for some reason I decided to evalute the "stuff" I was holding onto early in the year, but certainly didn't expect the mass clearing I've managed so far!  Honestly even at this point I can't figure out how or why I decided to "clear out" some of the things I've parted with, but I know that it was time to let go of it.  For anyone who knows me they will understand that books are my obsession!  Growing up books were my escape from reality.  They were a way for me to travel to exotic locations and different eras of history and live a life in my mind I only dreamed about.  One of my favorite stories to illustrate the importance of that particular possession is the fact that by the time I was 13 I had amassed a collection in the thousands that I did not want to part with upon which my Dad insisted some had to go.  Talk about traumatic!!  If I remember right I was livid and took quite a while to get over it.  That said my Dad would be very proud of me today since while I will always value my books, I have found they aren't necessary to my living and breathing. 

Of course it's not necessarily that the possessions are wrong, but I had to evaluate why I was holding onto them which resulted in the realization that in the big picture they aren't necessary to my happiness.  They take up space in my life that while I didn't recognize it right away has been replaced by other more important things such as relationships, the nieces and nephews I've "adopted", the friends who have become family.  Of course once you find you can part with the possessions you value the most everything else is a discovery in how free you can really become as you stop letting those things rule your life and let God fill it with other things a little more each day.  Now does that mean that there will never be days that the apartment looks less than it's best.  Of course not!  I fully expect that I will be able to organize and re-organize and re-re-organize many times over the coming years, but the way I look at it now is that if all of that organizing means God's making me think, well I'll just keep at it!