I don’t mind cleaning. I’m not lazy. So how is it that messiness and clutter reigns in my house?
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo helped me prune my wardrobe and kitchen items down to what I actually use and enjoy. Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston taught me about clutter zones and how to prevent clutter from building up by setting up a basket and filing system for mail and letters that I keep. These books provided good guidance and advice. But somehow, despite my best efforts, I still could not get rid of the clutter and messiness in my house.
When I began to do deep introspection through meditation, I realized something that totally shocked me. Let me tell you about some surprising mindsets I discovered that I didn’t even know I had and were the real roots of my messiness and clutter.
Sparsely decorated shelving and cabinets always caught my attention as I walked through furniture stores like Rooms to Go. I admired the open, clutter-free counters and thought to myself, “How nice it would be to live in a house that is so clear of messiness and clutter?”
But that thought did not translate to eliminating mess and clutter at home. Instead, I came home and justified every book pile that sat on my shelves and each item that stood on my kitchen counters. I always ended by deciding that “I’m just not the kind of person who could have a house like that.”
Recently, I took a look around my home and, for the first time, noticed how mismatched the furniture was. My beautiful, expensive couch and chair were sadly paired with $20 IKEA end tables. It seemed like I couldn’t allow myself to go all the way and buy nice things that match either. I remember waving the salesmen away when I bought the couch. They had suggested getting the matching coffee table and end tables for a little more money. I just couldn’t afford to make my house that nice.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I felt undeserving and guilty about buying such an expensive couch and chair. What gave me the right to own these beautiful things when so many people didn’t even have enough for groceries?
So, one way to justify having such nice things in my home was to create a mess. The mess brought down the niceness by a notch and made it more along the lines of what I felt I could accept and deserve.
I felt that I hadn’t earned the right to have better, nicer things. A bit of messiness on the kitchen counters lowered the value of my large beautiful kitchen to something that I felt was more attainable. I had worked hard enough to earn that lower level of cleanliness and organization in my home.
It’s a silly idea, but I felt that the Universe (call it fate or just life) would take away anything that I had not rightfully earned. I would lose them. As if the Universe had slapped a price tag on a nice, organized and clutter-free house. A price tag that I couldn’t afford, so I got around it by making a mess and making it appear to be worth less just so that I could keep it.
These are some of the crazy thoughts that once ran around inside my mind. They were mental blocks that prevented me from keeping my house neat and clutter free and caused many other issues that I will probably write about in other articles. Luckily, there is a way to both identify and get rid of false, limiting beliefs like these. You will be amazed to find what kind of things you hold in your mind that may be controlling your life in unexpected ways.
Take action toward the beautiful, organized home you want and deserve. Meditation helped me to round up and permanently get rid of my limiting thoughts, beliefs, and fears. Today, I no longer feel guilty for being better off or the need to deprive myself of nice things that come my way. It’s so much easier to organize my home and keep it free of clutter. And a little bit of clutter every now and then doesn’t bring down the value of my home in my mind anymore.
The lesson here is that good advice can take you a long way, but until you clear your mind of all the stories and experiences that hold you back, you might find it hard to implement any advice. I encourage you to start meditating to reflect on and clear away your own stories and experiences for more meaningful, effective action towards a clutter free home and mind!
Written by Irma Glass
