Cleanliness is next to godliness

Yesterday started out as a day that I needed to get to some long over due tidying in my bedroom that keeps getting put off while I always prioritize more visible areas of the house. My daughters had ripped a curtain rod out of the wall in their bedroom that I recently patched up and painted over, but alas, the spot I had left the hardware had been disrupted and left me looking a long time until deciding I wasn't going to find it in a timely manner. I decided to go out and buy a new bracket for hanging the curtain (this is tied to getting my room clean because the curtain rod was laying across things in my room and needed to be put back up as part of the clean-up process). In this process of getting new brackets, I came across some other storage solutions that were on sale and would hopefully make some other problem spots in the home function better. This involved setting up some shelves with poor instructions when I returned home and realizing that one of them was rickety and needed some reinforcement before it died, so back top the hardware store I went to get some supplies to improve on this unit which was otherwise quite a good fit for our space and hopefully a really good purchase.

Anyway, by the end of the day I'd managed to get some tidying in my room done with a bunch more done throughout other areas of the house. I don't know how much time I've spent in my married life trying to make storage solutions because I can't convince my family to get rid of excess stuff that makes our life worse. Anyhow, the process got me thinking about how improving storage solutions to a certain extent is important in increasing capacity to withstand the "stuff" that comes with living, but there is also a point where no amount of storage efficiencies will overcome the need to remove clutter from our spaces (or our lives). I was thinking about how the Nephites under Moroni's direction increased capacity by building better defenses (like better storage solutions), but eventually cracks showed up and the Lamanites in the greatness of their numbers started taking cities. Obviously, it's not a perfect comparison, but it got me thinking about trying to purge the non-essential out of my life to make more time and space for the things that truly matter.

I am finding that by making sure I put in my small and simple habits of getting scripture study and exercise in every day that I'm forcing other things out to a certain extent without thinking about it. I suppose this makes sense with time as it's always filled with something, so it's not as much a matter of cleaning it up as it is simply filling it in with what matters.

I would encourage you to think on how you can clean up your space and time to allow less influence from the world into your life and more focus on faith and family. Let me know what you find is working, or simply share some challenges that you could use help with.

Be Strong!