cleaning and gardening are not my favorite chores. Oh there are all sorts of “a faith life well lived” analogies in cleaning and gardening. There are tons of quotes that reflect how the they are interlinked. This kind of thought gives me the heebiegeebies. Seriously. it’s like that standardized testing in grade school. Some people really do not test well.
Over the last week or so cleaning house has been essential. We have a bit of a life change happening, a good one, necessitating a major clean. Part of the process has been letting go of things I tend to hold onto thinking, “hey I’ll need this for….” or “oh this is a good place to have this until I really need to deal with it.”
Like boxes, a lot of boxes went into recycle. What a great amount of space this freed up. Space that I didn’t realize that I needed/missed/wanted. If I need to ship something there are plenty of places to get boxes. And paper, I collect more paper than I thought. My apologies to my sweetie for thinking it was all you. Pieces of paper that I might need for the magazine. The solution, as I’m seeing it, is dealing with them sooner rather than later. Once I’ve dealt with it I can put it in recycle. Pieces of paper that catch my eye and may be inspiring. Why yes they are inspiring, but sitting in that stack of paper over there does me no good. At. All.
While I don’t have a lot of them I chose to let go of the judges comments from the competition quilts. When I get them I scan through for comments for whatever is necessary and go on my merry way. At some point when I have more time I’ll let go of the student comments from shows as well. While both of these hold valuable information I can get that shortly after the show, keep notes in my computer of things that are important and let the paper go.
Magazines, there are a lot of these. I like magazines. I work for a magazine. Magazines are awesome. I don’t need to keep every single one of them for all time. About 7 years ago I did a major magazine purge, giving them to a local guild as freebies for the show. The only one I wish I’d kept was the first issue of American Patchwork and Quilting. But other than that I read what features I like then they go to the shelf and sit there. It’s rare that I make quilts from the magazines only because my personal quilting has taken a different bent and I’m inspired by rather than following a specific pattern.
I’ve discovered that I like to see my things, out in the open. So storage that hides it makes me nutty. I am discovering though that they need to be orderly. Because the out in the openness as it stands is driving me nutty. There is a difference between what I need to see and what I don’t. And I’m slowly figuring that out. It takes living in a space for a while, fiddling with it, tweaking it to really know how to live in that space. Things that don’t belong there creep in taking up residence and now need to move on.
While the impetus for all of this is the current life change I’m really finding this process amazingly good and freeing. Often in my faith life I’ll be going along and everything is just fine however I’ll be missing a lot of really amazing things. I get bogged down by Because I’m just going along. Not really paying attention to the beauty around me. To the things that are really important. This not paying attention to my faith life, not working it, not practicing it allows things to creep in to my life that don’t belong there. There comes a moment to take a look around, see what belongs and what doesn’t then work on moving it on and out. The gift of this is the things that are important stay and are strengthened through the gift of the Holy Spirit and God’s Love and Mercy. These things are strong and holy and beautiful and build up.
Philippians 4:8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
God bless!
Teri
A Quilter's Heart 