Looking back through the years I have to say I have received advice from so many wise people who had gone through some things that I had not experienced yet. Some of that advice I really took to heart, and some of it didn’t leave a lasting impact. It seems that the advice offered after I mentioned something that was an irritation to me, that the responses to those problems I was facing, were the most impactful.
One of those times was my mentioning that I could not keep up with the laundry and that I was surprised to find that boys can be guilty of changing their clothes for no reason multiple times within one day. I learned that I was not the only Mom who had discovered this. One lady told me that she too had the same issue until she made a change within her household.
She proceeded to tell me that she learned her boys had too many clothes. She said she decided to give many of their clothes away to a charity. She kept one pair of clothes per day for her boys. She said this resolved her laundry dilemma. My mind pondered what she said, and I realized I probably had more clothes than was necessary for my boys.
I went home and I sorted out all of the clothes excluding the church outfits. Of course, those were not of interest to the boys to wear outside of Sunday morning, therefore, those were not the issue. I could not believe how many bags of clothes I had accumulated. I had clothes received as gifts, clothes I had bought, clothes that were handed down, and the list could go on and on.
After I got rid of the clothes, I was amazed at how much less time I was spending doing loads of laundry in the washing machine every week. Not only was time regained from washing laundry, but also from other things like spending time trying to decide what was really dirty and what was only worn for an hour or two. I felt some relief in a strange sort of way.
One can imagine that I started thinking of other things that I might change that would relieve some of the time spent working in the home unnecessarily. I discovered that I had more toys than were needed or even played with within our home. Those toys would be thrown into the floor in the process of looking for the toy that was desired to play with and cause more of a mess than was needed. This made chore day agonizing for all of us.
At that point, we started a process of picking out a number of toys before birthdays and Christmas that were not ever played with or that weren’t a favorite toy. We would then take those toys to a charity to be donated. Most of the toys were still in the condition of new and barely used. This solved the problem of unwanted toys just taking up space and the problem of not depriving the grandparents the joy of giving toys to the grandkids on holidays and birthdays.
I also learned that the more one has, the more one becomes a slave to those things. That in turn, made me really think about if the purchase really was one that I truly wanted to make. That turned into saving money more efficiently.
In the process of all of these seemingly little changes, I noted something else positive happening. Less clutter was actually making me feel less overwhelmed and more peaceful. I felt more successful in caring for my home.
There have been times that I have entered a home, and I realized this was not a concept adopted by everyone, but many of us seem to fall for the misconception that, the more we have, the happier and more content we will be. That is so far off base for so many of us, but sometimes we fail to see it.
When one has less stress, and less to have to take care of, then one can spend more time with his or her family and in having more time to do hobbies or interests as opposed to cleaning. One also feels like they are doing a job well done within the walls of his or her home. That is such a blessing.
This is why I say, there is a peace that lies right under our nose. Even though only a few see this as an option, you can be one who does. Who knows, it may be a piece of advice that you put into practice, and realize like me, it was worth putting it to the test and worth passing along to others.
SeasonedMomBlog 