Getting my house in order is about so much more then just cleaning.
When I was first married with children, if I felt like it was out of sink, then I would spring-clean the whole house. It was a cleansing for me as well as the house, and for that matter for everyone that was in the house. When I finished I would feel centred, re balanced, like my life was back in order. This didn't mean that the house had to be spotless and everything in it's place. It was about how I would feel on the inside. I would feel very settled, able to see things more clearly.
The clarity would sift through to all parts of my life. Nothing was a struggle.

This was something that I did very regularly, it was like my personal Springclean on the inside. My friends started to call me Miss Springclean, and they would want me to come to their homes and do the same.

I have always felt that my cupboards reflected more about how I was living,  even thought they were closed and no one else saw inside them. It was how I cared for the things in my cupboard that was important.  How I cleaned, looked after and put away all the things that went into the cupboards, the joy I got when I cleaned my cupboards or when I  would go to put our clothes away and feeling the love and order that was there for everyone.

​If you have read any of my blogs you would already know how much I love cleaning and clearing spaces.  I say how I make love to my saucepans because I lovingly clean them, I love to use Gumpton and give them a really good scrub after they have been used. I love to look into the bottom of the saucepan and get a shinning reflection back.
 
Cleaning is about so much more then cleaning. It is a reflection of how you live in every way.
 
The other night I was hanging my whites on an inside line before I went to bed. I love to hang everything I can on coat-hangers and then hang the rest in a loving order.
 
The next morning as I was walking to the office I was stopped in my tracks. I stood there looking at the clothes hanging on the line. It felt like slow motion.
I looked at the detail that I had hung the clothes on the line, the loving way that I had faced them in a particular way, like they were all looking in the same direction. The socks were also all walking in the same direction.
 
What I felt as I stood looking at the clothes on the line was the love that I had hung them in, the playfulness, the joy that doing this little job before bed gave me and then to get up the next morning and feel the quality as I walked past, all the love, joy and playfulness that I had hung them in the previous night. It felt divine.
 

 Yesterday morning as I was getting dressed for work I went to get a pair of briefs out to put on, as I was about to put them on I felt how they were not the  pair of briefs that I had previously chosen, as I went to get them out of the draw I grabbed another pair. There was nothing wrong with them but I felt how they weren't the ones that I wanted to wear today. I put them back in the cupboard and got out a pair that I love to wear.

As I continued to get dressed I got out a bra that I liked, a shirt that I love to wear  and a pair of slacks that I fell amazing in. They are so comfortable and I feel so sexy in them. I was off to do a cleaning job.

In the afternoon after I had finished the cleaning and I was back at work I felt what a beautiful day it had been. As I pondered on my day I felt how stopping and making that tiny choice in the morning had made such a difference to my day. 

It was then that I felt how if I love myself enough to only choose to wear things that I love, that then spreads through-out my day, if I love what I do then that also adds to my day and if I continue by loving what I wear and eating the food that my body loves to eat that supports it, then my day is filling up with a grandness,  this feeling of absolute joy that i'm driving home with a smile on my face and feeling so gorgeous inside that I want to give myself a hug.

I recently cleaned out the whole garage, I washed all the walls, we shifted the fridge and cleaned out the cupboard in the garage. It felt amazing after we finished. For the next few weeks I would sweep the floor each time leaves accumulated on the  floor making a mess. I love to sweep instead of blowing it out, there is something that is beautiful for me when I sweep. I love the ordered way that I start from one side and work my way across and then come back and then start again.                                                                  

Since cleaning out the garage I have noticed that I have been more aware of my car and the vacuuming of it. I had been vacuuming the car each time I saw that the floor needed to be cleaned, but last week I cleaned the car and it didn't even need to be cleaned. It felt amazing. This was the first time I had ever considered cleaning it when it didn't need to be cleaned. It was a real marker. 

I have also been cleaning the leather seats as well and wiping  the surroundings with "Armorall". Last week I also gave it a polish, it was called lazy man polish. It is great as it doesn't leave a white polish that can be hard to get off the corners if it goes over the edge, I also  cleaned all the windows inside and out. 

Boy is the car looking amazing. Its probably 10 years old and even though it is starting to look a bit worn, it  still feels amazing and is loving all the attention.

The reason that I'm saying all this is that I can feel how my lovingly cleaning out the garage has just continued to spread and deepen, each week there has been more attention to detail.  When we love what we are doing, then the love has a way off seeping into everything. It keeps expanding and growing. 

I used to keep my car clean and Chris would always wash my car for me, But I feel that me taking responsibility for washing my car as well has had a huge impact on keeping it clean. The whole experience has had a profound impact on what I am seeing and feeling. It is like I have thrown a rock into a lake, the circles go around and around spreading out and touching the next circle. Evolving as they go as I am also. 

I am feeling how this has had an impact on my life that is far greater then I am consciously aware off. Showing me the depth and the quality of how the little things can impact on everything in my life,  building a consistency that I am feeling does not have me in the equation. It feels like the choice is coming from something inside off me, the way I live, that is now guiding and supporting me.

Can't wait to see what the following few weeks will bring. I'm really enjoying this unfolding. So is my car.

​Update.
For a few weeks the car and the shed have been on my list but I hadn't gotten to them.The other day Chris washed the cars, did the wheels, and all the extra bits  and I spent nearly all day detailing them both. Then when I was finished I cleaned out the shed that had gotten a bit untidy. It now feels like the cars and the shed also have a holding in them, this supports me to bring them back to a beautiful space were everything is holding everything else. Every part of our home is being supported by the love and attention to detail. Building consistency, and a commitment to caring lovingly for all that we have. We can then take this love to work with us to build on a foundation in the world. 

This morning after I said good bye to Chris I felt to give my car a vacuum. We recently bought a hand held vacuum that we keep in the garage to make it easy to give the cars a clean instead of brining the big one out of the house. I felt this would support us to keep on top of cleaning the cars.
Usually we clean them when we see that they are needing some TLC. But this morning I felt to give my car a vacuum and it didn't even need it. It felt so lovely like the car had put its-self into my rhythm list without me even knowing. 

Rhythms are something that I like to use to keep me in a natural flow. I look at it like painting the opera house, its always in the link and then not forgotten.  

It feels so different when something just naturally pops up to be cleaned, there is no pushing,  it then comes with a joyful feeling that pushing to get it done just doesn't bring. Pushing makes it hard and usually something that we don't want to do.

​Choosing to make life so much more simple, flowing and most of all joyful.

I have always had a love of Order, since I was a little girl and I read Wind in the Willows where Mole was white washing and Spring-cleaning his little home I have loved cleaning, reorganising and getting rid of clutter.
 
Over the years that I have been supporting women and men to eliminate clutter from their homes, my awareness and understanding has grown in that there is so much more at play here then we could possibly have ever imagined.
 
Have you ever considered that the way you keep your home could be nurturing yourself?  It is the bed you lie in so to speak.

I feel that my home is giving me a reading on the way I live in every way. It is telling me far more about me then I had ever considered. It goes far deeper then what you can see with your eyes. 

Our homes are constantly reflecting to us the way in which we live, far beyond just doing our housework and keeping the house tidy and clean. What if something as simple as putting gloves on to do the washing up then affected every movement that you made with your hands. It was like you took that love and care into everything that you touched, the way that you washed your face, the way that you put your cups away or the way you put clothes onto the clothes line. The list goes on and on.
 
How amazing would that be that something as simple as putting gloves on to wash up could change your whole life? It’s interesting that when we go looking for the things that can make a difference to our lives we look for the big things. Like loosing weight, but what if it is the tiny little things that make the most profound impact on our choices. Who would have considered that learning to love yourself could support you to loose weight. Its the simple things in life.
 
One of the things that I have always wondered about was that I felt  my cupboards reflected far more about me then what my house looked like. I like my house to be neat and tidy but it is my cupboards that I have always felt showed me far more about me then my tidy house. It is not having things inside me in a mess, like a messy cupboard. 
 
My cupboards have always been a marker, years ago if my life felt like it was out of sorts in some way then I would Spring-clean my home from one end to the other. Cleaning and clearing as I went. After this I would feel a sense of balance back in my life, it felt like a breath of fresh air now ran through my home. There would be a feeling of clarity as I walked through the house after I had finished, I loved this feeling.
 
I feel that my home is like my reference book on how I’m living my life. Something that is always there for me, supporting me, I just need to remember to STOP and read it. 

1. Building consistency is my Top Tip. Committing to doing things on a regular basis is building a routine that will support you each day in your kitchen as well as the rest of your home. I like to run the sink with hot water as I’m about to start cooking, it keeps the kitchen in order as I’m working and that way I don’t finish with a pile of dirty dishes.
 
Building consistency is something that needs to be in every part of our lives.
You then get to see so clearly when something is amiss, if something is not right. These are little signposts for us to stop and have a look at what is going on.
 
2. When I put things away every thing has a place and everything goes in its place. That way I know were things are, and everyone else knows where things go as well. It puts an order in the cupboards and it is easy to see when you are running out of something so that you can pop it on your grocery list as you go along.
 
3. Cleaning out the fridge is something that I like to do before I go shopping, it's a way to see what is left in the fridge and what is needed when I get the groceries. That way I’m already organised when I get home and things can go straight into the fridge.
 
4. My husband and I do the washing up together each night, we unpack the dishwasher together, the kitchen is our responsibility not just mine. Before we go to bed I like to check that everything is off the bench and put away, the kitchen is tidy and ready for the next morning and feeling beautiful.
 
5. I like to wipe things as I’m putting them away, they might be the sauce bottles or other containers, that way you don’t have sticky things in your cupboards or fridge. It makes me more aware of the kitchen surfaces, the cupboard doors, the drawers, fridge doors and the pantry shelves. All these little things that help keep a clean and tidy kitchen and by regularly doing them the kitchen stays organised and sparkling.
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Yesterday I had a little giggle as I was walking around the house as I remembered that in the past I would always have a room that was messy. It was like a collection of all the things that I didn't know what to do with, they would all end up in the one room and then I would shut the door. What I felt was that I had to keep something incomplete, like I was holding myself back, staying in a pattern.

I feel that I have come a long way since then. Things are always and will always be unfolding for me. Now when I look around the house I can see how we are building a commitment and a consistently in our daily lives.

Now if I see something that I want to make part of my daily routine, something that makes my life simpler, I committee to myself that I am going to do this regularly, make it part of my daily routine.  

 I have found that if I don’t make that choice to commit, it will just drop of my radar.
 
The other day my husband came into the house and said to me why don’t I use the orange mop each day to mop up the small things that appear on the floor.
This brought me to a stop, this was something that had fallen off my radar.  I had completely forgotten that it was something that I used to do. I would vacuum once a week and then use the mop each day to keep the floors clean. It was simple, it only took 5 minutes to do the whole house and it makes such a difference.

I find that I can think that something would make my life much simpler but if I don’t let it fit in or give it a place somewhere in my daily routine, then it will not become something that I will do. It gets forgotten. 

When I build consistency and commitment into my life they feel like anchors, they support me to keep our home sorted. As I build these little anchors, they constantly bring me back to me, a moment to stop and look around and appreciate the things in my life that I am holding. As I walk around the house all these little rituals that I am making part of my daily/ weekly routine support me in a way that is far beyond just keeping the house tidy and making my life simpler. I get a feeling of Joyfullness each time I stop and appreciate.
                           
These choices are deeply nurturing choices that support me to build a life that holds consistency and commitment in more parts of my life. Building an appreciation for the choices that I’m making.
 
 
 

 
 

 

We recently shifted to our new home and I have been unpacking and setting up the house. When I have previously shifted, there has always been this rush to get it done. Wanting things to be in order right from the start. But this time was different.
The moment that I would start to rush or feel I’ll keep something for now  and deal with it later, I would feel that something was wrong. At first I didn't know what was going on, there would not be a place for everything and I could feel how I was trying to fit things in when they were not fitting in. It is so interesting to observe how by keeping things that I already knew had to go, I had stopped the natural flow of setting up my pantry. It is like everything that was to go into the cupboard already had its place and by keeping things that needed to go I was disrupting and complicating this natural process.

I knew I had to go back and re-do the cupboard. The first thing that I did was to remove the items that I knew I would not, and had not used up until that moment. It was like once they were gone something shifted. Everything started to fit and the flow returned, making it easy to organise the cupboard. Everything had its place and the pantry felt amazing. 

I know this may sound a bit strange to some people, but what if this is what we do all through life. The moment that we make that choice to over-ride something that we feel to do, we could be choosing to completely complicate our lives. Imaging doing this 10 times a day and the impact that it is having on our lives and we don't even notice it.

I know that by choosing to keep 3 things in my pantry that needed to go, I no  longer kept my pantry tidy, I didn't put things back where they went, I wasn't wiping things as I returned them to the cupboard. It was like what came naturally to me had somehow been removed from my memory and I didn't notice, it was only that I kept feeling that something was wrong every time I went to the pantry.

This was such an eye opener seeing the significance of every little choice that I make and how it impacts on my life. 

By stopping and feeling how my choice to keep a few things in my pantry was having an affect, not just on the pantry but it was then impacting on the rest of the house and all my unpacking.  It is then easy to see how this flow on effect can affect everything. 

It's all the little things we choose to do through-out our day that make a difference, they add up to our whole day, that add up to our whole week, to our whole year, to our whole lives and how these choices can complicate without us even noticing that we have been thrown off course.

WHAT IF ?  
​The next time you feel to let something go but decide to keep it, stop and observe how it impacts YOUR LIFE. How things can feel out of place.
At the time what was wrong with the pantry felt as little as feeling a hair across my eyes but it was in my face until I made the choice to go back and clear what needed to go.