A-Drawer-A-Day
9 PRACTICAL SPIRITUAL LEARNINGS FROM CLEANING A-DRAWER-A-DAY
By Susan Vogt
Sabbath living may start on Sundays but is not only for Sundays. Technically a Sabbath is a day of rest and worship devoted to God. BUT, shouldn’t God be a part of our everyday life? And shouldn’t every day be holy? In this spirit, for years I’ve been trying to make room for what’s important by clearing my home and life of clutter, i.e. “Spring Cleaning” all year round. Despite annual, seasonal, daily, and Lenten purges, it can still feel never ending. So, I decided to simplify simplifying.
One Lent I decided to start with just a Drawer-A-Day. I used the system that many organizers recommend: empty the drawer, separate the contents into piles of Keep, Give Away, Throw Away, and Wait. I added Move.
9 things I learned that might be useful to you.
1. Differentiate Between Give Aways and Throw Aways
Early in the process my husband saw my Give Aways and challenged me to re-evaluate whether old stockings – even if they had no runs – were really worthy of being given away. This is a personal decision but I tend to err on the side of not wanting to throw usable stuff away.
2. The Virtue of WAIT
Normally procrastination is the enemy of decluttering – or so I tell one of our kids who is known for his mantra, “I have not yet begun to procrastinate.” BUT, when it is a step to moving an item to a safe storage place, at least it’s progress.
3. Respect Other People’s Stuff – But Not Forever.
Our four children are all sprung and living in their own places. When going through their former rooms I found things that certainly they no longer wanted. I checked. I was wrong. I negotiated. I lost. They have a deadline.
4. Don’t Get Distracted – Unless You Want To
The point of this experience was to break the decluttering process down into small enough time blocks that it would overcome inertia. Several times I got into drawers or cabinets that just yearned for further work – a shelf needed repair, or I was on a roll and wanted to do more.
5. Some Stuff Has a Shelf Life
This is obvious but since I hadn’t gone through our bathroom medical shelves in many years, it was embarrassing how outdated some of the medications were.
6. Time Is Worth More Than Being Perfect.
As a responsible human being I want to repair items before I give them away, find the perfect recipient for a treasured item rather than just give it to a thrift store, and to recycle responsibly. Yea! But sometimes the time it takes to do something perfectly can be the enemy of the good. It stops me from doing anything. I had to loosen up.
7. Don’t Be A Slave to Rules
I had my self-made rules at the beginning of my 40 days but as I went along I learned that I needed to change what I counted as a drawer. Eventually, I extended the 40 days beyond Lent because it served the bigger purpose.
8. Ponder How Much is Enough
As I was going through our kitchen and dining room I started thinking, “Hey, we should have more dinner parties!” We have enough plates, glasses, silverware, and cloth napkins to host a couple dozen people; yet on a daily basis there are only two of us. I can justify some of our extra dinnerware to feed company, but it was quite sobering and humbling to realize we had so much stuff we weren’t using often.
9. Cleaning Out Stuff Hidden in Drawers was a Metaphor for Cleaning Out My Soul
A casual visitor to our home would probably not see any difference between my before and after A-Drawer-A-Day project. Drawers hide things. I went into this process with the hope that I would also make room in my heart to be less judgmental and love more unconditionally. I started opening up conversations with people I had been avoiding. I learned a lot about the troubles they carry. I decided to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation which I hadn’t done for awhile. These internal but invisible changes were very freeing and worth it.
For the full blog post click here. For further examples of decluttering see 4 Kinds of Clutter, Room by Room Plan.
Susan Vogt is a speaker and writer on marriage, parenting, and spirituality. More importantly she is married to Jim Vogt and has four young adult children. Her most recent book is Blessed By Less: Clearing Your Life of Clutter By Living Lightly. It is based on Susan’s Living Lightly blog https://www.susanvogt.net/blog/ where you can find numerous other articles on the concept of living more lightly and simply.
