You know the drill. You need to leave on a trip, but you’re suddenly overtaken by the driving desire to set your house in order. You see all the things that should be put away, cleaned, even organized. You begin what is affectionately known as the ‘death clean.’ What if something befalls you on your trip and you never return? What if your offspring have to dispose of your estate? What will they think of you if they find a mess?
Will they be embarrassed when they donate your knickknacks to the thrift shop in a dusty state?!  Will they think less of you if there’s moldy food in the back of your fridge?

For the last three months, I’ve been on a mission to get my life better organized for my peace of mind. A few weeks ago the weird idea struck me that it felt like I’m doing a ‘death clean’. Will my earthly life soon come to an end? I sat with that thought and decided that’s fine with me! I’m ready to go home to Heaven and if my efforts now will lessen the burden on my surviving family, that’s great. And what if this ‘death clean’ is a sign that my old way of doing things is ending? Many areas of my life were so chaotic that I had developed negative, fatalistic, complaining attitudes. Funny how mundane irritations can spill over into our outlook. I was wasting so much mental and emotional energy being upset that I was missing out on peace, gratitude, and time for others. I needed an overhaul! I needed a lot of things to end and better things to take their place.

The good news is that God uses desperation to fuel our determination to change. What isn’t working motivates us to figure out what does work. Misery in the status quo makes us persevere to break out and push upward. The Lord doesn’t want us stuck in ways that hold us back from being all he wants us to be. I found that I don’t have to allow my old habits to beat me down. God will help me by changing my thinking. I can choose to push back with a godly desire for better.  God loves order.

I’m learning to spot victim mentality in my thinking. I know I’ve fallen into that trap when I catch myself making excuses for why I can’t improve a situation. “I’ll never get what I want because I don’t have enough ________” fill in the blank- money, energy, training, time. Whoa! Stop right there! God is the one who provides for my needs. He gives enough and more. The excuse of ‘not enough’ is a slap in God’s face. But if I take responsibility for finding solutions with what I have, I can move forward. I can examine the root causes and work hard to fix it. What is causing my unhappiness in this situation? How am I contributing to this problem? What can I change with God’s help in my behavior and attitudes that will improve the situation?

I started by making a mental list of things that bugged me on the daily. I finally decided that some things bothered me so much that I was ready to do whatever it took to change them instead of simply getting aggravated and then putting it off to be figured out another day. I changed my thinking from “It’s just the way it is.” To “I must fix this now.”

If it’s things that were bothering me, I committed time each day to work on these steps:
Sort- what is actually essential for happy living?
Eliminate- throw or give away what isn’t serving me
Organize- so I can find what I need
Levels of accessibility- not everything needs prime real estate on the front of the shelf.
I slowly made improvements- not perfect- in my food storage areas, closets, bookshelves, and kitchen cupboards, even my messy drawer of recipes.

If conditions were bothering me, I committed to trying different systems until I hit on a system that worked. This trial and error approach was discouraging, but I kept my eye on the goal. I slowly made improvements- not perfect- still in progress in finances, keeping house, cooking, gardening, just the nitty-gritty of daily life routines.

Here’s a super mundane example of figuring out better routines. Our big dogs bring in a lot of dirt from outside. The situation was so bad that I was thinking of looking for a new home for them! Confronting the problem instead of wishing we hadn’t taken on the responsibility of pet ownership was a game changer. I guess when I hit that point of misery, I was finally ready to change. All of us are ready to make sacrifices for the sake of a better outcome. We dedicate ourselves to hard work and discipline in order to get what we truly want. For me, it took a lot of trial and error trying different systems, but I didn’t give up. Now I have systems in place like clipping them short on a weekly schedule and wiping them down with a wet cloth before they come inside, as well as a strong air purifier to catch airborne dust. Every time I’m tempted to let it slide, I remember that I want to enjoy them and have a clean house.

I’ve discovered that since getting my possessions in better order and systems in place for daily chores I’m more available for my family and church. I’m less behind, less stressed, and less agitated. I’ve been making decisions based on what’s truly important given that I’m in the latter years of my life. Some activities that took up my time, I’ve let go of in order to have more time for caring for those I love. There is peace in knowing that my time is filled with what matters in the long run- relationships. This peace and freedom is a gift from God and I want to use it to serve him and others.

So what does all this have to do with you? What can you learn from this? When you hit whatever your roadblock is, remember that the Lord is bigger than your problem and he delights in helping us push upward with his strength.

Here are some verses that are helping me on this journey of change:

“Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered— how fleeting my life is.” Psalm 39:4

“Seventy years are given to us! Some even live to eighty. But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble; soon they disappear, and we fly away.” Psalm 90:19

“The path of life leads upward for the wise;” Proverbs 15:24

“I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.” Philippians 3:14

“. . .[I] have enough stored away for years to come. Now take it easy! Eat, drink, and be merry!”’
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! You will die this very night. Then who will get everything you worked for?’
“Yes, a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God.” Luke 12:19-21

P.S.  Don’t forget to take a minute at the end of each day (while you’re brushing your teeth?) to thank God for the progress you made, no matter how small.  Make a little mental list of things you accomplished today and give him credit for helping you.