God will supply all your needs according… Phil 4:9
I stepped into my craft room, looked at the mess, threw in the items I had in my hand, then turned around and walked out of the room, closing the door behind me I could not look at that room any longer.
I don’t like clutter. I find I cannot focus when the area around me is cluttered. Yet, I nest anywhere I am, and the clutter abounds.
Yarn and other crafts are the worst! I find a beautiful color of yarn, I don’t have anything planned for it, but I bet I can find something. OR I think about one of the thousands of patterns I have and would love to make, buy the supplies, and then don’t proceed OR As in the case of the craft room, I have no place else to put it so I throw it in there to get it out of the way.
Unfortunately, the craft room is not the only place I clutter.
My mind is cluttered. I have dozens of projects going at once. I am the ultimate multi-tasker. What this means is I do a lot and have a lot of UFOs (unfinished objects/projects) with very few FOs (finished objects/projects).
My spiritual life gets cluttered. I have several devotionals open, but I don’t concentrate on one, I don’t finish any.
Even my recreational world is cluttered. My calendar is filled with ‘do this’ and ‘do that’ to the point I don’t do anything.
God will provide all my needs (Phil 4:9). Are all of these items ‘needs’? I could fool myself into believing this is overflowing abundance from God, but if I am honest, it’s just overflowing. It is not providing any value to myself or to God’s kingdom. (1 Cor 10:31)
Clutter abounds. If I just ignore it, my fairy godmother will bring in some elves one night while I sleep and they will call in the forest animals so that when I wake in the morning everything will be in its place.
Yeah, right.
It was time for action. My daughter came to help. In our discussion, it was made clear that I had not touched most of the items in years (my yarn was in another area) While I worked on the yarn and unfinished projects, she started pulling out things I had no idea I had. She pulled out and filled 10 trash bags, sealed them with the instruction I could not look in any, and prepared to take them to a local thrift shop. She could do what I could not because she did not have an emotional attachment. I did not, and still do not, miss anything that was taken away. However, if I had seen the items, even if I hadn’t looked at them in years, I would have reacted emotionally and pulled them back. WHY?!?! Because I can’t let go.
When I can’t let go, it leads to a lot of clutter in my life.
It’s not just the physical things that clutter my life, not letting go emotionally adds to the clutter as well.
Scripture tells us to declutter our lives. In Luke 12, there is a parable of the rich fool. I am far from rich, yet I do what this man did. I gather much and store it, then make room to store more even though I have not used what I already have. I keep adding more and more to my stash. This stash is not rewarding to me and does nothing to serve God. “But wait, I will make hats or bears or whatever and donate them! Really? You have been saying that for years. You have all this material. Where is the finished product? Where is the beginning of the product? I can’t answer that because I am lost in the confusion and chaos of all the other clutter. And no work is being completed.
Daniel made it a point to go to his room and pray on his knees three times a day (Dan 6:10). Three times a day! My calendar is so full, how will I find time to do that even once. And then, heading to my room, I am interrupted by a text message, by that load of laundry, by the latest crochet project laying by my chair. You get the idea.
God doesn’t want me to live a cluttered life.
Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your word. – Psalm 119:37
God told his disciples to head out, taking nothing for the journey (Luke 9:3). I can’t even leave a room without a handful of ‘stuff’.
I did take the bags straight to a thrift store donation site. I don’t miss any of it.
That accomplished 2 things (1) it made room for better use of that area and (2) released me emotionally.
Freeing myself of the clutter offers options:
More opportunity to focus on what is in front of me (Gal 6:5)
Give attention to prayer and ministry of the word (Acts 6:4)
Time and energy to write another Knit and Crochet Bible Study post (Col 3:17)
Once I worked on the physical clutter, I started on the other areas of clutter I created. I keep a calendar in front of me, marking off time away from the computer. I have put up all devotionals except one. I am striving to read and pray through it daily.
Now that I have cleared away much of the yarn and supplies I stored and never used, I have purchased just what I need to work on one project. This is a drastic change in the way I handled my knit/crochet projects in the past. It feels a bit strange. Yet it feels very freeing.
How do you handle clutter in your life?