Did I say something about it being Spring? Perhaps it is. The snow that came did not linger. The drifts now are of tree blossom. The fruit trees that flower first and leaf later. I’m sure there is some evolutionary reason for that. Catching the first pollinators on the wing perhaps, or as much sunlight as arboreally possible.
The first blue flowers are making their way into my world. Forget-me-nots, grape hyacinth, and those I have yet to identify…tiny bluebell-like woodland flowers. The single crocus bulb in my garden, of all those planted the only one to make the surface, defies me to roll the wheelie
bin over its beautiful purple.
And did I say something about cleaning? About there being six “rooms” and so I could have it done in a week? Did any of you actually believe that? Did I?
Ok, maybe not – but it’s good to dream, even when it’s just a dream of getting the house back to how it was the day you moved in.
Ah. No. I have photos of the day I moved in. It’s better than that. When I moved in not all of the work was completed. When I moved in there were boxes everywhere. When I moved in the TV aerial was mis-connected, and it took me two days before I figured out that the DVD player would still work and I could watch old movies, and however long after that before I got live TV.
I remember many incarnations of my home. I remember how it was a generation back when the idea that it would ever be mine never entered anyone’s head. I remember how it was afterwards. I remember the degeneration and the regeneration. I remember this space as if it were alive, living along with me. How it was when I was such & such, how it was later when, and then when… and so on. I wonder if I could write the life of my home as a character in my own life story.
I don’t remember a single moment when all of it was perfect.
I remember some TV programme when one character claims that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and another responds with No –but there are bits of it that were! The point was being made, that we cannot use the excuse of how long something will take, as a reason for not starting, or not continuing. Nothing is magicked out of the air; everything is constructed layer upon layer. Or excavated the same way.
Making a home, maintaining a home, living in and loving a home, is a continuous process of both layering and excavating. Adding and removing. Remembering and forgetting.
My cleaning and clearing was interrupted. The energetics of it were disturbed. A rock was thrown into my pool and the ripples…rippled. I will tell the tale of that some other time. Its only relevance here is how easily we can be halted in our tracks, thrown off course, allow externalities to affect our internality. And how pointless that is.
Now I am back to reclaiming the space as my own. Cleaning and clearing. And loving what remains. So no, not all done within a week, but progress.
This is where I ‘come clean’ and admit the challenge I have deferred yet again: that of the “thin clothes” boxes. I’m sure everyone has a few clothes in their wardrobe that they haven’t been able to squeeze into for a while. I have two boxes full of them. Clothes I love. Clothes I really want to wear. Clothes from when I was younger and thinner. A lot younger. A lot thinner.
I know the rules. You box the stuff up, and you set a deadline, and if you haven’t been in the box by
then: out it goes. You do not even look in the box.
It’s not working out like that. I don't need to look in the box. I remember vividly some of the things in there. They call out to me in my dreams. And I really DO want to be thin again. Giving this stuff away feels defeatist. The reality check: some of these clothes have been on death row for over a decade. They have breathed more easily after every birthday, every solstice, every equinox, new year, holiday departure date. This has to be their absolutely final reprieve.
Next time I do this, those boxes will be gone. I will be into those beautiful clothes, or someone else will be. Promise.
Back to today. I’m about half-way through this springtide ritual of cleaning and clearing, and I’m looking ahead to the potential roadblocks. The pool re-opens midweek, and there are away-days and workshops in the diary. I need to regain enough momentum to ride those out.
I have never completed a spring clean. On a good year I’d have got one or two rooms in before life got in the way and I let it all slide again. It matters greatly to me that this year I do finish the job. It matters not because I want my home to be pristine – it was never that, will never be that, but I want it to be as near to it as I can get it and still actually be able to live in it, cook in it, be lazy in it, be creative and productive in it. Actually make a mess in it. I want to feel free in it.
I have no problem with people who can live among the debris, who don’t mind being able to draw patterns on the furniture with a finger (or a crayon for that matter), for whom there are more important things in life. I was one of them, up to a point, for a while. But we change.
For me that change started when I was faced with the reality of where it can lead, the not really caring about a bit of clutter. That gave me a real fear of ending up in that place, which in turn gave me an uncrossable line. How other people live is their choice, but for me, something shifted. I started to care.
For a while I thought the shift would fade once I’d let go of one flat-full of stuff, and merged two remaining homes into one, letting go of lifetimes’ more stuff and deciding to keep or take my time over the rest – but it didn’t. There was a pause.
Ok, there are recurrent pauses, where the place ends up looking like it’s just been ransacked. But not for long. I come back to caring about the space. And always I come back to ‘useful or beautiful’.
None of this has triggered a Kondo-mode of needing everything to spark joy or out it goes. I know that we keep stuff for a whole host of complicated reasons, and sometimes we need time to figure out what those reasons were and whether they are still valid. If I really wanted to get rid of everything from my home that “right now” doesn’t meet the William Morris criterion, then I could undoubtedly fill a skip today.
I am equally sure that there would then be a point in the future where I would deeply regret one of the discards. We need to take our time.
Even so, I am on a mission to simplify my life. Cleaning house this spring is part of that, part of something bigger. It is symbolic of personal clearing.
Clearing, rather than cleaning. Making space. The rooms that I have blitzed feel more spacious. Lighter. More airy. And there is an invitation implicit in that. Come in and work, it says. Come in and play. Come in and practice. Come in and rest.
Come - be here - and be you.
And that’s what I want internally as well: that invitation that space offers.
There is a saying that Nature abhors a vacuum. Not at all. Nature rushes in with great delight to any vacuum you create. Nature yells YIPPPEEEE DOOOODDEEEE, when it spots a vacuum. Space to fill. Space to play, to work, to rest, to be.
It feels to me that clearing physical space is creating energetic space. Even just writing that down lights me up. The possibility of whatever comes next excites me. So, now that I have taken the latest two bags of not-wanted stuff to the RSPCA, I’ve got lampshades to dust and floors to wash...and a bit more space to play with.
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