Blessings 40 days After the Flood

I want to share today some of the wonderful blessings that have come to me and my family by having a huge flood. I will back up and tell you what happened this past August. Our cousins were visiting with us from out of state and while I was out shopping with my daughters and female cousin, someone in our family that was home accidentally clogged our upstairs toilet. Thinking it might just shut off or something, they left. Well the toilet kept running for several hours! This created damage for our basement as well as our upstairs. Long story short, we ended up replacing carpet in four bedrooms, most of our basement, and in a library upstairs, and our entire hardwood area (over 1000 feet) had to be replaced. We also had to remodel our upstairs bathroom. Most of our home was repainted. We pulled all the carpets ourselves and did all the painting to save money. It ended up being $15,000 in damages!

We built our home 10 years ago and I have continued to say that I will NEVER move again, it is just too much work. Well when you have a flood, you get to move, you just don't go anywhere. Here is how it went for us: We moved all the furniture that was on the carpet, to the hardwood areas. We have a large home and a lot of hardwood on the main floor. So we moved the three bedrooms that were upstairs on the main floor hard-wood areas. We have many books. We have lots of everything actually. One day in all of this crazy moving stuff this little light went off in my head..."We have too much junk!" I thought. I had heard a saying that went like this "If it does not enhance your life, get rid of it." I looked at all the books I had collected over the years and it dawned on me I was being ridiculous. I do happen to have a library card. Why in the world did I need my own library? Well I decided in that moment of all that crap piled around me that I was going to change my life. No more stuff that did not enhance my life! So I started de-junking right then and there. I got rid of over 200 books, and 100 movies that day. This started a chain reaction and I then went through all of my clothes. I got rid of all the clothes that are too small, too large, the ones labeled "I will wear that someday" and all the shoes that I don't ever wear. I love to cook, but I also had to de-junk my pots and pans. I got rid of my baking tins that I never use, bowls that don't match my sets any longer, extra potato peelers (I mean how many potatoes can I peel at once anyway?) and all of my odds and ends of plastic bowls and on and on. I just started looking at my home and asking if this picture really enhanced my life, or that knick-knack really meant that much to me? I got rid of cookbooks I have never cooked from, coats that no one likes, towels that were thread bare, and tons of sheets that we never use. We had snow boots that fit nobody, trikes no one rides, shovels that are broken and earrings that don't have a mate. All now gone!

I am far from done de-junking my home, but we have made a ton of progress. We no longer wear shoes in our home. With our new pretty floors, I want to keep them clean all the time. I now have a shoe shelf that sits right inside our door way and we actually use it! We all have clean bedrooms and every bed in our home is made each day. Our fridge is clean all the time. Just yesterday which was Saturday I told the children it was time to clean the house. In the past "pre-flood" we would use our Saturdays for heavy cleaning and that took most of our day. Yesterday not so, we had our whole home clean and tidy in about 40 minutes. For us this is a miracle. We have a three car garage and we have not parked in it in two years...well all that has changed...our new van is sitting in there asleep as I write this blog entry! I am amazed how the excitement I have felt about getting organized has caught on to my family. Again another success just yesterday: My son Jake was finishing up cleaning his room, which only took about 10 minutes and he decided on his own to clean up his closet. It was admittedly a bit out of control. Within a half hour, it was so clean I was shocked. He had hung up all his shirts and organized them, his shoes were in a tidy row and he had his toys all clean and orderly. This was without his mother nagging him!

I have realized that I am not a naturally organized person. (I know; Duh!) My mother is. It is hard to compare her to me though as she had two children that were seven years apart. Her home was always neat and tidy. When I married, I had 8 children in 15 years. My home was very different than the one I grew up in. I like some things better in the home I created, but I did not like my lack of organization. This flood has helped me have a reason to get rid of stuff. I just simply didn't want to put it all back. But then I just kept going and organizing lots of areas. As I said, it is an ongoing project, but I am slowly working through my closets, my shelves and my drawers. It is very rewarding to me to see myself becoming a more organized person. I have realized a couple of important things that perhaps you can relate to. First off, my new mantra is:”If it does not enhance my life....get rid of it!” So now instead of just accepting that something should be at a certain place, I evaluate if it enhances my life or the life of those I love. Secondly, I am not naturally organized, so if I have less to manage, life becomes much easier for me. I am learning that I don't need to live with so much. Less really is better. I don't need a library to dust. I have lots to do in my life that for me is far more important than managing stuff. The blessings that have come to our family are truly amazing. We are no longer embarrassed of our home if someone just drops by, it is usually clean. We don't trip on things any more. We have more time to do what we want to do. We can find things when we need then. We feel pride in our home, and it just simply feels more cozy to be here. Our home is a very pretty home, but I think we forgot that when we were messier. We appreciate and use what we have now. There is less visual “noise” when a home is clean, I feel much more at peace.

There is something magical that happens when you start cleaning out old junk and become organized. It is sort of infectious. You want to do more and more. My children are noticing things that they never noticed were out of place or dirty before. Just yesterday our oldest daughter Bailey was found in the kitchen cleaning our microwave! I had not asked her to do it either. YAY! When one area gets clean, the contrast of another area starts to show, and we all want things to look nicer, so we are all finding new areas to get cleaned up. It is very exciting!

I don't recommend over flowing your toilets, but if you are like me, and being organized is an issue for you, you might want to start by de-junking one drawer. Then work on your linen closet. I felt pride in cleaning out my silverware drawer the other day. I realized how many miss matched forks we had, and I went out and purchased new ones and got rid of the ones we don't like or that don't match anything. Having an organized and clean home is a life long goal and it is not something that happens over night. If I work at it a little bit each day though, it does eventually start to work. My family which is huge compared to most is now “on board” with me. They actually mocked me at first and were offended that I was getting rid of our “stuff.” I kept going though and was sensitive to be throwing out my stuff not theirs. My room got cleaned first...then it started to grow. They started to see the vision and it really did catch on with my whole family!

I wish you clean closets, less clothing to wash and iron. I hope you will be able to have only the pots and pans you need. I wish for all of us to have only in our lives what truly enhances our lives. It is a wonderful way to live. I am finally at almost 50 years old seeing this.

Happy closet cleaning!