“Have nothing in your life that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”
~ William Morris, 19th century architect
As I sat, watching the sun pop it’s head through the clouds this morning, all I kept thinking was …. It’s the light of a new day! A new week, and the start to a new month! Happy Monday !!
Yesterday was spent cleaning out our shed, and remnants of messes on our patio deck and our back bedroom, left over from before the holidays. It felt amazing to clear out all of that old junk ….
And of course, Universe sent along two reminders for me, which served as an aid, while I sorted through the various areas. Do I really need those old patio cushions and pillows? Will I ever get to recovering them? It costs almost as much for new fabric as it does to just buy them new …
In came an email from Houzz.com, entitled: “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: the Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing”, a new book out by Marie Kondo which tops the New York Times bestseller list. Her basic premise is this … Unless something gives you pleasure, get rid of it !!!
And then sort by type, not room. And when we do this kind of sorting, she offers four simple steps:
- Think of what is ideal in your life.
- Gather items from each category and group them together (clothes first, then books, then documents).
- Ask yourself, do these things “spark joy”? Touch them, and see how each item feels. Maybe even sing that song from Frozen … “Let it go, let it go!”
- Determine a proper place(s) for each item, and put it where it belongs.
She writes: “What makes the method more difficult is the fact that many of us imbue our things with emotions. We hang on to items we don’t like because they were gifts; we allow books and papers to pile up in anticipation of reading them later; we refuse to let go of regrettable purchases because of the money we spent on them.”
Which brings me to a second piece of advice that I ran across yesterday. It’s a story of a dog and his bone ….
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A dog went to the cremation ground.
It picked up a sharp piece of bone from which the flesh had been completely burnt off and started munching it.
The sharp edges of the bone pierced the dog’s mouth in many places and there was bleeding.
The dog dropped it, but seeing blood smeared all over it, it thought that the blood was coming from the bone because of its ravenous munching.
It licked the blood and again started chewing the bone even more ravenously, with the result that there were more wounds in its mouth and more bleeding.
The foolish dog went on repeating this process of dropping the bone, licking the blood and again chewing the bone.
Little did that foolish dog realize that in fact the blood came from its own mouth and not from the bone!
“A foolish dog picked up a bone,
Bereft of flesh because ’twas burnt,
Masticated many a round
Till its mouth was filled with wounds,
Licked and praised the blood, its own,
‘No thing on earth equals this bone’,
~ ‘Guru Vachaka Kovai’, verse 585
Similarly, when a man enjoys external objects, he only experiences a little of the happiness that is already within him.
But, on account of ignorance, he thinks that the happiness comes from the external objects, and thus he behaves like the dog in the story.
Exactly like the dog that munched the bone again and again, throughout his life man repeatedly searches for and accumulates external objects.
What is the result of all this?
Alas ! Untold heaps of misery, with a few iotas of pleasure in between – that is all!
Indeed, all this is ignorance, otherwise called maya!
~ Sri Sadhu Om Swamigal, “The Path of Sri Ramana”
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Humming to myself, I let go of alot of “things” yesterday. I dropped the bone. The cushions got tossed.
I hope these little tips will help you also, as you weed through the clutter in your own life …
“Spring cleaning isn’t just about sorting through things, and getting rid of clutter. It’s about taking stock of who you are, and how others see you. It’s a chance to redefine yourself, to change expectations, and to remember that it’s never too late to recapture who you were or to aim for who you want to be.”
Make room for the new! Happy spring cleaning!!!
For the complete article on Houzz: http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/46893825
