From Cluttered to Clean

Woooowwwweeee! I had a wild and crazy weekend folks.

That’s right, I spent  Friday and Saturday cleaning my house. Such a rebel rouser in my old age, huh? Actually, cleaning might be an understatement. I think “scouring” or “OCD organizing” might be more appropriate descriptions. (Um, I didn’t think nesting started for a few months yet? Holy cow.)

Before I get to far into this post, there are a few things you need to know about me. I am NOT one of those people who “likes” to clean. Sure, I try to keep up on dishes semi-regularly so nothing is growing in the sink and I will occasionally sweep the kitchen floor (but only after my husband has left behind piles of sand from work.) But other than that, I need serious motivation to clean.

For some weird reason, I got EXTREMELY motivated to clean starting Friday afternoon. Sure, I have a semi-steady stream of company coming starting this week. But surface cleaning usually does the trick. Plus, I don’t really believe in spring cleaning. (As a youth, “spring cleaning” was the worst profanity ever uttered by my mother to my little person ears.)

Apparently, that changes on Friday.  Over about a day and a half, I spent 12 hours in a cleaning frenzy. I thought I had lost my mind.

Obviously, this wasn’t just a general surface clean… it was deep. It was intense. It was exhausting. Here’s a brief overview of how crazy things got this weekend, just me, the pup and a scrub brush. (Ok, and vacuum and paper towels and Swiffer and…)

• Washed all rugs, bedsheets, and every piece of laundry
• Vacuumed all floors, including the stairs (How does such a tiny dog shed so much!?!)
• Reorganized entire kitchen, including the pantry, tupperware, countertops and spice cabinet
• Unclogged my bathtub drain (I don’t want to get into details, but it looked like a small rodent had died in there. I briefly considered shaving my head to avoid any future incidents.)
  

  After my intense book purge, I actually have SPACE on my shelf for the first time... ever. This shelf coupled with the other identical shelf leaves me with two whole empty shelves. See, God really does do modern day miracles!

• Purged my book collection, which resulted in me donating a full rubbermaid container of books to a friend
• Completely recategorized my bookshelves
• Dusted/wiped down the baseboards
• Cleaned out the office closet completely to prepare for transition to nursery…

Oh, and based on the amount of trash I carried out, I think our neighbors thought I was moving. That or they thought I was delusional, because on one trip to the trash can, I kinda sorta forgot that I was wearing my grungy scrubbing clothes AND my wedding tiara. (Hey, don’t judge me. I hate cleaning and knew a little bling would make things more fun.)

I will give you a moment to stop laughing at my pathetic attempt to be the “Clean Queen.”

Ok, now that’s outta the way… Back to the topic at hand. During the 12 hours one-on-one with the scrub brush and vacuum, I began to think.

God is a pretty great house cleaner too. He lives in us, so we are kind of like His house.  Thus, today I ask you: Do you have any cluttered areas in your heart that you need to let God clean up? Any clogs? Any junk that needs to be purged? Does your relationship with Jesus need to be dusted off?

It doesn’t matter what amount of clutter you are dealing with in your heart, whether it is a junk mail sized pile or perhaps and entire 3 bedroom dusty, hairy, disheveled mess. God can take care of it. All you have to do is ask. He can unclutter, unclog, reorganize, wash, refresh and polish you from the inside out.

Ask God to grab His cleaning supplies and take you from cluttered to clean.

Loving Jesus is lemony fresh,

SGK

“He’s going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.” –Matthew 3:12 (MSG)