Do you have a junk drawer in your house? You know... that random drawer where things go that don't really have a home or that are broken but you don't have time to deal with or fix them? So you stuff everything in that drawer with every intention to get to them "later". Although, have you noticed that later never comes?
If you have no idea what I am talking about & you don't have a junk drawer, then we are on opposite ends of the universe. I actually have several junk drawers, cupboards, shelves, ect..... I'm just that girl that is organizationally challenged! I am a hot mess ALL of the time. I make people like you twitch... we will probably never be friends.
Actually.... this is a lie.... my best friend is a total neat freak. Everything in her house has a "home". Her house is always organized & clean. She loves me & I love her. So we can probably still be friends, you'll just have to lower your standards a little bit & slum it up when you hang out with me! I can be your dirty little secret, it will be fun! :)
Anyways, back to the topic at hand. Junk Drawers! I flooded my house 6 weeks ago, (no I'm not getting distracted & off-topic again, just wait for it!) It was my birthday. If you want to know how to for sure ruin your own birthday, then you need to leave the water running in the laundry room sink for 2.5 hours. It will ruin your day & your house.
Since then we have been remodeling several rooms in my house. We gutted my mudroom and laundry room. We had to move out of the main level of my house 2 weeks ago, for 7 days, so that our hardwood floors could get refinished. We've been doing a lot of moving things out & organizing & cleaning & dejunking.
When it came time for us to come back home after our floors were refinished, we walked back into our house & it felt like a completely different place. Not just because the floors were completely different, but because the house was empty & spacious. It wasn't cluttered & full of "stuff". You could take a deep breath. The majority of my main level was a clean slate & I could do whatever I needed to in order to keep my house feeling this way.
Everything we have done to my house since the flood has been very well thought out and intentional. We have spent a bunch of time remodeling and repairing broken things. We have spent countless hours looking at paint colors, cabinets, tile, and wood stains. We want to make sure that we get things just right and the way we want them this time. We have been very careful about what we are allowing back in the house. We have questioned every piece of furniture & wondered if it was helping us feel relaxed & organized. We have gotten rid of a lot of things, and we have replaced a lot of things with smaller, more compact versions. We are going for the "less is more" approach this time.
I have noticed that I feel better physically, mentally & emotionally in my own house. I have always loved my house. It's my happy & safe place. I never realized that it needed this much work to really feel like more of a home.
This has got me thinking.... what if our minds are just as full & crammed as our houses? What if we all have these massive "junk drawers" in our minds that are taking up an insane amount of space and energy? Just typing this feels overwhelming and exhausting.
When was the last time we actually took stock of what we have hidden in the dark corners of our minds? Everyone has hard, awful things that we don't want to think about our deal with. Even people who say they don't, they do! No one can escape this life without some type of trauma. We need to be taking a mental inventory of our minds every once in a while at least & "dejunking". We need to be dealing with the hard stuff, so we can clear it out.
If you just take all of the "hard stuff" in life and shove them in your mental junk drawer, eventually that drawer feels up. Then you start shoving the "hard stuff" into other places until eventually, that is all that fills your mind. We will spend an insane amount of energy trying to avoid dealing with the hard things that we have filled our minds with because we can't deal with them and let them go.
Once we have filled our minds with all of the stuff we wish we could just forget, and avoiding them becomes a full-time job, then our unhealthy coping mechanisms come out to play. We get to a point where we either have to deal with the dark, scary corners of our minds, or we have to numb them & shut them down. Any mental health problems we might have will spiral out of control, addictions come to the surface & take over, impulsive behaviors become more frequent and harder to control, ect. There is a list a mile long of how people are numbing their minds and emotions.
I get it, cleaning out your mental "junk drawer" is terrifying. It's scary to make the decision to dive in & start that process. Opening that drawer is like opening the flood gates. Once it's open, you'll never really be able to shut it again without causing some serious damage. There are things in there that you know are there, and are the worst things ever. There is a reason you are choosing not to deal with them. There are things in there that you know you have forgotten about & you are grateful that you don't remember them. Why would you ever want to remember any of this stuff again? It's the fear of the "unknown" & it's powerful.
I want you to do one thing for me right now. Close your eyes & take a few deep breaths. Now, try to imaging how much better you will feel when you are no longer afraid. When there are no dark corners or "junk drawers" in your mind. When you make that decision for yourself to stop avoiding and to start "dejunking".
When everything is out in the open then you know what you are fighting. It's no longer a scary mystery. It's still scary to face things head-on, I'm not saying it will be a walk in the park. But once you shine a light in all of the dark spaces & see what they are hiding then you can start forming a plan of how to deal with them. Imagine your mind, instead of cluttered and full of "stuff", as a big, open & bright place.
We all need to start dejunking our minds. We don't have to start with anything monumental, it could be something as simple as starting 1 thing that is just for us. Pick 1 thing you know you need to do for yourself on a daily basis & just start with that. Sometimes "dejunking" is about bringing in the tools we need to start organizing. Pick 1 small thing that feels the least hard, then we will build on that. We aren't going to climb our "Mount Everest" on the first try, especially if we have never even taken any kind of hike up a small mountain.
So let's get started. Just 1 foot in front of the other. Even if you have to start out crawling, you are still moving forward and making progress.
You've got this! I've got this! We are amazing!! Good Luck!!
- Jess
