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Happy New Year, everyone! Many cultures have New Year's cleaning rituals where the house is cleaned top to bottom. Ideally, this serves as a "reset button", clearing away the past year's dirt (both physical and spiritual) and allowing us a fresh start for the coming year. However, if there is clutter in our path, we may never reach the goal of making our homes truly shine.
Think about the extra work involved in wiping down a surface where many objects "live". We have to move each item out of the way, wipe away the dust, then return the item to its original spot. Perhaps we'll discard a few items deemed unnecessary as we randomly come across them, but the end result—though it might be cleaner—hardly looks much different than it did in the beginning.
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This is why it's ideal to tidy up first, then clean afterwards.
"Tidying" and "cleaning" are often used interchangeably, but as Marie Kondo explains in her book Spark Joy, the meanings are really quite different. When we tidy, we move items and put them away, whereas when we clean, we are removing dirt.
Dirt and dust tend to naturally accumulate, without us doing anything at all. It's a law of the universe. But often you will hear people talk about items "piling up", or "finding their way in". The truth is that objects don't grow legs and walk into our homes. We bring them in. The responsibility for clutter lies with us.
This means that while cleaning is about confronting nature, tidying is about confronting ourselves.
Cleaning (unfortunately!) is a process we'll have to do over and over again. But tidying is different. Once you've gone through the process of deciding which of your possessions spark joy, and then deciding where to store your joyful things, you'll never have to do it again. Your relationship with your home and the belongings in it, as well as the way you shop and acquire things going forward, will be permanently transformed.
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Which brings us back to cleaning. People who have completed their tidying journeys often remark that cleaning hardly takes them any time at all now. Some folks even enjoy cleaning, now that it's been made simple because they don't have to do all the extra work of navigating around stuff and clutter.
Whether or not you'll become a person who actually enjoys dusting and mopping, one thing is clear--if you want a clean house for the New Year and beyond, it makes sense to tidy up first.
🌱Ready to embark on your tidying journey? I'd be honored to be your guide. Contact me to get the conversation started.🌱