Why you need to “weed” your house
When I was in 5th grade, my best friend and I volunteered at a colonial re-enactment farm. We’d dress up in our late 1700s garb and pretend to be farm children, interacting with visitors and performing all sorts of colonial chores. One day we were assigned the task of weeding the corn field… of ROCKS.
As you can imagine, it was an endless chore. There were pebbles of all sizes strewn throughout the large field, and no matter how many apron-loads of rocks we collected, there always seemed to be more.
Needless to say, I left that day with an entirely new appreciation for weeding.
But how does this story relate to your home?
Just as some amount of weeding is needed to maintain a healthy, functioning garden, weeding is essential to maintaining a beautiful, vibrant home. Home “weeding” is one of the secrets to creating a sense of peace, control, and spaciousness. But what type of “weeds” grow in a home?
They’re called “irritants.”
Irritants, as you might guess, are anything in your home that you find… irritating!
Examples include:
Piles of mail
Unfinished projects
A broken thing you’ve been meaning to fix… for months
Clutter
Art or wall decor you haven’t got around to hanging yet
Other people’s stuff that they’ve left in your home
Dead plants
Old cds or vhs tapes you’ve been meaning to convert for years
Items you meant to sell but somehow are still sitting at the bottom of your closet
Anything that doesn’t have a “home” in your house so keeps getting bounced around from place to place
You get the idea.
Usually these things take the form of small, “low priority” tasks that don’t bother us *enough* to go ahead and fix them right away. But over time, they linger in our spaces and pull our energy down. Every time we notice them, we feel stressed, anxious, guilty, frustrated, or overwhelmed. You can imagine how having a home full of irritants could make it hard to feel relaxed, rejuvenated or at peace, right?
So what’s a gal to do?
Over the years, I’ve come up with different ways to intentionally tackle the irritants in my home in order to create a greater sense of calm, sacred space. Here are a few of my favorite methods for you to try in your own home!
How to Weed Your House of Irritants & Restore a sense of Calm & Ease
1 ) Take a walk through your house with a pad of sticky notes - ideally in a bright color. Place a sticky note on every irritant you see to help keep them in your awareness. Sometimes irritants blend into the visual fabric of our homes, and we stop consciously seeing them. This exercise will help bring them back into your consciousness.
2) Make a list of all the irritants in you identified. Keep this as a running list in your calendar, on your phone, or even a to-do app. Be honest with how visible you need the list to be in order to actually use it. Is a to-do list app on your phone ok, or would it be better to have a list taped to the front of your fridge?
3) Put a star next to any irritant that involves another person - write their name next to the star. This will help you get clear on which things you can easily handle on your own and which require cooperation of or assistance from someone else.
4) Set a timer for 30 minutes. See how many irritants you can bust through and “weed” out in that time. Start with low-hanging fruit. You may be surprised by how much you get done!
The hardest part of dealing with irritants is getting started. Once you’ve overcome the temptation to ignore your irritant for the 10th - or 100th - time, and actually BEGIN, I promise that you’ll be flooded with such a sense of accomplishment and contentment that you might even find yourself looking for the another “weed” to pull!
Happy gardening!
Cheers,
Joanie
Longing for a home that lifts you up instead of dragging you down?
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