Less is more: Our journey to the fasted lifestyle, pt. 22

Today I decided "this is it! I'm going to buckle down and do it!"  What is this it?  It's reorganizing and cleaning out our storage room.  Our fourth bedroom has been deemed the storage room.  We have excess craft stuff, medical supplies, food storage, and emergency preparedness stuff in there.  Basically anything that we need to store in a more climate controlled environment, i.e. not the attic or garage.

I was going through all this stuff and thinking, man how did it get like this?  I mean the room was a mad house.  I have not been able to touch it in months.  Between busyness and the crushing "where do I start" feeling, it was just easier to shut the door and walk on.

This room has been the bane of my existence for the past few months.  I call it our hub of chaos.  The chaos spills out into the rest our home, making it a cluttered mess. When we can't get to the shelves in the room, the overflow takes up residence wherever it may land in the rest of the house.  Remember our tiny kitchen?  Well our tiny kitchen has a tiny pantry and right now our tiny pantry looks ridiculous because the majority of that stuff should be on the shelves in the storage room.  Which then leaves a bunch of stuff to gather on the kitchen counter because there is no more room in the pantry.  And the cycle just keeps going.  

The accumulation of stuff over time is overwhelming.  Do we need it all?  Could we bless someone with it?  Then the, but-what-if-I-need-its starts.  You never know when a huge case of stamp ink pads is going to come in handy.

In reality, will I need 5 million (exaggeration) sticker letters for projects I truly don't intend to do for years?  Could I get rid of it, then buy new ones in the future?  Most likely yes.  

A wise friend once said "if you want to see a picture of someone's spiritual life, look at their garage".  Well our garage in this instance is our storage room.  We have been dumping things in there that we don't want to deal with "right now" and shut the door.  Out of sight, out of mind.  We have done that with so many issues in our own hearts.  "Well I will work on that later."  "I'll get to that when I have more time."

I told my husband a few weeks ago that our storage room is a reflection of our hearts and he asked how so. Well we can tidy up the area that everyone sees, but we throw as much overflow back into the room and shut the door when company comes.  That way no one sees our mess (our sin).  Those things that nag at us, but we are afraid to admit them openly.  Then the but-what-if-its-too-hard-to-change starts.

We are holding onto things we can give to the Lord and be delivered from, but it's so comfortable to hold onto it because it's all we have known.  Sometimes our thought processes and even sin can be comfortable to the point of routine.  We keep tripping over the same stuff because we are afraid of a new way.  This way seems easier because it's what I've always done or been taught to do.

So as I'm cleaning and purging this area of our house, I'm asking the Lord to highlight the junk in my heart that I need to get rid of.  What can be pruned so that new abundant fruit can grow?  What is keeping me from the fullness of my destiny?  Lord reveal it in Jesus name!