Decluttering your home; It brings you closer to Jesus.

At the beginning of December, I was feeling extremely overwhelmed. We were dealing with issues concerning my son being homeschooled, my kids were dealing with constant colds and so I did not get much sleep. During the day I had to drag my kids from appointment to appointment so I didn't have much time or energy to keep the home.

One day I looked around and just could not imagine how I would ever get on top of this mess before Christmas. "If only I could hire someone to help clean the entire house for ONE day, "I thought. Then I could just keep it clean from there on. I shared this thought with my mom who immediately wanted to help pay for someone. (Bless her heart).

Of course, it was very tempting to jump at the opportunity, but instead, I sat still for a moment and asked the Lord His ways. I knew very well by now that if I would do it God's way there would be more blessing upon it.

The Lord did not encourage me to get paid help, instead He told me to declutter my home. I lost all my belongings a few times during our first 2 years in Spain, so we did not own much and I lived a pretty minimalistic lifestyle so I didn't think, by myself, that decluttering would be needed, but I trusted the Lord and asked my mom if she could help me get containers instead.

I had exactly 5 days before my husband's Christmas vacation started and I felt strongly to keep that date as my goal. What happened that week revealed a bunch of things to me that I wanted to share in this post. Afterward, I'll share a bit on how I practically decluttered my home.

How decluttering is Spiritually and Physically connected:

• Decluttering our home is exactly like decluttering God's dwelling place in us. Our heart. As I went from room to room I found more than I thought I would. Bags filled with random stuff I put away and random papers everywhere. Things that needed to be thrown away or put in a container. Going through every room allowed me to see the situation for what it was. It looked nice at first glance, but there were lots of hidden messes that needed my attention.
  

• Decluttering takes some serious time and arm work. I spend an entire workweek decluttering from morning till dinner time, only stopping to care for my children. I was even so deep into the work I often forgot to eat myself. It surprised me how much work it was and I was exhausted at the end of the day. The same goes for when we start doing the hard work of rebuilding the temple of our heart. It's not easy and requires perseverance and faithfulness to finally get to that point where your heart is clean and the Holy Spirit can fully dwell in you.
  

• You will find so much junk you did not even know you had. As I mentioned before. Things stuffed in bags and put away that I had forgotten about. I threw away bag after bag after bag of trash. I realized that our hearts are like this as well. Open wounds and lies we have accepted as truth make our hearts a dwelling place for trash. (demons) Once you start doing the hard work of doing the heart work, the Holy Spirit, bit by bit, exposes all of these to you. You'll be surprised at how much can be in your heart that does not belong there! (Speaking from personal experience.)
  

• The Lord is with you and helps you during the process. You would think, with 3 little kids at home, that it would have been very hard to spend almost every moment doing the work, but somehow there was SO much PEACE in my home. My kids were amazing and content. They played happily and helped where they could. They were joyful and kind. More than usual. I could see how the Holy Spirit was just filling my home with peace and joy to help me do what I needed to do. In Nehemiah 4 you can read how the enemy reacted when the Jews started rebuilding their temple: "When Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, he became angry and was greatly incensed. He ridiculed the Jews, and in the presence of his associates and the army of Samaria, he said, “What are those feeble Jews doing? Will they restore their wall? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they finish in a day? Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble—burned as they are?” - Nehemiah 4:1-2 (It kind of sounds like all the discouragements in our head when we want to tackle the hard work of decluttering our home and heart!) But THEN later in the same passage, it says: "Therefore I stationed some of the people behind the lowest points of the wall at the exposed places, posting them by families, with their swords, spears and bows. After I looked things over, I stood up and said to the nobles, the officials and the rest of the people, “Don’t be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your families, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes.” When our enemies heard that we were aware of their plot and that God had frustrated it, we all returned to the wall, each to our own work." - Nehemiah 4: 13-15 The enemy hates it when we declutter our home as much as he hates it when we declutter our hearts because he knows that all the clutter keeps us in a state of overwhelm and therefore we cannot experience constant deep intimacy with Jesus. But God loves it when we do it, because He wants to be able to remove out of our life, anything that comes between us and Him so we can have constant fellowship. So He supports us when we start doing the hard work.
  

• Once the work is finished you'll experience a supernatural peace and joy fill your home. After that week of hard work, I managed to finish exactly on the night of my husband's last work day before his vacation started. What followed was a whole week of absolute bliss in our home. There was SO much rest, peace, and joy. My kids were so content the whole week and that brought so much joy and rest to the whole home. We had never experienced such a week before. Joyful moments, yes. But this whole week was only filled with good things. It was obvious that the Holy Spirit was there and kept our home in a state of pure pure bliss. In the same way, cleaning our hearts is HARD work, but once it's done, the Holy Spirit FILLS you like a stream of Living Water and you get to experience intimacy with Jesus like you've NEVER had before. "There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, The holy place where the Most High dwells." - Psalm 46 River whose streams make glad - the Holy Spirit. City of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells - your heart.
  

• After the work is done, you'll quickly notice when unwanted things enter your home. Once your home it decluttered, you will have to keep it up of course by making sure trash gets thrown away immediately and things get put back into their proper place. This will be a lot easier done than before, but if, after maybe a hard week or two, you neglected an area in your home, you will immediately notice and want to tackle it as quickly as possible. Because you have now experienced the peace and joy a decluttered home gives, you'll want to work hard to keep it that way. The same way, demons will try to get some ground back into your heart by making you accept lies as your own or try to hurt you through someone else. But this time you'll immediately notice something is off in your thought pattern or in how you feel and will want to protect that beautiful intimate relationship you now have with the Lord so you'll be quick to kick the demon back out. Your heart is now God's dwelling place. No time for nonsense.

So now that the most important part of the blog is written I know a lot of people will want to know exactly how I did it. Here are a few tips.

• Figure out what's most important for your family/ What you spend a lot of time on, and create a "home" with easy access to the materials you need. (For us it was arts and crafts time, so I bought a pencil caddy where all the daily craft supplies go and put all the extra things in a container I could easily access.)

• Sort toys by category. Your kids will be less likely to throw everything on the floor if they have easy access to everything they need without having to sort through all they do not need. (We have 3 clear containers containing their most played-with toys. 1 for the wooden train tracks, one for the magnatiles and, one for their plastic animals. Cars go in their garage and we have a little chest with some random things and 1 bag with dress-up clothes.)

• Put the books you are currently reading on the shelf and put the ones you've already read and want to save in a box.

• Use the space you have! Do not keep more than that. Instead of buying more cupboards and creating more space everywhere for all your stuff, just prioritize what you really need and get rid of the rest. You will not miss them.

I hope this inspires you to start your decluttering journey! We're about to head into Spring so WHAT A BEAUTIFUL time to step in with a clean home and clean heart. For more in-depth teaching on decluttering your heart, you can get my guide and workbook <3 (Also available in Dutch)

https://www.riversofroses.com/guide