Mama Monday: Organized Simplicity Week One

For the past month, I was chronicling my journey to become a more gentle mother. One of the things that I tried to work on was to figure out my triggers or things that would set me off and make me lose that gentle spirit. My main trigger was clutter and mess around the house. It just stresses me out! I couldn't concentrate on doing school, talking to the kids, downtime with the hubby, nothing; I only focused on needing to do something about our house which made me grouchy and very un-gentle.

So for the next seven weeks, I'm starting a new journey. You are welcome to join me or just hang out and watch my progress. I was inspired by a free Kindle book that was offered last month, Organized Simplicity by Tsh Oxenreider. It is a great book and gave me a jumping off point for this series of blog posts.

I read once a long time ago that a cluttered, messy house is an outward symptom of your inner life. I don't know if that's always true, but it's certainly true a lot in my life. My mind gets cluttered and messy about lots of things. As any mother knows, our real talent is juggling, juggling home, family, work, church, etc. Trying to get everyone where they need to be, when they need to be there, with all of the stuff they are supposed to have will definitely lead to a cluttered and messy mind. This almost always spills over into your home.

To start down the path of becoming a more organized, simple mom, it will help us define exactly what "simple living" is. In the book, it is described as living holistically with your life's purpose. Let's break this definition apart into it's two pieces.

1. Living holistically. Holistic medicine is when you treat a disease by healing the mind, body, and spirit all at the same time. Well, living holistically is when your spiritual, relational, emotional, intellectual, physical, and financial parts of your life and family are all working together. There is a seamless flow that connects all of these things together. What all of these things flow toward is the next part of the definition.

2. With your life's purpose. What is your life's purpose? More importantly what is your family's purpose? An entire chapter in the book is devoted to figuring out what the purpose for your family is and coming up with a phrase or statement that sums it up. There are a couple of pages of questions that you are supposed to sit down and go through with your spouse to come up with a purpose statement for your family that is simple (not too complicated), timeless (doesn't change depending on how your family changes), and general (you don't have to give specifics). Well, there is no way I could ever get Hubby and I to sit down and go through these questions together, but lucky for me he came up with one for us. I blogged about it here. She recommends writing your family purpose down and displaying it somewhere in your house. Here is ours on the shelf in our living room:

So as I go through this process over the next several weeks, everything I do as I work on organizing and simplifying should be focused on "Acknowledging Him." I can think of no better motivation for my family or myself as a mother, than to make sure that our spiritual, relational, emotional, intellectual, physical, and financial pieces are making an entire life that acknowledges God.

Excited to begin decluttering and destressing in the treehouse,

Chelli