Keep Cleaning

Glimmering Butterfly Project – Day 16 (2)

One of the messages that has been coming up a lot has been this urge to “clean.”

From physical to mental to digital.

My mind and heart is just itching to not be “icky.” Whether that’s just-waking-up-grossness or a messy room or a mile-long list of tabs and “to dos” to catch up on.

Getting rid of that clutter and junk out of my mind, my environment, and my digital environment makes a huge difference.

I like my environment to be orderly and neat, but it doesn’t need to be perfect (even if it would be awesome if I could get it to that point – I’m happy with “good enough”).

Especially after watching Jordan B. Peterson’s shorts and lectures on the importance of “cleaning your room,” and similar concepts around making your bed, etc., I’ve found a substantial shift in the way my mind works when it comes to clutter.

It just hates it. My whole body just feels off when things are in a state of disarray. I go through these cycles of massively cleaning everything and then letting things gradually pile up over time.

I’m getting better at putting things away and taking care of small things in THAT moment rather than postponing it for a later time. But the piles of physical clutter and digital obligations continue to pile up over time. And often I need to do a big purge. And it’s almost stupid how quickly it gets done yet how big of a mental relief it gives me.

The digital cleaning takes the longest, surprisingly (or not).

So I’m gradually learning the importance of keeping things clean. Not only does it make my physical and virtual spaces more usable, but it keeps the mind clutter free as well. That time when I started unsubbing people on YouTube and Facebook, the “pull” to be on those platforms decreased quite a bit. There’s still some deep-dive cleaning I need to do on my computers; countless bookmarks, digital obligations I’ve set for myself, and other little online projects left hanging in an infinitely open loop.

But my mind and now my heart likes clean, so I will do everything I can to keep cleaning, because it’s an ongoing thing and I’m learning to accept that it’ll be something I do forever. If I fail to do it, then the piles of junk and mental pressure will just keep building until I collapse.

Keep cleaning.

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Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash