Embracing Home Management

Last week, during our current Six Weeks to Sanity course run, Presbytera Stacey Dorrance gave us a fantastic pep talk on beauty, order, and the rhythms of productivity. She also gave us a tour of her beautiful home and showed us how she organized her various living spaces (kitchen, bathroom, office, garage…). Oh gosh, it was inspiring! I’ve heard her speak on home management many times throughout the past five years, and every time, it just lights me up with motivation.

After decades of feeling overwhelmed by my own messiness, the energizing rush of learning and applying new methods for maintaining calm, loveliness, and wellness in my physical environment has been eye-opening, to say the least. Creating a home that is warm, beautiful (to me), clean, hospitable, free of clutter, prayerful, organized, and inviting takes hard work and intentionality. The benefits, however, are life-changing!

Shifting my attention away from circumstances I cannot control and onto the things I can (my living and workspace, my perspectives, the words I speak, how I use my time, etc.) is incredibly stabilizing. It also opens up new possibilities for loving and serving others. It’s no small thing to bloom where you’ve been planted and to be faithful in the “little things,” which are actually really important things of eternal significance. Infusing our daily responsibilities with gratitude and dignity produces meaning and contentment.

Here are a few little home projects that have brought me joy this week:

Creating a pantry in my kitchen:

I love our 100-year-old house. She has character and charm! What she is lacking, however, is pantry space. Since moving here in 2020, finding a home for my canned goods, pastas, grains, tomato sauce, etc. has been challenging. I tried using the basement as extra storage but running up and down the stairs was not ideal. While at the Goodwill with my mom, we found some sturdy metal storage shelving for $19.99. I brought it home and after removing a shelf that held my tea supplies, found a perfect spot for it! I already owned the baskets so all in all, it was a very inexpensive solution that makes me so happy every time I look at it!

Simplifying my kitchen sink:

A “hot spot” is any area of your living space that tends to collect clutter. The top of my kitchen sink has always been a magnet for cleaning supplies, sponges, and scrapers. To solve this dilemma and add some beauty to my dishwashing station, I organized the area under my sink and invested in a three-dollar (on clearance) black hand soap dispenser to hold my dish detergent.

Sprucing up my main floor bathroom:

Over time, the green paint in this bathroom had gotten chipped and dingy. After a thorough cleaning, including decluttering the drawers and closet, I touched up the paint and changed out the artwork. It now feels like a brand new bathroom, and it cost me zero dollars!

As with any new endeavor, getting started is the hardest part. My home was certainly not transformed in a day, but after several days (weeks, months) of tackling one little area at a time, order and rest emerged from the chaos. Once you get the ball rolling, these home-simplifying projects become addictive in the best way. Fifteen minutes here, thirty minutes there, can make a big difference in terms of developing renewed appreciation for your home/apartment/room and reducing your stress levels.