A New Perspective On The Mess

Plus, how to change your shopping habits.

As I walk around my messy house today, I feel different than I usually do.

I feel relaxed instead of stressed. Happy that we can let the mess be. Grateful that home is a place we can rest. Thankful that we have a place we can just be.

After 10 weeks on the market, and an offer that fell through on week 8 (crushing us a little, but thank God a better offer was on the way), our home is finally under contract and we are moving fast towards our closing date at the end of next month.

While there is a lot of work ahead of us - one thing we can do is let the mess be.

My kids can play without my cautionary “we’ll have to clean this up right away because we have people coming to see our house later.”

I can let the clean laundry sit in its happy little pile in the corner of the room if I don’t have the energy for it right now.

The bed can be haphazardly made and I can call that enough.

For so long, a messy home made me feel bad about myself. I felt like I wasn’t doing my job as a mom and wife well because I wasn’t the best homemaker that could keep the house unrealistically tidy all day.

But the past three months changed things. The mess was no longer even an option while we were showing our home. I had to have things cleaned up as soon as they were undone. Constantly hiding the signs of life was exhausting. And while my house felt peaceful, it also felt sterile.

My perspective on the mess has changed. It doesn’t mean laziness. It doesn’t say anything about me. It’s a sign of a lived in home. It’s a reminder that we have a place to lay our heads, a space that holds our things, a place we can relax.

I’m grateful for the better habits I learned while showing our home. I learned to be fast and efficient in cleaning up the mess. I learned to be even more diligent of what we bring into our home. We decluttered more and very little clutter came back in.

I’ll keep those habits close because a space with less mess and less clutter is less stressful. But so is a space where I can let go a little and let the mess be.

Maybe you woke up to a messy home, or you find yourself in the middle of mess during naptime - after lots of play and meals have happened. Or maybe your home has just gotten messy after a long week of work.

I hope that mess doesn’t make you feel overly stressed or like you aren’t good enough at managing your home.

I hope these words remind you that the mess is a sign of life - your life, and the life of the people you love. I hope you remember that a mess might mean you relaxed a little in one area of life while you prioritized something else.

There are times when mess can be stressful. Like when it’s constantly taking us forever to get our home to a place that feels peaceful. Or when we feel like it’s just piling up and always overwhelming us and we don’t even know how to begin to tackle it. That level of mess might be the perfect motivator for decluttering.

But even when we’ve decluttered our whole home, we’ll still find mess, because people live here. So don’t let the normal, daily mess that comes with living boss you around. Don’t let it make you feel bad about yourself. Don’t let it make you feel like you need to constantly go-go-go to keep your home in this unrealistically tidy state.

It might be difficult, but I hope you might shift your perspective on the mess a little, just as I have. I hope you’ll find a way to be grateful for it, and rest when you need to - even if the mess stays in its happy little pile(s) a little longer than you usually let it.

I guess I just hope that you rest. And I hope you don’t feel bad about yourself if your home is a little (or more) messy today. We see perfectly tidy homes on social media, but that isn’t real life.

I lived in a not-real-life state over the past 10 weeks and I couldn’t wait to get my life back.

So let’s not hold ourselves to those fake standards. Let’s let the mess be when we need to, and maybe even allow ourselves to be grateful for it.

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This Week on Minimal-ish…

Of course, how much we bring in to our home will contribute to whether or not we have overwhelming messes or just normal messes. This week we’re talking about some ways to start changing our shopping habits. I bring you some tips to help you in an impulse-shopping moment, along with some challenges you can commit to that might help you bring some long term change if you struggle with your current shopping habits.

You can click the button above or search “Minimal-ish” wherever you listen to podcasts to listen to this week’s episode!

Last week, we talked about budgeting and how to create habits to help us track and stick to a budget. My guest, Carly Hill of Debt Free Mom, knows how to make budgeting so simple and attainable. I love the tips she shares, and if you haven’t listened yet, I’m linking it here. I highly recommend it!

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Sponsor Spotlight

Earth Breeze Eco Sheets are this week’s sponsor, and I am a huge fan of everything they are about. Less messy laundry detergent? Yes please! They look like dryer sheets, but they dissolve in water and become simple, eco-friendly laundry detergent.

You can try them for 40% off at earthbreeze.com/minimalish

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That’s all I have for this edition of the Making Room newsletter! Early next week, paid subscribers will see a new bonus episode! Looking forward to getting that out to you :).

With love,

Desirae