Cleaning to Cleanse

Yesterday I experienced a natural high.

The old, slobbish me would have never believed the current Meghan if she were to tell her that this high arose from cleaning her entire house.

Two days ago, the sliding door that leads to our deck had caused four of my family members to scrunch their faces up in agitation because it kept getting jammed half-way through the act of opening it. I watched as stress consumed each of these individuals for a few seconds after they wriggled it open, and then watched as they proceeded to walk through it and ignore the jam.

This is a common theme among many fast-paced American families. We pass by a clock that wears the time of two hours past or we put up a picture to cover a conspicuous hole in the wall when we don't have time to mend our environment because we're too busy trying to mend ourselves. In order to invigorate the mind, however, we must invigorate our living spaces.

I hunted down a can of WD-40 in my garage after witnessing the fourth display of door-provoked agitation. I greased the bottom of the door, and the door suddenly began to slide like a bar of soap on the bottom of a bathtub. I had fixed it! I actually fixed it. It required maybe two minutes of effort to save my family the stress of having to constantly pry open an annoying door whose original function was to slide.

I was inspired by the door crisis, and spent the next two whole days re-modeling and de-cluttering the whole house. My room was targeted first, as I attacked all the furniture and threw away useless junk that had accumulated there for years. Random vines that used to hang from the ceiling (I had a jungle theme) and tacky plastic stars that cluttered the walls now reside in large black trash bags, and everything is more organized.

The rest of the house required that I seriously step up my game. The disorganization in my home does not occur because we fail as a household to maintain order; it is just a result of many minor instances of laziness that are 100% preventable. My mother labors constantly to keep her house clean with painstaking efforts, but wherever there are two men and two dogs occupying the same space there are inevitable sanitary emergencies.

It's so easy to be a slob when you believe that there are more important things to worry about in life, but the reality is that your environment directly impacts your mood. If I want to live by the four agreements and feel like I am born to run, I can't expect to give myself entirely to these tasks unless my living space encourages me to do it. Clutter overwhelms and stresses, while an organized, clean area invites action and healthy living. But what is the one ingredient for an organized paradise? Self-discipline.

Self-discipline makes us stronger people. If you concentrate fully on any task that you do and let each moment consume you, you will never miss a chance to live. If you procrastinate, your mind will grow heavy. There is plenty of time in each day to devote your mind to self-discipline and to then allow it to recuperate at a later period. We are fully capable of applying the amount of self-discipline that maintaining a clean home requires, but sometimes we get lazy. This is why I decided to create reminder notes.

In order to encourage self-discipline in my household, I planted florescent reminder notes around my house in formerly clutter-concentrated areas. I actually made signs that say "clutter-free zone" for open spaces and "take me out when I am full" for the underbelly of our trashcan lid. We definitely don't need these notes, and most people would say they are excessive and ridiculous. But reminders can’t hurt. I want the makeover of my home to last because clean living space actually gave me a natural high.

During my run yesterday, I felt like a champ. I burst down the road for a 4 miler, and didn't slow down until I reached my front door again. I couldn’t fathom how having a clean area to live in could actually energize me, but now I realize how this was possible. If you let your environment get out of control, you feel like a failure on a small level. Letting your home get messy means that you have surrendered to external pressures, because you have allowed them to make you feel that you don't have enough time to take care of your living space. When you regain control of your personal setting, you regain control of your life. Why shouldn't we give ourselves time to make sure doors are fixed and floors are clean? We deserve it.

Nurturing your environment is a harmless drug that can bought with self-discipline. WD-40 something. Clean to cleanse yourself and you will feel fabulous.

Invigorate your living space, invigorate your mind.