Order: a Heaven-made
Law
Daryl Hoole
We have found enemy number
one to succesful home management: its's too much stuff!
Many of us are victims
of an epidemic of over-consumption and are buying too
much and throwing away too little. Mom has five
pairs of black pants, ten white blouses, and twenty
pairs of shoes. The house is overrun by stray
socks, lost Legos, and loose DVDs. Dresser drawers
are coughing up T-shirts by the dozen. The teenager's
room looks like a laundry bin. The children's
toys are too many, too broken, or too mixed up in the
bottom of a box for the children to play constructively
and really have fun. The garage hasn't housed
a car for at least five years, and who knows what's
in the garage anyway!
All this stuff makes clutter,
and clutter detracts from the appearance of the home
and interferes with its function. We owe
ourselves and our families something better.
Besides, life is too precious
to spend it struggling with stuff. Money and time
are wasted. In fact, it's stated that the
average American burns fifty-five minutes a day - roughly
twelve weeks a year - looking for things they know they
own but can't find. (Newsweek, 7
June, 2004)
Furthermore, our chaotic
world seems even more out of control when our house
is in disarray. The stress of our hectic lifestyles
is only exacerbated when we can't find what we're
looking for, the laundry is behind, dinner is late,
and no one wants to help because the situation looks
hopeless. Most of us feel overwhelmed and
immobilized by messes. And saddest of all, this
physical disarray leads to spiritual disorder because
the Spirit will not dwell in a state of confusion.
Well, enough of the bad
news. The good news is that there is no better
time of year to make a change, to put your house in
order than spring time. (If your home already
is orderly, then rejoice and be glad and read on to
see how you might encourage and help others.)
Winter has melted into spring in the northern hemisphere,
and this change of seasons is a reminder of the prevailing
law of order in the universe. This
eternal, heaven-made law blesses this earth; it can
also bless our homes.
Our new book, The Ultimate
Career, devotes twenty-four pages to helping one
establish order at home. We suggest "de-junking"
as the first step, so we've chosen it as the subject
of this writing.
As a premise for "de-junking"
we recommend the maxim by William Morris that states:
"Have nothing in your house that you do not know
to be useful or believe to be beautiful."
A smart method is to sort
items into three piles: one to discard, a second to
give away; and a third to put away - and then go
to work.
If you're reluctant
to part with items you no longer need, consider that
you're not giving them up, but rather you're
giving them away to grateful benefactors. In other
words, you're streamlining your house and being
charitable at the same time. It's a win-win
deal.
To overcome the seeming
endlessness and even hopelessness of de-junking an area,
it can be helpful to place a time or number limit on
your efforts. For instance, each time you work
allow yourself forty-five minutes (or some such block
of time) to "hit it hard" and make a real
difference in one area of your home. Or
challenge yourself to put twenty-five items (or whatever
number appeals to you) in each sorting pile and then
go to work.
Now, one word of caution:
empty only one closet, one area, or one room at a time.
If you dump everything at once, you may never recover.
The other day my friend,
Marie, pointed out that the kitchen junk drawer (or
catch-all drawer) is somewhat a microcosm of the entire
house, and all the principles of de-junking and organizing
are represented there. Besides, it can be a quick
fix. Therefore it's a good place to launch
your de-junking attack. Begin by emptying the
entire drawer on the counter and then sorting the contents:
throw away, put away, and return to drawer.
The throw-away pile consists
of such items as notes and scraps of paper that have
served their purpose, stray screws, broken pencils,
dried-up pens, out-dated phone lists, and other odds
and ends of no value. The put-away pile is for
the extra note pads that have collected, the two of
the three rolls of cellophane tape that have somehow
ended up there and could be better used somewhere else
in the house, a screwdriver that needs to be returned
to the tool box in the garage, and other such misplaced
items. The third pile consists of everything that
actually belongs in the drawer. Before putting
the items back, however, it's important to arrange
some organizers and containers to hold everything in
its place. Then each time you look in the drawer
and find pen and paper just where it should be, it's
likely you'll feel a bit of satisfaction and experience
a little burst of energy that will move you toward another
spot to work on. The better you do, the better
you can continue to do. Or in other words, nothing
succeeds like success.
Establishing an orderly
house requires desire, good habits, energy, personal
discipline, and the cooperation of family members.
(Future columns will address the topics of space
utilization and inviting family members' cooperation
and help.) Extra effort may be required initially,
but the benefits go on and on. The returns for
living a true principle far outweigh any investment
it might have required.
In the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints, we preach and teach the
ideal. It is according to the Lord's plan
that we are not provided with excuses to be weak, but
rather that we are given reasons to be strong.
Fully realizing that we will not, in this life at least,
attain the ideal in everything we do and say every day,
we are nevertheless urged "to press forward with
a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness
of hope" toward eternal life (2 Nephi 31:20).
Expectations are high,
not to make us feel unworthy, but to assure us that
our Father in Heaven believes in us, that he loves us
so much that he is preparing us to return and live with
him. As we strive to reach this most lofty and
glorious of all estates, we are beset with countless
human frailties and challenging circumstances.
These are not to discourage and deter us, but rather
they are to teach us to trust in the Lord through faith
in him, to rely on him through humility, and
to perfect ourselves through repentance.
In the dedicatory prayer
of the Kirtland Temple in 1836, the Lord revealed through
the Prophet Joseph Smith the high standard of devotion
he desired for his people as they endeavored to become
temple-worthy and visit his house. This is also
the pattern for each of us to follow as we strive to
establish gospel-centered homes: "Organize
yourselves; prepare every needful thing; and establish
a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting,
a house of faith a house of learning, a house of glory,
a house of order, a house of God" (D&C
88:229).
The principle of order
is for blessing your home as well as the world. It's
a heaven-made law.
Please see this column on May 8th for the
"Top Job," a refreshing tribute to mothers.
