Calm, Clutter-Free, Curated

I'm trying to find it valuable that I create a calm, clutter-free, and curated home. When I watch videos about minimalism they talk about what do you want your home to feel like when you walks into it and those "3 C's" are what comes to mind: calm, clutter-free, and curated home. One of the struggles for me in doing this is that I grew up in a home that didn't prioritize being clutter-free and I still associate that with fun. Having a cluttered home and being able to tolerate a cluttered home means you have a more fun life. But today as I was up before my kids making myself a nutella & banana waffle and about to sit down with my current devotional journal (The Search for Significance by McGee) I realized that mess didn't create a fun life, it was instead my mom's:

• love/care for me: staying up to help me study because I was so anxious

• her spontaneity: taking me out of school one day and taking me to the beach because I was becoming consumed by grades and her showing me grades aren't that most important thing

• seeing her enjoyment of her life: designing our lakehouse because she for a while was going to be an architect, her pouring over Architectural Design magazines for inspiration with a cup of coffee that would inevitably be left in the microwave after she reheated it for the hundredth time and then forgot about it

There are so many parts of her I hope I am like and I'm so grateful I get to pull from. When I think of the love and approval we receive from our Father, I think of ways she has shown me Christ-like love throughout my childhood. I'm fortunate I have gotten to and still get to experience her unconditional love. I wish I was a better daughter. I've heard it said the parent-child relationship is always a lopsided relationship: parent loves the kid more than the kid will ever be able to love the parent. Maybe it's not about me loving and caring for her as much as she loves and cares for me, but instead getting to live life knowing I am already loved. A mother's love of her child is a gift, just like Christ's love and sacrifice for us is a gift. Maybe my job isn't to match that love and return it, but to live out of it.

There will be times, usually when I'm tired and attackable, when I'm working on creating a calm, clutter-free, curated home and Satan will come in with horrible hate: "you think folding laundry matters?," "you think this makes you valuable?," "you should be so embarrassed this is how you are using your time. How insignificant." Many times it will bring me to tears as I'm putting away my husband's underwear and can feel like this is so pointless! Why am I doing this at all?! Then I sleep and wake up and empty the dishwasher that we started the night before (always, well usually) and see the ease and smooth flow it adds to our life and feel: this is important. This helps our family run calmly, order from something that so easily becomes chaos.

My value doesn't come through having a calm, clutter-free and curated home, but it isn't wrong to work towards that order in my family's life. My value comes from being a creation who is fully pleasing to God, which I have become because of the act of love on the cross. Praise be to Jesus.