The other day, I returned home from a short trip, and immediately unpacked and washed my clothes and put everything away. It felt nice.
The next morning, I was feeling a bit unsettled. So I started cleaning. I cleaned in the kitchen and outside in the yard, and I swept the garage. I felt so good.
I’ve come to realize that cleaning, organizing, and decluttering are a form of self-care for me. These activities help me feel settled and like I’m taking care of my life.
Yes, cleaning and organizing can be overwhelming and are often avoided. But if you take a small corner to tidy up, and let yourself just enjoy the cleaning, you can get lost in it. It feels nice to make things nicer.
Yes, there’s always more to do—but that’s a disempowering way to think about it. Why does it matter that there will always be more to do? That just means there’s more self-care available. Just do a small portion right now, and enjoy it. A good analogy is that there will always be more tea to drink. I focus on only a single cup of tea at a time—and enjoy it fully.
As you clean, you might feel things getting cleaner. As you organize, you might feel like you’re making lasting progress toward an improved living space. And as you declutter, you might feel the liberation that comes with shedding excess items.
We can extend this self-care of cleaning and organization into every part of our lives. Today, I worked on organizing my finances. I’ve been fixing little things around the house. This morning, I deleted a bunch of apps from my phone, and turned off a lot of notifications to simplify my phone experience. I also unsubscribed from a bunch of newsletters and started clearing out my email inbox.
You can think of taking a task from your task list as a form of this self-care—one item at a time, taking care of your life.
It can be overwhelming and dreadful, or it can be nourishing and lovely. It’s a choice, and I choose to feel the care that I bring to every sweep of the broom or rake.
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