Are you gleaming any hope as you read and study these lessons? Are you seeking after what you want? I can present these things to you, explain them to you, but you need to do your part, which is to pick them up, and move forward with them. Have you been visiting Victory Campaign 2024, and watching the videos posted there? You may not like or value everything posted, but as you study, which includes reading and hearing, your heart beliefs will start to change and you will start saying, thinking, and doing things differently.
Let us just imagine that you are now debt free, you have your working homekeeping schedule and your home is balanced, what do you see? Are you feeling peace and joy? Do you feel like you finally arrived, and now you can run after your dreams and vision? Are the shackles of burdens laying at your feet?
In our last lesson we talked about you focusing on change, from moving from one season to the next. I have decided that I have made so many quilts that I have no space to store them anymore, and my family has requested I don’t make them anymore quilts or crocheted blankets. I have approximately 20 quilt tops finished but haven’t any desire to spend the time or money on completing them by backing them and quilting them. Last year during a decluttering I gave away all my scrap fabric, boxes of it, but didn’t touch my fat quarters and yardages of fabric. I have also mentioned I have switched over to sewing clothing. One season lasted over 20 years, now a new season has come. This spring, during a new decluttering, I must decide whether to give away, sell or keep that fabric.
I have some fabric in their own boxes, with patterns and matching fabric to make into a quilt. Other fabrics are in boxes with like kind fabrics, with no plans for them. As I write, I can feel the emotional attachment I have to these fabrics. The fabric is taking up valuable real estate, and I haven’t touched the fabric in years. Some fabrics in my stash have to be at least 15 years old. My mind says either sell them or give them away. My emotions are saying, but what if someday you want them.
If I ran all my time on my emotions, it would bring me right back to where I was in my early adulthood. I thought I loved this person. I thought I could change this person. I thought I was in control because I refused to talk to that person. I thought I was alright, because I didn’t cry myself to sleep that night. I look back now and see how immature I was to allow myself to be led by my emotions and the complete mess they got me into. I didn’t know that emotions are not how to lead your life, they are a byproduct of life, not a road map.
The truth about my fabric is, they are useless sitting in a box. Fabric doesn’t love me, care about or does it need me. Its cotton woven into a strip called fabric yardage. Yes, it is pretty. Yes, I can mold it into something useful, like a quilt, an apron, clothing, table linens, or make cat toys out of it, but is having boxes of it worth the exhaustion it now brings me? Does not fulfilling the dream of making certain fabric into a quilt worth the emotional drain on me now?
A number of years ago, after moving my treasured dishes and good cutlery from one province to another to another, I found myself in need of new dishes and cutlery. My dishware was a gift my parents gave me when I was about 10 years old or so. Me and my little sister would walk every Saturday morning to the mall and buy one or two pieces of open stock dishes for our hope chest. When I asked my children if they would ever want them, they replied, no. So, I decided to use them. During one move, most of the plates broke, and now I only have a few bowls left, and the cutlery has lost a few pieces. These are things that have a special memory attached to them, but because there are only a few left, doesn’t steal the memories I have.
That doesn’t mean I have to get rid of all my fabric, as I have some pieces large enough to use to sew a blouse or dress. I can keep one or two boxes of fabric that I have a plan for, but seriously, what the heck do I need to keep totes of fabric for quilting for? I wrote about a woman in the book, “Be in Season, Out of SEASON,” who had insured her fabric stash. Now, it could be worth a lot of money if she sold it piece by piece on the internet, which takes so much time to photograph each piece, post it, package it, and mail it. But from the story I got, she is just hoarding it, an investment for her family. I believe she got a high of pleasure when she bought it, but how much joy can she get from a piece of fabric in some bin in her basement? Her family one day will have to deal with it. Will they sell it and make a few bucks or divide it up between themselves or just curse their mother for leaving a huge mess for them to clean up. What will happen if the mother needs to go into extended care and she refuses to go because her fabric is in the home?
This long introduction has led us to frugalism, hoarding and minimalism. The older I get the more appealing minimalism becomes. I have moved so many times, and hauled so much junk around, only to give so much away, or sell it so low just to get rid of it.
There are degrees of application to each of these, and degrees of emotional attachment or detachment to these three things. I have met some people who are so attached to their possessions, they would rather die than remove the very things that are killing them from their home. I know some people that are so minimalistic that their homes are bare and lack any personality. As well I know some people who are so frugal that they will deny themselves basic needs.
As a housekeeper, you are the one who must clean up, organize, and take care of all the possessions in your home. The fewer things you have, the easier it is to maintain. Visualize your bedroom. Is your bed made, the clothes put away in the drawers and closet, the surfaces are dusted, and the floor clean? If not, why? Is it because you have too many clothes, or boxes of stuff on the floor, and clothing draped over chairs or dressers? My room contains two chests of drawers, with clothing in them, a nightstand, a cut down crib made into a dog bed for my Saint Bernard, a small wire cage for my small dog (he loves crates), a long wall mounted shelf, filled with quilts, and a tiny 1950s size closet. When my room becomes a mess, I have found two reasons for this, laziness and drop and go,
Drop and go usually occurs when I am busy doing something else, and just drop something in the bedroom. I might have supper on the go and need to drop a hamper of unfolded clothing on the floor. I might be busy working outside, trying to get the garden in or harvested, and my housework gets pushed back because there is only one of me. Or I have too much stuff and something needs to go, and I am too lazy to deal with it and drop and go, until I become so frustrated, I need to deal with the problem, before permanent dust bunnies move in.
I have often heard that the condition of your home reflects your heart and life. I think in part that is true. As I talked about earlier, my emotional attachment to fabric is causing me grief and frustration. When I am too lazy to put something away, it causes me to experience a burst of anger when I can’t find what I am looking for, or trip over it, because I didn’t put it away. Sometimes, I just have to accept things are not done, because I have too much on my plate in this season, such as gardening, harvesting, or unexpected guests arrive, and those things just go haywire for a time, and I will deal with them later.
Decluttering your environment is healthy, not only for your emotions, but also for getting rid of dust, mold, and grime. When was the last time you pulled those cardboard boxes away from the basement wall to inspect for insects, mice, mold, and water damage? When was the last time you took down your curtains in that bedroom you hardly enter? How often do you clean your oven? Believe it or not, these tiny things affect your health, both physically and mentally.
If you can’t deal with these physical things, how are you going to deal with the underlying causes of messes? If you can see the chaos around you, but don’t do anything about it, how are you going to deal with the unseen stuff inside you? Here is the beautiful part, as you deal with the stuff outside, it helps to clean up the stuff inside. If you are needing to do a full on declutter, I suggest reading my book “Be in Season, Out of SEASON.” In there is a full teaching on decluttering, dealing with the emotional and physical aspects of it. There is also a teaching on the fantasy side of you.
Minimalism doesn’t mean you don’t hoard things. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but it can happen. If you walk into someone’s home and everything appears minimalistic, it doesn’t mean somewhere there are things one could consider hoarded. In a closet, under the bed, or in a storage unit. Perhaps it is in their heart. Minimalism doesn’t mean they are frugal either, cheap or depriving themselves of things. Some people would rather spend their money on traveling or saving for certain things. Some people would rather spend their money on landscaping, growing food, having animals, working, than spend time on their possessions.
Merriam-Webster defines frugality as the quality or state of being frugal : careful management of material resources and especially money : thrift. As with hoarding and minimalism, there are different degrees or expressions. A good housekeeper knows the balance of money coming in and money going out and living below their means.
When you hear people talk about frugalism, they often imagine someone in many of the YouTube videos of people living off food that comes from a dumpster dive in the middle of the night, or eating only food that has been discounted and on the verge of spoilage. You watch as people explain they only use a couple pieces of toilet paper or eat discounted meat even if they don’t enjoy that kind of meat. To me, that is not an enjoyable life. There might be a time in life you really have to buckle down and live like this, but it shouldn’t be a way of life.
Why do people take frugalism, minimalism and hoarding to such extremes? I believe the underlining cause is fear. I know someone who has a condo, but only spends a few hours a day in it. It was bought as an investment, but she has furnished it, in a minimalistic style, however, she sleeps, eats, and lives with her elderly mother and aunt. She is afraid of food, so she eats to survive.
Fear makes people do some strange things, and keeps people locked in a prison, even if the cell door is wide open. Some people have no awareness of fear and do some pretty strange things, to the point of putting their very lives at risk. I mentioned earlier I married alcohol abusers. I was fearful to move away from them, even though my life was filled with chaos and pain. Fear held me down, preventing me from walking through that open door. I allowed the alcohol abuser to stand in front of that door, because I believed he was my god, even though I was mistreated by him. My fear held me back, not him. I thought he stood in front of the door, blocking my escape, but in reality, the open door was there calling me through the whole time.
The definition of frugal is someone who is careful with money and possessions. When I finally left my alcohol abuser, I had to learn to manage my money. I am still learning how to properly handle money, even after all this time. I had some deep heart beliefs about money, that are now truly being dealt with. I never learned how to handle it, when I had it in abundance or in lack of it, I was taught that credit cards are necessary, and that spending less wasn’t of greater value than possessing something now.
When you find yourself in the extreme of something, it is like a warning alarm. When you are deceived you don’t know. The truth will set you free. Take a good long look at what you read in this lesson. Are you finding something a little uncomfortable to read? Are you looking at something in your life through rose-coloured glasses, and now is the time to take them off, because they have filled your heart with wrong beliefs? We can all gain knowledge but without putting pressure on that knowledge to turn it into experience and wisdom, it won’t take us anywhere. If you step forward, and find it hard to push through, just like the introduction used the doctor saying push, don’t shrink back and say its too hard, I want to go home. Keep the pressure on, until you have your breakthrough. With me concerning money, I have rose up and fell down, studied, practiced, advanced, and fell, got back up, dusted myself off, read, studied, moved ahead. Every year, I find myself advancing. One day, I will have all the knowledge, wisdom, and experience, to handle money with ease and success.
Maybe you are gifted in the area of money, but you struggle with hoarding, violent relationships, identity, or commitment. Everyone has at least one thing, and that one thing could take months or years of putting pressure on it until break through.
Take the time and go back and highlight the things that don’t sit comfortably with you. Things that you think are you, but you are not sure. The thing about hidden secrets in your heart, is just that, they are hidden secrets, and until you discover them, you don’t know that they are hidden in your heart.
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