Spring Cleaning + Nesting = A more organized home

Its that time of year when women everywhere start to focus on Spring Cleaning. It seems almost an instinctive thing that as winter ends and the weather begins to warm up we start opening up our homes and getting rid of the built up grim of the winter months.

This year Spring Cleaning happened to be at the same time as my Nesting Instinct kicked into high gear. That is quite a powerful combination. This time my cleaning and nesting was not just confined to physical cleaning of our home. Sure the tiles have had the life scrubbed out of them in the last month. Our closets have all been reorganized and decluttered. The neglected corners and areas under furniture have been dealt with. The baby things have been cleaned and made ready for when ever this baby decides to arrive. But it was more than all of that.

Our home has also been cleaned spiritually. Some things had slipped in during the last 17 months that we've lived at this home. A movie that was not completely God honoring. A few books left by others visiting us that contained material we didn't need to be exposed to. Seemingly innocent decorative items that had been left in the house for us, that were in fact items of idolatry. Once we realized it was once again time to do a major spiritual clean out of our home we got straight to it. For the last four weeks we've been emptying our home of every item that is not spiritually clean.

This included the major project of redecorating our boy's room. It had been theme decorated to match some bedding. The problem was the theme. It was astrological in the design influences, with pictures of the sun, moon and stars. There was even a matching wall paper border. Ever since we moved in our oldest (and most spiritually sensitive) son had been picking at the wallpaper border. It just took us 16 months to figure out why he had an issue with it rather than it just being paper to tear off the wall. However this border did NOT want to come off the wall. As we suspected it had been stuck on the wall with mastic glue. Removing it was not going to be an easy task. So we bought a wallpaper steamer. And for 2 nap times that week I worked my way around the room steaming the paper off the walls. The area under the window was so badly stuck to the wall that when I tried taking it off it also took off the paint all the way to the dry wall. So that would have to be redone before we could paint. In all it took us a week to get the room redecorated in a calm neutral light blue. We've still got some finishing touches to do in finding some artwork for the walls, but we are determined to be very careful about what goes back in that room, so even choosing artwork will probably take some time. Just seeing the joy on our oldest son's face when we were finally able to let him back into his bedroom has been worth it. He is sleeping so much better now that he isn't surrounded by all that astrological imagery.

Keeping our home clean is a constant work. So too is keeping our home spiritually clean. We had let our guard down some in the busy routines of life with toddlers. We were reminded that letting our guard down is not an option. So we are back into full alert mode, and this time we plan to stay there. Just as we have to keep up the work to maintain a clean and organized home, so we have to keep our spiritual eyes open to maintain the spiritual atmosphere of our home too. If we want our home to be a small taste of heaven on earth then we can never stop working at it, guarding it and keeping it safe from all the influence of the world outside.

I'm so thankful we were able to make this a part of the nesting for the new baby. It is a comfort to know that as this new life arrives within our home they will be arriving to a safe comfortable home, both physically and spiritually.