Spring Clean, From Within!

I looked around and saw that I needed to tidy up. Not a sweep through the room, not just moving things around here and there and calling it a day. But a deep clean, the kind that takes up your whole day or even your entire weekend and makes your house look like a construction site in the best possible way. Where you’re on your knees scrubbing your oven because you want it to look and smell brand new. Where you play "where’s the missing puzzle?" with your food storage boxes trying to find their lid. When you wait for an overcast day so you can finally get to clean your windows because that’s just not something you get to do everyday. Ah, the joys of spring cleaning.

They say when your house is clean your mind becomes clear and if there’s one thing that I desperately needed, then it was a clear mind. After battling what seemed to be the final boss of all flus — I’m talking chills and fever and not being able to keep food down and sounding like Lil Wayne and dealing with a persistent cough that made me sound like a woman who had been chain-smoking for the past 40 years; spraining my foot because I took a nasty fall down the stairs— Thinking I’d broken my foot because I couldn’t get up, not even with assistance, my butt was glued to the bottom of that staircase y’all! And I can laugh about it now but in that moment? Your girl was going through it— and generally not being able to catch a break because life decided to life in the worst possible ways and well you know what they say about rain: when it rains, it pours.

Spring has sprung and with it, the first sights of budding cherry blossoms and trees starting to break dormancy. With daylight saving meaning that the sun would say good morning before 8am and that the moon would say good night long after 8pm. The air smelled like spring and even though warm temperatures were yet to not only make an entrance but stay for longer than merely a couple of days, there is a sense of rejuvenation and rebirth in the air. The kind of feeling only spring could bring about. With spring comes the need for a good old fashioned spring cleaning: out with the old and in with the new. But I wanted spring cleaning to go beyond just my four walls, the cupboard, the windows,  the floors, my closet  (I had been dreading taking inventory and decluttering my closet space for so long but there’s no way around it because I can’t always get into a frenzy anytime there’s an event coming up and I don’t know what to wear because “I don’t have anything in my closet.” Same old dance, same old song and it’s getting well, for the lack of a better word: old. Where was I? Ah yes: I wanted this spring cleaning to start from the inside. I wanted to declutter from within. Take inventory of my emotional state, my physical state, my spiritual state. Look at habits that I had chosen to be a part of my routine and deep clean. What was working for me? What was making my life harder than it had to be? What did I like about myself? Did I like myself? What could use a change? A glow up, if you want to call it that. I didn’t just want to feel good about cleaning the space I lived in, I wanted to feel good about me and who I was. I’m glad I had picked up my journal at the end of last year and had started journaling more regularly again. So I picked up my journal and wrote down “spring clean, from within?” The question mark bothering me because there were no if’s but’s or maybe’s. I quickly and neatly replaced the question mark with an exclamation mark. Much better. Because this was something that needed to be done. I went through my list of affirmations, my list of daily habits, my morning routines, my nighttime routines, my daily to do lists and weekly to do lists. Looked at the vitamins I was taking and the benefits I had seen and those that were yet to be found. I took a deep look at myself. I even went as far as deleting contacts that I hadn’t been in contact  with for the past two years, deleted apps that had unloaded but were still taking up unnecessary space. What was serving a purpose in my life and what was just occupying space? I looked at the ins and outs I had written down at the beginning of the year and let out a sigh of relief because there were some things on the list I had already started implementing. Go me! Sometimes, when life is a lot we tend to just function, and not only that we add on a lot more clutter and then in turn wonder why there is no space for us to unfold and to grow. But no more of that. Use the change in season, use spring relieving winter of its seasonal duties, use it to declutter. You know, spring clean from within. And while you’re at it, clean your house.

Love,

Maame.