Years ago, I watched the movie My Life starring Michael Keaton and Nicole Kidman. (No spoilers here but I do highly caution you if you are sensitive to grief.) Oddly, my main takeaway from that film is a single line, “Set your house in order.” In the context of the film, it’s a very serious line, but in the context of everyday life, I have found the line beneficial. Setting my house in order has been a goal for me ever since.
Yes, it is taking that long, but it took that many years to get my life out of order. What does out of order look like? That depends on the person. For me, it looks like a few different things. It looks like clutter that I’ve been clearing out. It looks like cell phone bills from 2006 sitting in a pile ready for the shredder after I pulled them from a box of “filing.” It looks like a piece of trash next to the trash can when I threw it and missed. It looks like the clothes hanging in the closet that I don’t wear anymore, and I need to take to the local donation spot. It looks like the salt packets laying on the counter that came in the last fast food meal that I need to empty into a container for natural weed killer. It’s a daily process. It’s a bunch of small conscientious decisions to do better each day.
That list sounds like I never clean up after myself, but it’s also way better than I used to be. I used to think that I had to keep every last slip of paper for filing. I used to have an entire floorboard of trash in my car that I only cleaned out if someone needed to ride with me. I once had a closet so full of clothes that the rod of the closet bowed under the weight of things hanging from one end to the other. I used to keep all the seasoning and sauce packets until things were wedged so tightly in a bag or jar that they became indistinguishable from each other. I have been making progress at “setting my house in order” for years, and I intend to keep improving.
I’m not a minimalist by any means, but as I get older, I do find that I can live with less. (I wish I had realized this in my twenties, but I digress.) I also find that there’s a limit to how far “my house” stretches. What I mean by that is I’ve learned to only be responsible for “my” house and helping the people I love with their houses, but I acknowledge that I can’t set everyone’s house in order. During a criminal justice class, we had the discussion of whether we could change the world. Some people said no. I said yes. How? We can change the world by deliberate, positive, kind, and loving actions that reach people, and in turn, some of those people will do the same for others and so on. Imagine dropping a pebble in the middle of a perfectly still pond. The ongoing ripples are the change. I can set my house in order and encourage other people by a ripple effect, but I can’t put their houses in order for them.
As I was driving today, I thought about how I used to let trash collect in my car without a second thought. Now I move trash from my car to a trash can as soon as I get home because I don’t like trash lingering in my vehicle. That’s a little way I have learned to set my house in order. Whereas I used to keep every slip of paper like it was a matter of national security, I now keep a handy online resource to tell me how many years of documents should be on file. Setting my house in order is an ongoing process. I won’t complete it in a day, and there’s a good possibility I’ll be working on it until I die. However, I can see the change and the progress, and I can feel the difference between then and now. It keeps me moving in the right direction. If you’re experiencing that feeling of being overwhelmed by stuff, then I recommend the practice of setting your house in order. Not only does it clear the physical stuff but it helps clear the spiritual, mental, and emotional places as well. You don’t have to take it as seriously as the movie, but just make it a healthy, daily practice to improve your own surroundings. Then step back and look for the ripple effect.
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Inspirational verse for the day:
Then he said, “Beware! Guard against every kind of greed. Life is not measured by how much you own.” Luke 12:15 (NLT)
All Things Subject to Change 