Thankful Thursday: Therapeutic Cleaning

I am going to be very blunt.  Yesterday was an extremely horrible day for me.  I had to register for classes which turned out to be a nightmare at the last minute and I was also at work dealing with high-schoolers at the same time.  I plan on graduating early and because I had not seen a certain requirement for my major, I thought I was going to have to graduate later which pushed back all of my concrete life plans I had made in the past couple years.  I ended up fixing most of the problem, but I still will not be able to study abroad like I was hoping to do.  Without going into too much boring detail, I was completely overwhelmed to the point where I had lost my appetite and just wanted to lay in bed and fast forward to Thanksgiving.

I eventually talked to some people, my mom in particular, and felt somewhat better emotionally, but physically I was still feeling very drained, dizzy, and tense.  I didn’t want to feel that way any longer after I had accepted that I will not be able to follow my school plan like I had wanted to.  I looked around me and figured out one thing that could help me, that always helps me, with my stress.  Take a look at my room and you’ll guess what I’m talking about.

 GASP!  Clutter everywhere!

 Stuff strewn all over my bed.   Shoes, clothes, boxes, and bags on the floor.   Craft-related things, more bags, and more clothes.

I hope you didn’t lose all respect for me.  I am actually a pretty neat person.  I like things to be fairly orderly and if there is any clutter I prefer it to be on a desk or table instead of on the floor.  I find when I let my room go like this my mind goes with it.  To de-stress I decided to play some Christmas music (which almost always makes me happy) while cleaning my room.  Let me say, that it not only made the physical symptoms go away, but I completely lost all sadness I had about not being able to study abroad.  I got my mind off of my problems and was able to declutter my room.  I even dedicated a whole drawer to craft supplies, too, which made me really happy!  Now my room is clutter-free!

 My once pretty bulletin board now looks very bland after my mod podge shoe project, but that will change this weekend.  I have big plans for it and hope to get it off of my desk and on to the wall.

So what exactly am I thankful for, you ask?  I am thankful that God instills in each one of us a way to calm ourselves down.  Along with prayer, we each have something we can do that will help reduce any stress we are feeling.  Some people may not know what their stress-reliever is, but if you look at what you naturally do when you are stressed or the things that naturally relax you, you will probably learn that you have your own as well.  I do not necessarily enjoy cleaning, but organizing things and having everything orderly clears my mind and takes a lot of my attention so I am no longer thinking about the things that are stressing me out.  My mom and I are both this way.  We both are avid furniture rearrangers as well.  It’s just a nice way to clear your head and start with something fresh at the end.

What are you thankful for?  What do you do to clear stress from your life?

This post is also a part of Amanda at Serenity Now’s 27 Days of Thankful. Check her out until Thanksgiving to see what she is thankful for!