Tips From Your Mentor

Tips from your mentor: Clean your House, open your mind

By Suzanne Milligan, Paths to QUALITY Mentor

Child Care Solutions Kokomo, Indiana

As springtime approaches, you may be thinking about spring cleaning. Springtime usually brings on thoughts of new, crisp, refreshing and rejuvenating. According to Prudent Press Agency, clutter and untidiness within each area of your home causes constriction and inertia in the corresponding aspects of your life. In other words, if your home is cluttered, so is your mind in relation to that area.

Clutter in the Kitchen

The kitchen has been called the "heart of the home,"and with good reason. Here we are nourished and provided for, even if we are dining on frozen entrees zapped in the microwave rather than a homemade meal lovingly presented by mom. An untidy and disorganized kitchen makes it hard to nourish yourself and others, on both physical and metaphysical levels. How you care for your kitchen is a clue about whether you are giving proper attention to your own nourishment and sources of abundance. Cleaning up and de-cluttering your kitchen opens up space for you to receive the support and comfort that you need in life.

Living and Dining Room Clutter

These are spaces where you mingle with and honor your relationships with family and friends. Here you engage with the world while being at home through watching television, reading the paper, or arguing politics with old friends over dinner. Clutter can turn these social spaces into dens of isolation, especially if the mess is so bad that it has been years since you've invited people over. Look around your living and dining rooms to see what they say about your relationship with the rest of the world. Are you hiding your true self from others, burying it in clutter, or putting it on display here.

Cluttered Hallways

Hallways are the arteries and highways of your home. Think of clutter in your hallways as a traffic jam that prevents important connections between different areas of your home and you life. Look at your hallways to see how you feel about your life's path; are they well lit and easily navigable, or do the trip you up? If you feel disconnected between work and family, self and other, what you need and your obligations, it may be time to give your hallways a good clearing out.

Cluttered Closets

Closets represent things that are hidden, unknown, or unrecognized. When we fill our closets with clutter, we stifle our ability to be intuitive and insightful. Cluttered closets can indicate problems that you may not be consciously aware of but which impede your progress through life, work, and relationships nonetheless. Keeping the closet door closed is not an effective solution.