Cleaning for Joy

My bedroom, office, and, to be honest, the rest of my frickin’ house needed some attention. Not just tidying. A real top-to-bottom clean, complete with purging, organizing, dust removal, and the emotional excavation of all the things I had been stepping over, shifting around, and pretending were not quietly judging me.

I didn't want to do it.

My bedroom? I had been avoiding that for three years.

My office? A persistent exercise in avoidance.

The rest of my house? That has been part of the rotation for a while now, moving things from place to place, waiting for me to finally deal with them in a real, permanent way.

What I realized is that all the chaos is preventing me from experiencing joy. Since this year is an experiment in joy, I decided to take a different psychological approach to what needs to get done.

I stopped saying, "I need to clean my room," or "My room needs to be cleaned."

Instead, I considered the result.

"A clean room will bring me joy."

"Being able to find my clothes and wear them will bring me joy."

"An organized office will bring me joy."

“Being able to sew will bring me joy.” The living room needs to be organized for this to happen, because apparently my sewing machine does not thrive under piles of random household debris and good intentions.

This was the approach I needed.

I spent the whole of a Saturday in my bedroom, working toward that joy. I put on Lord of the Rings, planning to watch the trilogy while I cleaned because if I was going into battle with three years of avoidance, I might as well bring hobbits.

I started by stripping the bed, knowing clean bedding would be the ultimate joy. Then I moved to the corner by the door. I took it slow. I started with the tops of my dressers and put my jewelry away instead of leaving it scattered across a field of chaos. Necklaces, earrings, bracelets, little treasures I love but had buried under dust and neglect.

Next, I moved to the TV stand and altar. I was careful to find a home for everything, to clean the layers of dust, to collect the garbage, to make the space feel intentional again.

Then came the chairs.

The chairs had long ago stopped being chairs. They were holding clothes, blankets, and who knows what else, all placed there in moments of exhaustion with the full intention of dealing with them later. But later kept getting pushed off. The piles got bigger. The task got louder. And eventually, those chairs became part of the landscape, like shame with upholstery.

When I finished, all my clothes were put away. The dust was gone. The chairs were clear and ready to serve their true purpose. I was no longer going to trip over a hundred things just to get to the bathroom.

And my bed was clean.

That may not sound profound, but it felt profound. There is something sacred about pulling back clean sheets at the end of a long day and knowing you created that small pocket of peace for yourself.

I didn’t clean my room because I suddenly became a different person who loves cleaning. Let’s not get carried away. I cleaned my room because I finally understood that the mess was standing between me and the life I keep saying I want.

Joy was not hiding somewhere grand. It was under the dust. It was in the chairs I could finally sit in. It was in the clothes I could finally find. It was in the clean sheets waiting for me at the end of the day.

And for one Saturday, I stopped cleaning because I had to.

I cleaned because joy was on the other side.