Week 3- Making Your Home a Haven

These weeks challenge for Making Your Home a Haven is to clean up your clutter!  It is actually two-fold.  1) Clean up the Cutter in your home.  This is a project that I started in January.  I am not a pack rat nor do I consider myself a clutterbug but I found our home was being taken over by stuff.  Something, many things, we didn't notice or use.  So I, as I've talked about in other posts, began going room by room, closet by closet, shelf by shelf - asking myself  a) Do I love it b) Do I need it and c) Do I use it.  I have cleaned out tons and tons of stuff.  It not only cleaned out my house and helped me earn some money through a garage sale; it also taught me something about spending.  Be careful what you spend your money on because it will end up given away or sold some day.  It makes me stop and think before I pull out the money - before I buy something, I ask myself similar questions such as a) Where will I put it and what will it replace? b) Do I already have something like this? and so on.  Trust me, I still buy things - I just try to be a little more cautious.  Even with my latest crafting trend - I surprise myself sometimes by finding things to use up at home instead of buying something else.  Even though I have a good handle on clutter, in a small home, I find that I always have to be cleaning up those "hotspots" where stuff gets set down, like the dining room table!!

So the actual challenge is to list a few spots in your home that make you visually stressed because of the clutter; now figure out how to organize it or clean it. 

2) Clean out the clutter in your spiritual life.  This fall I joined an accountability group with 5 other woman across the country called Good Morning Girls (You can find more info here)  We "talk" once a day via our own little private blog and talk about what we are learning in our quiet time as well as prayer requests and just what's going on.  It's been a great thing.  For the first time in a long time, having a quiet time seems "normal" to me.   The challenge today is to rid yourself of spiritual clutter.  Take time to repent daily for your sins.  As I build my prayer time, this is something that I am also doing.  I have to start with me first and let God do the rest!

Check out more of this weeks challenge at http://www.womenlivingwell-courtney.blogspot.com/

So, my candle is burning and I'm praying for peace in my home.  I love to see and smell that candle and prayer is always a good thing, is it not? 

I hope you take up this challenge too; it really will make a difference in your heart and home.