March 7, 2017
Cher Gilroy
Out of all four seasons, Spring has to be my favorite. Yes, it is my birthday season, but there is just something about the season that makes all things seem new. Winter is a dark, grey time of year. It is cold outside and the days are shorter. It seems to make people sad and depressed after they get through the holiday time. When spring arrives, we get a little more rain and it warms up, the flowers begin to bloom and people are a little more friendly because everything seems brighter. Leaves and grass are green and sprouting, nature gives us more color to enjoy, and the birds!! The sound of birds singing…one of my favorite parts of spring.
Now, I am not saying that spring doesn’t come with its own set of problems like mosquitoes, flies, and allergies to name a few. For the most part, Spring brings more joy, and a desire for fresh starts and clean homes.
I don’t think there is a more satisfying thing to me, as Spring approaches, than the annual clean up. Cleaning any time of the year for some is like facing the devil, but for me it is a sweet love affair. It brings me so much joy to have everything in my home feel fresh and new and organized once again!! My home does get cleaned all year, I just do a lot of purging when Spring comes, you know, so that I have room for my next purchases (smiling). This season is all about new beginnings so as we clean out our homes, we need to take the time to make sure that we check our hearts and do some Spring cleaning in our lives.
When we Spring clean our lives, we are getting organized and setting goals. I know a lot of people that make New Year Resolutions in January, but why not make setting new goals at the onset of Spring your new tradition, when it is natural to begin anew? It cannot be good to make promises to yourself in the dead of Winter, when you have little motivation, so you are set up for failure. We can give ourselves a better chance at success beginning in the Spring. We still give ourselves time to get bikini-ready, or financially set, or at least on the way.
So I say, let’s get ready together…for that bikini body, for another step toward financial stability, to get our “ships” (friendships, relationships, etc) on the right track. Let us make a real effort to get rid of the dead weight that we have never been happy carrying and love on the people and embrace the things that help us to feel freer, more positive, and make us want to love ourselves even more. It is a hard thing to do but cutting loose all of the things (and people) that are feeding the negative in our lives and prove over and over again to be toxic for our lives so that we can live free and on purpose!!! Every little step we take toward taking our lives back and living a life that we can be at peace with, will help us reach our goals and feel like we are living a full life. Remember that a little can truly go a long way in the grand scheme of things.
One thing we have to do is do an honest check on our relationships. Are these close relationships serving the good in our lives? Are we in them to compete with others or to serve an agenda? Do not be pressured to be with someone, to be someone you are not, or spend all that you have to look a certain way to society. Meditate, clear your pretty little mind and look at these relationships and call it quits when you know that you are done with losing! This means your friends as well. Toxic friends cannot serve the positive in your life and ultimately steal what is left of your joy. Now, it will definitely be hard to rid yourself of your “friends” but if you think about it and the whole friendship has been a struggle, the time means nothing when you have only been in a struggle for the majority. Be sweet and back up!! You will thank yourself later and use that energy toward someone or something that feeds the sweetness in your life. There are people we have in our lives we do not dare call friends, but they are acquaintances… ditch those poisonous ones too!! You know, the ones that call you, can’t even say hello before they start throwing up all of their issues. Then when they have drained you and your advice, they hang up!!! They never even said hello! How are you? GET RID OF THEM…. OK easier said than done if people consider you sweet, but learn how to be a little sour, just enough to back away from the drama. We can use this time to touch on the FB “friends” too. Clean up that friends list. People that are constantly posting negative comments about their lives or the lives of others all of the time can really wear you out..and that is just from reading them. Try to minimize the people who do this so that you are not visiting your page and leaving there pissed off or bummed out every single day.
I am not going to talk about anyone on this one because I am so guilty but when was the last time you cleaned out that closet? Yeah, me too!! We can get rid of something in there. Clothes that we have not seen or worn in over 5-10 years or old purses or shoes (did I say shoes?) we know that we are not going to touch. If it doesn’t make you feel feminine and sexy, or even slightly amazing anymore, get rid of it! It always makes me feel better to clean out my closet. I also feel the same way about my work-space and homeschooling classroom. It feels like I am de-cluttering my brain too.
What are you eating? Is it healthy enough to say that it is helping you Spring clean that body? If not…it must GO! We have to attempt to focus on what we are putting in our bodies. We will not do it perfectly every day but we can at least make the effort. Also, have you detoxed lately? We should do some kind of detox at least 2-3 times a year just to clean our systems out. And this one is free, get some sleep. I mean really, go to bed. I am not good at that one either because I am a thinker by nature but I am working on it for goodness sake (with a cheesy, innocent smile).
Finally once you take the time to do some de-cluttering, you will have time to fit some “you” time in. I am all about getting some “me” time in. Take a bubble bath in that super clean garden tub, read a good book, or just silence everything and enjoy some quiet, whatever you do to recharge. Just do not make the mistake of allowing everything that you did to “clean” up your life sneak back in. We can always try anyway. In a perfect world, everything would stay clean…then how would we get ready for Spring?