day 159: Spring Cleaning

At least once a year it is a good idea to do a spring cleaning of our offices. We tend to accumulate, gather, and before long we can't get another file in a file cabinet or the IT person has to come over and show us how to archive our e-files and folders. Is it human nature to just "hang on" to stuff? I was once taught that the only way you can really clean out is to go get three boxes and put them on the floor in the center of the office. The middle box is for everything to go into before any decision is made. That means everything has to come out of the cabinets and drawers and go into the center box. Once all the drawers, cabinets and closets are totally empty and the center box is full (or overflowing) then you go through the center box with either the chosen file papers going into the trash box or the "out" box. At last resort the file goes back into the drawer or cabinet. The trash box is exactly what it means. It's the trash. The "out" box is a box for files to keep but they need to be out of your office and filed somewhere else. And then what is left over is put back neatly and there should be plenty of room to now spare...that is until next year. Our lives are like this as well. We go through times where we feel like we are all cleaned out and then things start creeping back in and before long we are filled up with the wrong stuff again. We then need to get out our proverbial boxes and do our spring cleaning. We are told in Philippians that we need to be sure and discard along the way in our lives if we want to be truly fulfilled; "For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ." It is springtime and a good time to take an evaluation on whether it is time to spring clean. I suspect it is. There are surely a number of relationships at work that need mending, habits that need to be broken, thoughts that need to be removed, etc. The garbage box is waiting and God has His hand on the "out" box as well to help you figure out what to do with those things that you don't know what to do with next. When you are spring cleaning the office this year, think about using that time to also do a thorough cleaning of all aspects of your life.

Reference: Philippians 3:8 (New Living Testament)