Mental Health and Curating Your Space
You get up in the morning. Your sleepless night, tossing and turning, has left you tired and drained. Isn’t sleep suppose to give you energy? Whatever, you’ve never been a morning person anyways.
You sit up, and in that moment, you dread getting out of bed. The pile of clothes on the floor looks like a mountain, your dresser has random objects on it, perhaps makeup, wallet, keys, unopened mail from 6 months ago. You sigh as you dread getting ready for work or school. You somehow manage to make your way to the kitchen to make yourself some coffee. You look in the sink and there’s a pile of dirty dishes, the counter isn’t clean from preparing dinner the evening before, and there are no clean mugs for your coffee. You decide you’re going to spend $8 on a cup of coffee at the local Starbucks drive through on your way to work instead. Then you decide to do something nice and buy coffee from a local coffee shop instead of Starbucks. Support small businesses, right!? You head to the bathroom and realize you haven’t cleaned the bathroom in over a month. There is mildew on the water faucet in the shower as you hop in to take one, the shower curtain liner has soap scum on it and your bathroom mirror is splattered with dried toothpaste. Ew, is that the toilet?
Somehow you manage to get ready and head out the door. Your car is a mess. Receipts, paper straw wrappers, empty water bottles, and coupon advertisements that your postal worker keeps annoyingly delivering to your mailbox. What is that smell?
We have all been here. We have all been to the point where the energy of life has been sucked from the deepest parts of you with some invisible force that you can’t seem to describe. You’re just going about your days doing your normal routine hoping to make ends meet, all to do the same exact thing the next morning. This time the pile of laundry in your bedroom gets bigger, the dirty dishes pile up, and you decide that the highlight of your day was supporting that small local coffee shop instead of a major brand like Starbucks.
One day, out of the blue, you finally decide to do the three weeks worth of laundry. You fold all the clean laundry and manage to put them away in your dresser. Wow! You can see the floor! It’s a bit of energy that you haven’t felt in a while. You dread the dishes, as it’s your least favorite chore, but you get them done and disinfect the kitchen counter hoping that doing so was just in time not to contaminate anything in your kitchen with salmonella. You head to the living room and realize that the picture on the wall is crooked. You fix it and you also pick up the throw pillows and place them on the couch along with the throw blanket that you just folded as well.
You get the paper towels and head to the bathroom with an arsenal of cleaning products. You clean the mirror, the sink, you scrub the tub and shower walls, and save the best for last; the toilet. You never imagined your toilet could get this gross, but you manage to finish and feel better about doing so. You haven’t properly made your bed in weeks, and once you take the time to make it, you feel something that you haven’t felt in a long time. There’s some sort of spark. There’s some sort of motivation.
When your house is in disarray, this can be a sign of your mental and emotional state of being.
Our lives are reflected back at us in subtle ways that we don’t even realize, but if you take a moment to look around you, how are you really doing? Now, don’t get me wrong, we all have busy lives juggling multiple parts of it and our homes feel lived in. But does your home feel lived in or overwhelming to look at? Do you avoid certain chores as the thought of getting them done brings an onslaught of anxiety, shame, and worthlessness? I have felt this way. I feel this way a lot!
Clutter is NO GOOD. Your home doesn’t have to feel like a museum, but you shouldn’t feel swallowed in your home by stuff. Curating your home, or a particular space or room in your home, is more than decluttering and organizing (although these two things are an essential part of it), it’s about purposely arranging and displaying items that reflect your personality, maintain functionality, and feels like a pleasure to sit in. It should not feel dreadful! When you walk into your home, it should feel like a wave of warm apple pie smell floating to meet your nostrils and awaken a calm, warm, and welcoming feeling. Isn’t that expensive?
No! It is not expensive. You can make your home feel this way without having to purchase anything! Your home is a reflection of your energy and simple arrangement of furniture can transform the energy of your home or space in the biggest of ways! Bring in some of those plants from outside, find those old curtains that you haven’t managed to put up yet, vacuum. Once you declutter that mound of unopened junk mail, get rid of the dust, and throw away old makeup, you will instantly feel better! Holding onto things that don’t serve you just absorb and drain you from positive energy and once you get this taken care of, then the fun begins! If you have a small budget, simple things like painting that kitchen table to spruce up the feel of your dining area, moving the couch to a different part of your living room, and putting up that piece of art work you were proud of making, makes the world of difference!
I am a home curator, and everything I just have said I speak from experience. I have been there. It feels like a unsurmountable task. The good news is it doesn’t have to be! I enjoy coming into peoples homes and tackling and solving these feelings with them. Leave your shame outside! I help you declutter, organize and curate your home!
The way you arrange items that you love that fit into the little corners of your home will literally morph your mental and emotional health. Now don’t get me wrong, curating your space is not the cure all for your mental and emotional health needs, but it is a step in a positive direction for mental and emotional health recovery goals. When you don’t feel suffocated in your space and you feel like you can relax and be proud of being in your space, you will gain some confidence, getting up in the morning may still not be your favorite, but it will feel a bit less dreadful, and you will find you can focus on the parts of your life that need more of your attention. The energy has to flow, it has to move freely without anything blocking it. Once you have an un-curated, disorganized, cluttered home, the energy you attached unknowingly to meaningless stuff blocks this positive flow. I can help you fix this! You don’t have to do it on your own! Let me help you help yourself.
Mental health and curating your space, is a small but vital part in your recovery process. All you have to do now, is make the first step. If you need someone to guide you, I would be more than willing to help!
Here are my social media links if you would like to get in touch!
Blog by Erica Medlock:
Yay! You're here! I'm Erica Medlock and I am a space curator, photographer, artist, gardener, wife, dog mom, veteran, rock hounder, jewelry maker, and comedian! I love too many things to pigeon-hole myself into one category, so I decided to share everything I love! I live and work in Tacoma, WA with my Husband Kelvin and our three dogs, Hercules, Titus, & Claire
Here are my social media links if you would like to get in touch!
