(DISCLAIMER: this is not a room in my house. Mrs. Peterson would skewer me if I ever posted a picture like this of a room in our house… if such a room existed. 🙂 )

We just started  a new teaching series at church called “Making Space.”

As I’ve been thinking about this series and in preparation for it, Sherri and I have been working on something for the last few months… a little project that literally makes space in our home.

We’ve been getting rid of stuff! Trip after trip to Goodwill… we’re making space!

We started doing this after we started reading some books (The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, etc.)

We realized that all the stuff we had took space in our home, our minds, our calendar, our budget, and our lives… so we’ve started downsizing!

I never knew how freeing it was to get rid of stuff! Stuff like the clothes we never wore, the books we never read, the toys we never played with, the games we never utilized, and on and on and on…

All around us is stuff we never use that just takes up space.

Now that we’re getting rid of it, we spend less time organizing stuff we never use and cleaning clutter we rarely pay attention to… and it is freeing us to spend time on the things and with the people we love!

I’m no home-cleaning guru but I’m telling you what, making space in our closets, garage, and rooms is doing more than cleaning out physical spaces… it’s also cleaning up spiritual and mental space!

Have you ever stopped to wonder how much energy (spiritual, emotional, etc.) is consumed by the “stuff” you have in your space? Based on my experience, and the wisdom gleaned from the experiences of others, it’s a lot more than you might realize!

If you’re thinking about making space in your life, I would encourage you to start with the physical and see what flows out of that!

Maybe it’s time for a trip to Goodwill!