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Curate Your Life

With an eye made quiet . . . we see into the life of things.

—William Wordsworth

I have an anxious habit of collecting, but then like a frog in the pot of boiling water, all of a sudden I feel overheated by the amount of clutter around me. Every horizontal surface is covered. Every closet is packed. Every drawer is stuffed. And it’s all closing in on me. Nothing feels pretty or useful or creative anymore. It all just feels like stuff. And I want to light a fire in the backyard and start over.

What is occurring to me is that I’m not only strangled by all the stuff visually but also strangled by what it represents emotionally. Usually, it’s a sign of my need. I’m mindlessly piling more and more and more into our house and car and closets because I’m not taking the time to figure out what I’m really after, what’s actually going on inside me.

This overindulgence or hoarding is a form of hiding, a way we cover up and cover over as a means of comfort instead of facing whatever reality we don’t want to face. What is the source of my dissatisfaction? What am I trying to ease? How am I trying to make myself feel better?

When I’m refusing to tend to my actual need, I’m grabby. I grab food, clothes, accent pillows, another glass of wine . . . things I’ve come to believe will help me feel better because the need feels too scary, too nebulous, too tiresome. Turning toward my needs feels like too much work. My insides feel too high maintenance. So I go for “more more more,” and what I end up with is “less less less.”

I’ve started doing two things:

First, every time I start to feel anxious swirling energy about needing more or different stuff, I ask God to help me channel that same energy into taking exceptional care of my body instead—namely, exercising and eating nourishing food and drinking water. Every time I start to feel panicky about more, more, more, I realize that taking care of my body will help me feel so much better—in the long run—than more food, more clothes, more stuff.

I love beautiful things. I love rich experience and luscious meals. I love surrounding myself with interesting textures and creative details and layers of color. This is a part of my soul that does not need denying. Wanting to create an interesting home or wear unique pieces of clothing does not equal mindless hoarding. But you know as well as I do when we’re looking to these things to fix us, when we’re using. You know as well as I do when we’re grabbing because we’re trying to solve a problem that food, clothes, pillows never will.

So my attempt to take care of my body is a way I can use my anxious energy to my own benefit. I can teach myself how to nurture my body instead of numb it.

Second, I’ve been challenging myself to do the refining work of deciding what I love and only bringing those things into my home and closet.

Will it bring me pleasure?

Will I reach for it over and over again?

Will it speak to me?

Or is it just one more thing, one more quick fix?

And, on top of that, I’m starting to ruthlessly get rid of the things in my house I don’t love. A long time ago I read an article about a woman who got rid of every single thing in her house that she didn’t like aesthetically, all the way down to pens and sticky notes. If it wasn’t pleasing to her, she didn’t have it or bring it into her home. There’s a part of this that feels like a luxury, but there’s also a part of this I totally get. Many of us live in a sea of things that cause chaotic, overstimulating, and depressing vibes in our homes, and we assume we can’t really do anything about it.

I’m very much in the beginning stages of this, but I see how our homes and our closets and our refrigerators can be these Ground Zero places where we can decide to nourish the True Self and starve out the False Self if we will approach them with intention. What a concept.

Curating has become a sort of buzzword these days, especially as minimalism seems to be making its way back into trending conversations. While I’m not a minimalist by nature, one of the things I love most about this idea of curating a selective environment is the idea that we must practice the discipline of learning what we love.

As I curate instead of amass, as I nourish instead of numb, I become more awake to the dynamics at play in my own soul. I am more attuned to my need, which is the good news and the bad news, I guess. But I am giving myself a fair shot at really, truly meeting my need instead of shoving one more quick fix down my throat.

I’m learning the fine art of selecting the elements in my spaces and my world in a way that serves my soul and my emotional sobriety. Keeps me clean instead of cluttered. I’m learning to take care of my body instead of seeing how quickly I can buy more clothes for my body. I’m learning what it means to pursue quality over quantity, to become very familiar with what I need, what I love, and the freedom that comes from narrowing. And it’s really, really hard.

Anyone can amass. Not everyone can curate.

I love Myquillyn Smith’s Instagram hashtag: #HushTheHouse. She’s helped me think, very practically, about quieting my home and my closet so that I can actually enjoy what I have instead of needing to constantly manage what I have.

She tells you to take everything you can out of a room and then start adding things back in, one at a time, until the space feels nurturing but not cluttered. What you find when you do this is that you were living with far more chaos than you realized, far more visual stimulation than you intended, even. And clearing it out is like breathing again.1

There are many different aspects to this conversation: practical functionality, emotional underpinnings, our tendencies and preferences, the role aesthetics play in our lives and homes. But here are my conclusions: Sometimes I assume I need more when, in reality, I need less. Cutting away the excess can reveal the essential in this amazing sort of way. What we loved and needed had been there all along but we just couldn’t see it through all the noise. Sometimes we perpetuate all the noise because we want a nice distraction from our need. Hushing the house and quieting the closet, then, are ways we turn down all the external ruckus so we can listen to the conversations that are happening in our hearts and souls under the surface.

I’m proud of myself for leaning into these areas of my life. They’re muddy and murky and multilayered, to be sure. Anytime we’re talking about the things we grab to make ourselves feel better, I’m raising my hand and saying, “Yes, I do that. Me too” and “I so wish I were beyond all that.”

How about you? I’d love to know how you’re making your home a haven, your closet a curated collection, and how you’re doing all this as a manifestation of your Created Center. I’d love to hear how you’re practicing self-possession by exercising self-restraint. And most of all, I’d love to know what your life and soul now have capacity for because you’ve exercised the spiritual discipline of hushing so you can really hear.

Reflection & Expression

Make a list of what you love in your closet and your home, things you already own.

Choose five items in your closet and five items in your home. Write down why you love them.

For Your Brazen Board

Add images or words that represent things you love.