Cleaning... or the necessity of a purge

Spring!  It is HERE (well, on Thursday at 4am it's here) but as a community we celebrate today. Honestly, most of us will celebrate all week with cleansing and circle and feasts.

I started today at the center of my home - my hearth. I have a LOT of incense and herbal oils, and the ingredients for more. Life happened and sadly I couldn't get to it for a while, so it sat in a corner of my kitchen, gathering dust and whatnot, becoming sticky and dirty and neglected. I'd go to it every now and then, lament the state of things, and never get back to it. Well, that changed today.


See that? That's what my incense and oils supplies fit into now. (you kinda don't want to know what it looked like before, trust me) Lots of dust and a bunch of washing later I know what I have, what I'm running low on, what I have A LOT of, and what I need to do to make what I want. And I threw out a lot of stuff that was just gone.

And I found my Imbolc incense, and burning that while I worked was the icing on the cake of 'oh hey, there is floor in that corner of the kitchen.'

Working with magic as I do isn't always exciting - sometimes it's just a simple walk around the house with a trash bag. If you've never done that, try it this week. No seriously - grab a big black trash bag or a plastic grocery bag and walk around your house. Every room. Bathrooms too. Bet you'll need another plastic grocery bag by the time you're done. There's a reason I suggested the big black trash bag first. ;)

Cleaning isn't something I love, so let's get that straight now. I kinda hate it actually. I put it off like anyone else and then *freak out* when someone is coming over. That meme is actually talking about me. I bet a lot of us can say that though.

Imbolc is the symbolic start of Spring. More cleaning gets done in the name of "Spring Cleaning" than at any other time of year. In fact, most of us chose the changing seasons to motivate our cleaning than even our parents coming over.

We watch movies or we go over to other people's houses and see the beautiful, spotless homes that they say they "live in" and internally sigh,  knowing full well that it's a lie. No one's house is that spotless all the time. Unless you have a cleaning service.

If you don't have a service, or don't want a service to come in, that's ok. Just take your time, as the Goddess for help, and find the thing that motivates you to get it done.

This Imbolc, I hope you find the motivation you're looking for. I found mine starting with that neglected corner of my kitchen, and now I have about 1/3 of my house cleaned and another 1/3 on it's way to where I want it.

(and a hint? dust before you sweep or vacuum.)