I’ve been a woman on a mission these last few weeks.

When the mood strikes, as it does each November, I can be found in a near constant state of decluttering.

While most people prefer a springtime clean out, once the holiday season hits, I go in deep. I attack drawers like there’s no tomorrow.

“Gird your loins, kids, Mom’s at it again,” Mike may say. 

While most are bringing more into their spaces, by way of decorations and garlands, I’m Santa in reverse, secretly taking out unused toys under cover of night. 

I didn’t realize this was the case until a friend stopped by yesterday. When I proudly proclaimed it the day to declutter craft supplies, he reminded me that the last time he popped over I was going through our filing cabinet.

You know, because most reasonable people have a filing cabinet where they dutifully preserve their tax returns and other important documents, but not so important as to belong in the fireproof safe. Or so I tell myself when I contemplate stacks of paper that require prompt shredding.

The filing cabinet is not unlike my Band-Aid collection—a size for every potential cut or scrape—or my fabric stash, where I save bits and bobs from which Margaret and I make Christmas ornaments or ragtag quilts. 

Though I have no reason for this Depression-era frugality, I do subscribe to the old creed: “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” That is until my Nike-collecting husband spots me still wearing my old running shoes—the ones with the hole near the toe—and gives me a loving look that could only say, “It’s time.”

Our home just can’t sustain too much stuff, I tell myself and any family member who has made the mistake of wandering into my decluttering zone. 

In this day and age of behemoth starter homes, our house might be considered small. It’s a 1,500 square foot ranch with 900 square feet of living space in the basement. Its size is certainly nothing to sneeze at, and while we purchased it as a true starter home, over the years we’ve settled in for the long haul. 

While we may not have an open floor plan or kitchen island, our basement boasts not one but two storage spaces that are nearly as large as my first dorm room.

And we certainly have plenty of trash-flipped dressers and closets and places to squirrel away the thing that might be useful down the line, but may also have incorrectly survived the culling of years past. 

Our home’s size sometimes dictates a strategic approach to our belongings—or so I want to believe. And with Christmas on the horizon and the influx of stuff that will inevitably result despite our very best efforts, decluttering at this time of year feels intentional, thoughtful, and yes, a little virtuous.

It can also make me cranky.

“Why can’t I get to that bowl?” I harrumphed at Mike when making dinner. “I hate that in order to get the one thing I want I have to move aside a million other things.”

“Get rid of it then!” he replied, his exasperation one-upping my own. 

And he’s right, I could get rid of the not one but two china sets I inherited when his parents passed. Or at least move things around a bit.

But the china cabinet wasn’t on my list yesterday. Yesterday was for crafts and puzzles and board games, which are very, very organized if I do say so myself. 

And, besides, I reason, there is such a thing as too much decluttering, like that one time I proudly whittled down our winter gear until there was only one set of gloves per household member. Which is to admit that I must have blacked out and forgotten how many hats or sweatshirts my kids have left on the playground over the years. It used to happen so frequently that Graydon once came home triumphantly bearing one of Margaret’s sweatshirts he’d saved from the school’s lost and found, only to realize it was someone else’s discarded hoodie, an exact replica of one that still hung in her closet.

“It’s the thought that counts,” I’d told him, secretly wondering if it would be in poor taste to return a sweatshirt to the lost and found.

There is a sense of satisfaction that comes from having the exact right number of Tupperware or the correct size of children’s clothes in their drawers. But it’s a Goldilocks moment that never lasts.

When supplies get purposely low, it’s only a matter of time until a friend comes over to play in the snow and there’s a mad dash for an extra scarf (one I reluctantly plucked out of the Goodwill pile in my trunk. Point taken, Universe).

Or inevitably, someone grows four inches in a summer, hypothetically speaking, prompting a shopping spree to buy pants on the last warm day of October. 

Or perhaps you inherit some Tupperware from a mother who unrealistically expects her Tupperware to be returned posthaste, or ever. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

If you’re sensing a theme here it’s that I simultaneously want to be Very Prepared For Every Eventuality ^TM and also live in a sterile environment that will no doubt prevent any potential heartache or moment of beautiful chaos from crossing my home’s threshold. 

There is satisfaction in living a right-sized life, in which all I’s are dotted and T’s crossed, in which your tax returns are perfectly organized and important papers preserved come rain or come shine. 

But I think there’s a reason that right sizing feels so darn unsustainable. 

Maybe it’s because our home is a living breathing organism, the contents of which reflect our ever-changing lives. Or maybe it’s because having just a little bit extra is a privilege that allows us to feed whoever comes to our door—or bikes up our driveway as was the case one summer evening when five neighborhood boys showed up precisely the moment Mike took the meat off the grill. I suddenly found myself pulling out leftovers and setting out more plates, because hungry strangers come into our lives on all manner of transport, I’ve found. 

I know I’m not alone in this movement, the almost maddening embrace of togetherness, messes and disorganization be darned. 

I have a friend who feeds a neighbor’s kids almost every night, providing a safe space and a warm meal as if it’s commonplace.

I have another friend on whose dining room wall hangs a sign that says, “When you have more than you need, build a longer table not a higher fence.” And so her husband did just that: built a very large table that is now the site of frequent family dinners and rushed pre-trick-or-treating meals. 

These friends model the beautiful imperfection and radical hospitality that my anxious preparedness all too often contradicts. 

Because if everything is “just so,” it’s that much harder for a stranger to enter in.

If everything is perfectly organized and clean and tidy, every interaction feels like a threat to the status quo. 

As I posted items on our local Buy Nothing Facebook group today, I caught sight of the wooden Advent calendar I’d purchased years ago. I remembered how one tiny visitor accidentally broke off one of the donkey’s feet. As if Mary didn’t already have a hard life, now her transportation was down a limb. 

It was nothing superglue didn’t fix, but it felt symbolic nonetheless.

I was sad my beautiful Advent set now bore an imperfection. I had wanted so badly to create the ideal Advent, the perfect home, and now Mary’s donkey walked with a limp.

When I look at it again, amidst the piles of craft supplies to be sorted, I can see how my reaction risked my turning away from the Christ child already here, her little fingers banging Mary’s amputated donkey on the table with glee. 

I recognize, too, the incredible privilege of having extra, of thoughtfully deciding what to keep and what to pass on. Of having a place for everything and room to spare.

And in the same breath, I hold the knowledge that no amount of organization will keep God from sending me a stranger, or allowing me to be the one in need.

I have so very much to learn when it comes to having a welcoming home, not just one that appears welcoming by way of tidiness. 

I’m constantly reminded to try, though, as I keep getting sent bike gangs of hungry pre-teens and toddlers with no sense of decorum around sacred Advent supplies.

I’m thankful, too, that God grants me plenty of opportunities to bring food to the hodgepodge of people who come to church or gather at Safe Harbor on a cold winter’s night. Most importantly of all, God keeps reminding me, in both quiet and not-so-subtle ways, that I’m no different or better than those being fed, regardless of how organized my board game collection.

While I seek virtue around every organized corner, the Universe keeps showing up, asking for scarves and hungry for whatever I have to contribute.

While I’m busy rifling through my file cabinet, again, or stacking and restacking my china, the world keeps needing my presence, not my attempts at perfection. 

Because everywhere I turn, I’m reminded that presence is the only way to prepare for the best eventuality, the only way to see—and welcome—the many forms of Christ.