Simplified Organization: Learn to Love What Must Be Done

by Mystie Winckler

The goal is to be equipped and ready to respond obediently to God in the moment as He sends needs our way.

If we approach organization from a desire to serve others better rather than to make ourselves more impressive, we will fall into discouragement less often because our heart is in the right place. Our attitude will be organized.

Decluttering is part of the ebb and flow of life, not a project to check off.

this is decluttering, and it’s constant.

However, the real problem lies in thinking there’s a finish line we’re supposed to reach.

made the world for a purpose. He made us for a purpose. God’s purpose for us is to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. We begin that forever call here and now, in this life, in the midst of our day-to-day work.

He didn’t give us an outward, visible finish line to attain in this life. He is always calling us ever onward and upward.

When we’re organized, we think we’ll be in control, so it will be OK. Not so. No matter how much we get organized, life will always be outside our control. But our response to life—our attitude—is fully within our control.

A livable life is one wherein I stop focusing on reaching a final destination, give up indulging in false narratives that keep me stuck, and brush away the cobwebs of unreasonable expectations.

Simple living means you have direction, that all aspects of your life cohere around a single-minded focus. Everything you do moves your primary mission forward. Simplicity means your life is not compartmentalized. It means your energies are not scattershot across a wide field, aiming at no particular target.

anymore, as tempting as that option was. The real solution was to change my attitude, to see the significance of the work, to apply myself with faithfulness to my duties. I had to take joy in my own livable life, not wait for joy until my life looked the way I wanted it to.

We grumble about our work because our desire is to get to the point where we won’t have to work anymore. However, that’s not the way God made the world. We will always have work to do. When we address our root attitude issues, we begin to experience the kind of progress we never saw when we tried for surface-level organization.

God calls us, so we are accountable to God. Yes, this ups the stakes, but it’s only when we rightly relate to our Lord that we can enjoy the life He has called us to.

To call homemaking a vocation is to remember that we do not determine our own mission or our own destiny.

We simply ask, are we accepting our work with joy and gratitude, or moping and complaining about it?

My worries about burnout were unfounded. More of God’s will in my life was better, not worse.

Five minutes makes a difference, not only in getting something done, but also in changing the direction and intensity of your energy. Energy increases with movement.

Productivity is not efficiency but faithful fruitfulness

Everything we do affects other people directly—and what other people do directly affects our workload and our emotional load.

When we come to housework, cooking, and even parenting with a “clock in and do the checklist” mentality, we end the day overloaded and undone.

The world’s version of productivity looks like putting in the minimum amount of effort possible while still getting a worthwhile return.

We’re not called to be slacker Christians, putting in just enough effort to get us to the finish line someday. We are called to be a visible, bright, shining light on a hill that non-Christians can’t help but notice and credit to God (Matt. 5:16).

When we understand that our role within our families is raising immortal souls to glorify their Creator forever, weaving the fabric of society and becoming more like our Savior as we do, it makes sense that we’re called to work hard.

We have things we need to get done every day. We have people we need to build up. We have homes to manage. We have good works God has called us to. It is possible to take joy in those good works—all of them—because of the One Who sends them.

When we are in the thick of the season where our primary good works revolve around raising children, it can feel like everything we do is too little and too mundane to be significant. Yet remember that Christ said, “As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” Our own children are not excluded from this. It’s easy to feel like they are getting in the way of what we are trying to do, but they are what we are trying to do.

we are like trees in God’s orchard. All our lives, we are watered and pruned by God.

Fruitfulness shifts the imagery and, therefore, the expectation. A fruitful tree is messy. In every direction, branches reach outward. A fruitful tree is stationary yet exhibits growth and movement. Typical modern productivity imagery feels more like a freight train, powering forward unilaterally; productivity is the speed at which the train is able to reach its destination. Fruit, on the other hand, is seasonal. Fruitfulness has no destination.

Fruit trees require continual sunshine, pruning, fertilizer, water, and growth. It is the same with us.

Not every piece of fruit on a tree has to be amazing for the tree to be productive and plentiful.

When we are fruitful trees, we don’t have to be the harvester and warehouser and chef, concerned about how the fruit is used after it is produced. We aren’t more fruitful if more of our fruit is used to make pies than juice. God is the harvester, field manager, and chef. We can be joyfully abundant because the work comes from God, we get to direct it back to God, and He manages the results.

Our productivity doesn’t have to be measurable to be appreciated or significant.

But the work of the morning is educating my children. The oven, the pantry, the dust can wait—and will likely wait for weeks. Spending my time noticing all those areas, allowing them to nag me and pull away my attention, is a distraction and a temptation. Productivity is not about getting everything done; it’s about getting the right things done.

Inspiration and enthusiasm are good servants when they follow the train of diligence.

one of the most productive things you can do is smile more at your people.

We can change how we feel about our lives by changing our inner narrator

Those metaphors might seem like they fit, but in truth, I am making them fit by returning again and again to my chosen version of the story. The details of my life that support this story become the details I notice most. Without intending to, I’ve installed a filter that causes me to interpret life as frustrating, overwhelming, and impossible.

Much of our unhappiness and negativity arises from not taking our thoughts captive as Scripture commands. We allow any grumblings that enter our head to take up residence. We call these thoughts and feelings authentic and real because they happened to us. These default responses demand to be stars in our story, shaping our perception of reality.

We need to ask: Are these thoughts true? If we want truth to become increasingly authentic in our lives, then we have to take control of the thoughts we allow to have airtime within our head.

That which we repeat, we will become, so let’s take charge and repeat truth to ourselves.

Let’s not entertain complaining, whining, discouraging, ...

He makes all things new. He is weaving the gospel right into our life story. We can have peace and joy because He is trustworthy and in control. As the children’s Sunday school song reminds us, He has the whole world in His hands.

We have to be willing to call ourselves out when we catch ourselves grumbling about our life. All complaints are ultimately ingratitude to God, unbelief that He is doing good to and for us. But we shouldn’t merely accuse ourselves; accusation alone would leave us stuck in a guilt cul-de-sac. We repent of all complaining and grumbling, which means turning away from it. We must replace any internal lies with truth. What is the truth of the situation? Repeat that intentionally. We are characters in God’s story of redemption—His redemption of us as individuals and His redemption of a people through all history. From the very first day of history to the very last, God is telling a story. Sometimes the plot points our Author has assigned us are not what we would have written for ourselves, but we can trust Him as the One Who knows the beginning from the end, Who holds the whole world in His hands, Who knows what we need more than we do. Therefore, we must not complain, but walk in faith. After all, the Author has told us His overarching plot line and how it all works out in the end: creation, fall, redemption. So, as we narrate our story to ourselves—and to others—while living it out, we can always keep faithful to the revealed plot of Christ’s grace given on the cross, grateful to our loving and sovereign Author.

A truer perspective would see the child as the hero of his own story, placed in my home so I can be his guide and coach, preparing him for his coming of age. If I look at it that way, the walls, floor, and bedroom are not about me, so I have no reason to be offended. I am only seeing the next scene in my child’s character development—and I get to help it happen.

To avoid this, we have to be intentional and proactive, rooting out complaints before they taint our perspective. However, you can’t just remove complaints. You have to replace them.

Every complaint-based story must be replaced with a gratitude-based story.

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It will feel awkward and maybe even fake at first, but rejecting a grumbling attitude and replacing it with a grat...

Biblical meditation is a filling of the mind, not an emptying. Meditation is how we keep a proper perspective and align our judgement with God’s, so we are more and more likely to see our situation from God’s perspective.

We influence what we meditate on with what we say. We also influence what we talk about by what we think about.

wasn’t my job to prevent the work from needing to be done but to do it as it needed doing.