My first clue was the beads of water along the flooring joint between my feet. A quick scan revealed other bubbled seams around the kitchen. I opened the sink cabinet to an allegro drip beneath.
Calls to a plumber and the insurance company. Visits from both. Removal of the whole wall of cabinets and evisceration of my kitchen.
Then the claims adjuster announced that since the pipe seeped silently inside the wall before bursting outright, they could clear themselves on a technicality. We were on our own for repairs.
There was no postponing the remodel. The kitchen was already gone. Financial plans and calendar-schmalendar out the window, we had entered the construction zone like it or not. We’ve lived here twenty years, so refinancing to pull equity provided the inevitable path forward.
On the other hand, my heart couldn’t help but smile at the sideways gift. At the end of this journey, my kitchen would be so much better than ever before. I had dreamed of revamping the early 80s kitchen since we moved in. The pointy drawer pulls had ripped many a pair of shorts in their lifetime. Indestructible, Granny-apple green counters worked as hard as my cast-iron skillets, but Granny-apple green? The faux butcherblock Formica cabinets fell even lower on my list of aesthetic loves.
How many times had I redesigned this kitchen in my mind? And now the time had come to actually gather samples and pick fresh paint colors.
That was the fun part. The reshuffling, not so much.
God always plans ahead, even when we don’t. We’d still be able to eat. We had a kitchenette in our in-law suite. Remodeled for a father-in-law now in heaven and recently vacated by a daughter and son-in-law in between moves, the space came with a blessed sink, fridge, and oven, if only 18” of counterspace.
Everything went into boxes and bins. Soon the kitchenette looked like a hoarder’s den with pathways and a cluttered counter.
We began to live the remodeler’s version of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. A contiguous floor downstairs meant e.v.e.r.y. last piece of something had to move at some point. More boxes. More stacks of displaced items. And you can’t just scoot a china hutch over while you lay two rows of planks. You have to remove every candlestick, creamer, and what-not in there; then you scoot it over. And then after the dust settles from the drywall repair, you have to put it all back.
That’s when I realized the decluttering I’d been patting myself on the back for last year had only been the warm-up exercise.
We took loads to the thrift store. Loads to the dump. It felt great. I had too much stuff to manage. We swell to fill the space we’re in. Just because I had found a way to fit it inside a cupboard didn’t mean I needed to keep it forever.
Hebrews 12:1 talks about laying aside encumbrances AND the sin that entangles. Two things. And they both need to go. There was nothing sinful about the material I had. But too much of a good thing can be, well, too much. Encumbering. When we pushed the piano back to its corner on the new flooring, I didn’t want any stacks of music sitting underneath. It was so nice just to see the wall in the corner. Uncluttered. Unencumbered. Not an organizational project waiting for another day. Visually and mentally clean.
Deep decluttering felt light and free. But deep cleaning felt like new life. I didn’t realize how much crud I was living with until it came out.
Bug trots (this is Florida, after all) behind baseboards and cabinet spaces got swept, vacuumed, and sealed up. When we removed the kitchen island, we cleaned up deteriorated particle board powder mixed with decades of kitchen crumbs stuck in dislodged shoe molding. Even if I had known it was there, I couldn’t reach it to remove it all. Until now. It’s gone.
Weeks after the serendipitous leak, the underlayment we were pulling up was still damp. And instead of hoping it would dry out eventually, we were removing it for good.
My house was getting clean on an unseen level. That’s what felt so good.
And as I vacuumed yet another unearthed layer, I began to pray for my own self:
“Lord, would You clean me on the inside just as deeply? Take out clutter from corners of my heart that weighs me down. Clear out places where I have stuffed away things I didn’t know how to deal with. Old griefs, grudges, fear. Defeat. I don’t want to “manage” these. I want to discard them like outdated pantry items—that weren’t so healthy to begin with. Regret? Unforgiveness? Unbelief? These take up way too much space and attract critters. I want to be unencumbered and untangled.
“Scrub places inside me in unseen layers that I don’t even know are a problem. I don’t want a heart with mildewed underlayment and hidden bug trots. You desire truth in the inmost parts. Shine Your light in the unseen places and cleanse what I can’t reach.
“Thank You for a fresh, new, remodeled kitchen. May I please have a clean, uncluttered heart to match?”