I didn’t realize until I became an adult that my emotions are affected by my physical surroundings. My moods are markedly improved by clean, orderly rooms. You know how teenagers stereotypically have messy rooms? My theory is that something changes in the brain or hormones when reaching adulthood that makes us understand the benefits of cleanliness, but I can’t find any scientific proof for this.
I am actually a pretty minimalistic, organized person but it’s still hard for me to keep my house spic-and-span 24/7, even though I know it will make me happy. I always have something that seems much more fun to do… but here’s how I trick myself into doing it: I tell myself I just have to clean the floors. Once I start I somehow sneak in the rest of the cleaning without hardly even knowing it. Another trick is that I don’t keep a lot of objects which need to be dusted & cared for.
I really like the principles & application of feng shui because I have found that I just feel better in a “feng shui’d” home. All of our feng shui books are in 747.9. One of my absolute favorites is Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui. My husband & I bought this book because we liked it so much and there are some interesting charts that are great to reference. It’s a really fast read and it’s so inspiring! It brings cleaning to a spiritual level.
It’s all about opening up the space and letting it breathe, which is what we are doing here at OWL for the renovations. I’m psyched to see how it all looks when they’re done. The new reading area is going to be so much prettier to look at, which will give us all a little mood boost, I’m sure!
Here are some other library materials I think are really good & inspiring:
And some feel-good cleaning music to keep you going:
Turkish Groove - Putumayo World Music
Sunshine on Leith - Proclaimers
Now You Know - The Aloha Steamtrain
See you after the renovations!
Jesse Lee Harmon is the bookkeeper/library assistant at the Oliver Wolcott Library and loves playing guitar & singing her songs, cooking, green tea, red wine, clear water & walking through New England woods in any season.
