Lent is just about a week away and it is time for me to start getting ready. I wrote about Lent last year explaining my position and practice and then later reflected on what I learned about myself. This year I plan to observe this time period again, but with a few additions.
My focus will be Spring Cleaning... physically, spiritually and household-ly, or to nicely alliterate: Health, Heart and Home.
Lent starts February 17th (Ash Wednesday) and continues just over 6 weeks until Easter Sunday. My plan is still evolving, but I've come up with a few ideas that I'm excited about.
Health - As usual, I will stop eating desserts/sweets. It seems like such a good time of year to detox the body from holiday and winter feasting to prepare for the freshness of spring. This year, however, I hope to take on another challenge. The big push here in the UK is to eat "5-A-Day". By that they mean we should strive to eat five fruit and vegetable servings in a day. The bar is not too high - juice can count as one portion. But, in all reality, I'm not sure if I actually do eat that much in a day. I want to take a week during the Lent period to focus on intentionally serving "5-A-Day" to my family and see if there is a significant change from our typical weekly diet.
Heart - I would like to chose 6 verses for the six weeks of Lent to meditate on and memorize. I hope to focus particularly on verses that pertain to my role of homemaker. As part of this, I will post them around the house in places that I often look to help me dwell on God's truths throughout the week.
Home - Somehow my urge to spring clean always seems to come long before spring. While technically spring cleaning should probably take place after Easter, I have decided that Lent is the perfect time to clean out the clutter and dirt from the months of being house-bound. I have a six-week plan for this as well that I will go into more detail about later. In brief, I will chose one room to focus on for each week: bathrooms, kitchen, dining room, living room, kids bedrooms, and master bedroom. My goal will be to get rid of everything that is unnecessary and clean/organize everything else. I'm a huge fan of Simple Mom and she has many good tips for de-cluttering your life as well as a 2-week spring cleaning party that she hosted last year.
I'm excited. I'm ready. Care to join me?
Photo from photobucket.com
Comments (2)
Do/you know that 2 slices of raisin bread also counts as a serve of fruit?
In Australia it's 2 serves of fruit and 5 serves of vegetables. And fruit juice doesn't count!
What wonderful, meaningful ideas. I think I might just have to join you. No desserts/sweets for six weeks though? I went "sugar free" for over a year when I was in my teens, but the thought scares me now. Probably all the more reason why I should.