I’ve been reading a lot of memoirs lately, so this is a slightly different-toned piece. It’s the type of writing I used to do: reflective, narrative, a little personal. It feels a little vulnerable to share. I’m worried it might be awkward for patients and clients, like seeing your teacher in the mall on a Saturday. But, reading others’ stories helps me connect in a way that information can’t. Narrative winds and flows more like water than carefully placed interlocking bricks of facts. Through shared humanity, we see ourselves.
I will continue to do informational pieces, too. I’m still making podcasts (my free Bloodwork Series is available, with a hormone testing chapter coming next). If you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit eclectic and like to cover lots of topics.
But, anyway, I’m trying to write more regularly again, and this style is part of that. It’s part of my yearly Spring Cleaning.
I’ve never been one for New Year’s Resolutions. December bleeding into January, I suppose, is officially a new calendar year, but with the same dreary, dark days and cold weather, it doesn’t feel like the beginning of anything. Instead, I have Spring Cleaning, a season for new beginnings: sorting, inventory, renewal, organizing, and goal-setting.
When I was a naturopathic medical student, I lived with my Nonna on the top floor of her three-story Victorian house near Christie Station in Toronto. On Saturdays, she would wake me, looming over my bed, duster in hand, announcing, “Todayyy: We clean.” Exhausted from the long week of commuting, classes, and studying, I obliged. We rubbed damp microfibre towels over blinds, vacuumed the carpets, and scrubbed the shower, clearing the previous week’s residue from our psyches.
Cleaning was a Nonna thing. It was her pride, purpose and identity. Nonna famously told a Green Party canvasser, when they came to the door to ask for her vote, “You wanna clean-a the environ-nament? Why don’ you start-a by clean-na the street?” She had a point.
Todayyy: we clean has become a private mantra I whisper to myself whenever I want to reset my space. Those weekend mornings, after coffee, reading and scrolling, when I feel like sweeping dirt and restoring order, I think of Nonna. I grab my vacuum and my cloth, and I get to work. I am certain that my efforts would not be up to her standards, but as someone whose relationship with cleanliness and mess has oscillated between extremes throughout my life, my time with Nonna has definitely instilled in me an appreciation for clean, orderly spaces.
When things are wiped down and put in their places, things feel right somehow. Peace and order are restored.
So, every year, around the Spring Equinox, sometime between the last snowfall and the world turning green, birds singing, and fruit trees blossoming, I feel a surge of serotonin seep into my synapses. The glow of the sun melts into my skin like butter on warm toast. Vitamin D levels lift. The world is new again, and so am I.
The light, the warmth, the energy uplift me, and I find myself with a renewed sense of resolve. I want to shake off the heavy, lethargic blanket of winter and dive into health and well-being. I make resolutions. I think about nutrition, I commit to moving more and getting outside. This year, I got back into yoga.
This year, I got honest with myself. I stopped committing to doing things every day, as in, “I’m going to do yoga every day”. Instead, my inner resolve sounded more like “I’m going to start doing yoga regularly, like 4-5 times a week, letting myself miss a day or two, but maybe not too many in a row, in the evenings for about half an hour, or more if I feel like it.” Consistency over perfection.
I started booking appointments: bloodwork, osteopathy, and finally dental (I’d been straight-up avoiding this one). I straightened up my supplements, finishing bottles of stuff, paring down. Now I’m on a few things, like iron, fish oil, magnesium (and some herbs, and a quercetin and vitamin C supplement to get me through this allergy season). Actually, thanks to this regimen, I think my pollen allergies have been pretty mild this year.
I started journaling every day. Or, like with the yoga, most days. I try to write about three pages in a stream-of-consciousness style without stopping (Julia Cameron’s “Morning Pages,” except done at any time of day). And sometimes I do stop, leave it, and come back to it—actually, I started writing this piece in the middle of 1/6th of today’s journaling session. It’s helping me think clearly and breaking down the dam of writer’s block.
The words are flowing again, and with them the debris of doubt. I’m confident the clean water will wash that away in time.
I started dancing and singing more (my poor neighbours).
And then, it was time to clean. Spring Cleaning often calls for a deep clean. Every few years or so, I like to do big purges, a seasonal detox of sorts. I can be ruthless in my aims to eliminate as much as possible, donating garbage bags filled with things that no longer bring me joy. My discrimination against items that have never borne me any ill will, except maybe threatening clutter, can be quite brutal.
I’ve lived in my place for almost seven years, which is the longest I’ve lived anywhere since university, I think. Moving is a forced exercise in getting rid of stuff. One year, with emotionless abandon, I donated all my childhood books and toys, even my Princess Diana Beanie Baby (I know, I know… I traded it for a bottle of homemade wine from a guy who was expecting his first baby).
So, there has been regret, but mostly I often feel peaceful afterwards. I’m lighter, less overwhelmed, and less buried by Stuff (in my head, I say the word like George Carlin did in his famous bit).
This year was different, however. I didn’t embark on an elimination frenzy. I found myself moving more slowly. I went through my apartment, one room at a time: sometimes just an area or a basket. I opened things up and took objects out. I held them, looked at them, and I touched them.
Some things I donated. Some I threw away (not a whole lot, though). Mostly, I cleaned things. I put them back, or somewhere else, or found a new place for them.
I helped my things find their homes.
Some of the places I decided to keep things were weird (my batteries are in a bathroom cupboard). I worry my future self might not remember where I put stuff. But I think I’ll eventually find what I need when I need it. I trust the good sense of my sorting self.
I’m not a hoarder, really (thanks to the purges), but I do have a lot of lip balms scattered all over. Some were just empty jars or tubes. Many were new. I collected them up and put them together, like a squirrel piling up his nuts. Practically, this reduces waste. I no longer have to keep buying lip balm, thinking I need more.
I found spices, truffle oil, vanilla, and other fancy foodstuffs that were not yet past expiry that I’d forgotten about. Finding these treasures created little surges of dopamine. I found a little basket for them.
Instead of removing items, this was very much an exercise in keeping things. In nesting. In loving my things. Marie Kondo (whose book I skimmed) suggests ridding oneself of cards and letters. “Your writing always inspires me,” wrote a colleague on a postcard as part of a workshop we attended in 2019. Another year, I might have read it, held gratitude in my heart, thanked the writer, and then tossed it.
But I thought of my friends, sitting with the blank cards before them, holding them in their hands, thinking of me, and our friendship, deciding what to write before finally putting pen to paper. This year, I touched and read each one. I put them all in a purple folder.
My home is by no means clutter-free; in fact, to the casual visitor, the place doesn’t even look that different. There’s an area in my home that looks like a surf shop: bags of swim toys, swimsuits and wetsuits, pool noodles, surfboards, and sauna hats. It’s still kind of a mess, even after I went through everything.
I love that corner.
I recently unearthed the bin of the few very special childhood toys that survived the Great Donation of 2014. Talkin’ Bubba was in there. I won him in a contest when I was 8 or 9 years old. Do you remember that toy—a bear with sunglasses and wild hair who talks when you press his hands and nose? My niece wants to hear him talk. He needs batteries. I’m not sure what kind, but I know they’re in the bathroom cupboard.
Oh, my dad and I washed my car! We vacuumed, polished, and washed the mats and exterior. We gave her a tire and oil change. I felt so much joy and gratitude for my car, seeing her all fresh and polished.
I moved on to my mental space: finances, budgeting, investing, and savings. Filing taxes in April already brings finances to mind and forces me to review my spending for the year. Not just the money, but the things, services, and experiences that money bought me. Even though taxes suck and no one wants to do them, how much of the year might be forgotten if not for taxes? I have to touch every expense, remember it, catalogue it, and file it.
Confronting anxiety and uncertainty about finances is helpful. I know a lot of us are carrying stress in our bodies and minds about the economy and the affordability of life, and I’m no different. Finances are a common concern in individual therapy sessions with clients, as well as in discussions among colleagues during supervision. We’re all feeling stretched and stressed over the state of the world and our futures.
Facing the stress head-on has been helpful. With a little organization, planning, and intention, I feel more in control and at peace with things. It’s like practicing breath holds for the next time a big wave hits.
I turned to the business and creative space. Thinking about frameworks, streamlining systems, reading books, taking courses and attending supervision. What is next for me in the world of naturopathic medicine and psychotherapy? What would be helpful to add to my practices to better support clients and patients? Maybe you have some ideas on this, reader.
I’m de-emphasizing social media. I set a 30-minute limit for the main social media apps on my phone.
I’ve been reading more. I’m thinking about learning to sew and embroider.
I went through my arts and crafts supplies. I have so many tools: what do I want to make? Maybe my niece and I can make something. I’m playing in the space of creative movement: dancing and singing, finding rhythm, tone and pitch. I’m not good, but I don’t care (again, my neighbours might have a different opinion about this).
As far as spiritual and relational spaces, I tend to keep these parts of my life private. Ultimately, they involve spending quality time with the people who are important to me. Focusing on connection, presence, embodied awareness, and time in nature. Yoga and journaling are helpful.
I have friends who are diving into astrology or attending religious services again. Personally, I’ve been focusing on nervous system regulation, informal meditation, and connecting with a sense of awe and reverence for beauty through walks in nature.
This may all sound intense, and at times it has been. I’ve spent some moments running around like a caffeinated bee, sweeping and scrubbing all the flowers of my belongings. But there are also moments when I sit on the floor, windows open, gentle breeze and warm sunlight coming in, surrounded by things, reading them, turning them over, putting them into piles. My niece and I sorted my shell and beach glass collection in this way.
I can hear those of you with full-time work, families, and all the rest of it (if you’re still here) groaning at the time-consuming work of it all. “Ugh, not another reminder about cleaning the garage,” You might be thinking. I hear you, because I talk every week, if not with you, then with someone in your situation. We’re all stretched thin, overstimulated, and overwhelmed.
But, I know that most of you know I’m not talking about cleaning, so much as touching things with curiosity, taking them out one at a time, like the poem of the Holy Wounds.
And I lift them / one by one / close to my heart / and I say / holy holy.
Maybe Spring Cleaning involves turning towards something that’s been nagging at you for months (Okay, for me, it was the dentist, and it was years), reaching into the depths of the clutter, taking out a box and unpacking it.
In therapy, we use the metaphor “to unpack” all the time. Through non-judgmental conversation, we take things out, touch them, hold them, and decide what to purge and what to keep. We examine these thoughts, feelings, parts, beliefs, distortions, assumptions, memories, and schemas, and we find them new homes. We grieve what we’ve lost or what never came to be.
We love our clutter because our stuff carries people and parts of ourselves. Most of all, we take out only what we can manage. And then we put it back, sometimes changed in some way.
I think it’s important to note that even during sorting and cleaning, dirt and clutter continue to accumulate. The work is never done. But I’m touching everything I own with awe, appreciation, gratitude, and curiosity. My dog and I still track dirt onto the floor every day. Nonna would not be pleased. But, I vacuum it, Nonna, I swear. Tomorrow: we clean.
And, after all this, it’s worth noting that my closet doesn’t look like an IKEA catalogue: beige items sorted into aesthetically calming grid-like shelves and bins. Closets like those don’t usually have boxes filled with their dead dog’s ashes.
Mine does.
Mine is real.
Happy Spring Cleaning, everyone!
