Spring Cleaning: Why We Should Discard What We Don’t Need
Spring as Resurrection and Rebirth
We all know that Easter symbolizes resurrection, rebirth, and the onset of a sunny season.
But why is it that the so-called “spring cleaning” takes place precisely around Easter?
The tradition of Easter cleaning, once referred to as the Holy Water cleaning, has ancient roots. The Church encouraged the faithful to shed the grime accumulated over the winter months from themselves and their homes, to welcome the Easter blessing, brought by the parish priest.
Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Paul of Tarsus
To renew, we must first eliminate the old and then introduce the new.
Paul himself urges us to remove the old yeast, to make room for the new. To renew, we must first eliminate the old and then introduce the new. This is a rule that applies to all aspects of life. This is why spring cleaning is a time that concerns the world of objects, but also involves our inner world.
Easter is the resurrection to a new life; it is a fresh start. Spring is the season of internal renewal, of change. But to change, one must know how to let go, to be able to discard the old trappings.
How often do we fill our homes and cellars with objects we don’t use, which just collect dust for years?
To discard, we must learn to let go, to not cling to objects. Similarly, to grow, to purify ourselves, we must let go of experiences, people, and beliefs that are harmful to our evolution.
Let’s consider Hoarding Disorder (HD). Those who suffer from this condition have great difficulty parting with personal items, which results in the exasperated accumulation of products that are often completely worthless or even dangerous to health. Compulsive hoarding is the consequence of the difficulty in parting with objects. Some individuals with Hoarding Disorder have even died, buried under a pile of items they couldn’t get rid of.
Most of us don’t suffer from this disorder, but how often do we tend to accumulate in our minds a slew of items we can’t rid ourselves of?
They are all the defeats of our life, our childish thoughts, the wounds we’ve carried since we were children. This is why it’s difficult for people to truly change. We are always attached to what, once it enters our minds, doesn’t want to leave.
We are serial accumulators of thoughts and mental experiences that always lead us to recreate the same situations. We stubbornly and obsessively repeat negative behaviours which, paradoxically, in moments of clarity, we can even recognize, but from which we cannot free ourselves.
Thus, spring cleaning is not only a ritual of purification of the home and body but also of the soul.
Learning to Let Go of Things: Freeing the Old to Make Room for the New
Spring is the season when we are most inclined to free ourselves from the old to truly build the new. The beautiful thing is that we have this opportunity every year, but we must know how to seize it.
“It may seem illogical, but every time you get rid of something you don’t need, a space opens up in your mind that can be occupied by a new thought.”
Beach of dreams — Sergio Bambarén
