Drop, Go, and Avoid: What Cleaning My Home Taught Me About Healing

Tonight marks the second night I’ve spent moving through every room, deep cleaning our home after several weeks of “drop and go.” Meaning, whenever I left something behind, that’s exactly where it stayed until now. Over the past two nights, I’ve been returning each item to its rightful place, room by room, reclaiming my space piece by piece.

I still have a few more areas to tend to before the weekend and the start of a new month. Yet, even in this process, I’m reminded that cleaning and resetting my home is a visual reflection of what happens when we practice “drop, go, and avoid.” The clutter doesn’t resolve itself. Neither do the inner messes we ignore. Restoration requires intention our active focus and willingness to face what we’ve left unattended.

When we practice “drop and go,” things pile up not just in our homes, but in our hearts. Each unreturned item, unread message, or unresolved thought becomes symbolic of where our attention has scattered. Avoidance feels easier in the moment, but what is left unattended multiplies quietly. Restoration, on the other hand, is sacred work. It is not only about cleaning the physical space but about re-entering the emotional and spiritual spaces we’ve neglected. Intention becomes the bridge between chaos and clarity. To clean is to remember that order is an act of care and that tending to our environment can be a mirror of tending to the soul.

As I moved through each room, I noticed how the mess didn’t just represent busyness; it represented avoidance. Each pile carried a story of fatigue, distraction, or delay. Yet, as I placed things back where they belonged, something in me also began to return to center. It reminded me that healing does not happen by ignoring what has been displaced; it occurs through presence, patience, and the courage to begin again. Clearing space makes room for breath, light, and peace to return.

Ignite Your Liberation Journey

1. What spaces: physical, emotional, or spiritual? Have I been practicing “drop and go”?

2. What emotions arise when I confront what I’ve avoided or neglected?

3. How might I create a rhythm of restoration that honors both my limits and my longing for order?

4. What does “coming home” to myself look and feel like in this season?

Affirmation

I reclaim what I have abandoned.

I make space for clarity, peace, and renewal.

Every act of tending no matter how small is a gesture of healing.

My intention restores what avoidance once obscured.

Prayer

Holy Presence,

Teach me to see the sacred in small acts of care.

Where I have dropped and gone, help me return with compassion.

May each room I restore remind me that nothing heals through avoidance, only through attention.

Grant me the grace to begin again,

to reorder what has been displaced,

and to find You in every act of cleaning, clearing, and coming home.

Amen.