Well, the second week of the Clean Heart Clean Home Challenge didn't go quite as I had planned (Does anything ever go as planned?  I'm really starting to wonder...).  The main areas for this week were the entrance, the dining room and kitchen.  After Christmas, with the influx of new toys, we determined that since we hardly ever use the dining room table, we could use a playroom more than a dining room.  So our dining room table went out to the garage to make room for the Rescue Hero command center, a castle, a keyboard and numerous other bins filled with toys.  This means that I didn't have to clean a "dining room" as our "dining room" is now part of our living room which I did last week.  Yeah!  One less thing to do!

I have a very small entrance area so there wasn't much to do there.  I did go through our "shoe trunk" and took out the shoes that no longer fit or have lost it's match.  I never really did get to the kitchen, but since the weather was permitting and BW was on spring break this week, we tackled the garage.  Do we have a lot of junk!!  I went through some of the moving boxes that we had never really sorted through when we moved last July, especially the toy boxes.  I filled up the back of the van with things to take to the second hand store today and almost filled up one of our trash cans(now we can't make anymore trash until next Thursday!). 

I also took the opportunity to pull out  AK's 9-12 mth clothes (sigh, he's growing so fast!) and the girls' warm weather clothes, wash them and put them in their drawers since it reached the high 70's yesterday.  It had been so warm, I couldn't believe that it would rain again today, but by mid-morning, it was pouring once again.  Now I need to find some time to go through CJ's drawers and make some room for all of these clothes.  CJ has lots of clothes she likes to own, but not necessarily wear.  Does anyone else have a 6yo like this?  Her drawers are always full, but she can never seem to find anything to wear.  She gets in these ruts where she wants to wear the same 3 or 4 outfits.  This was one of the reasons I switched to only doing laundry one day a week.

BW prepped the soil in the backyard to plant our vegetable garden once the rains stop. We will be planting carrots, tomatoes, strawberries, corn, potatoes & cucumbers.  Through a fellow hser we were recommended to a wonderful nursery who gave BW all the info about what grows around here and what doesn't, what to start from seed and what to buy plants for.  I think sometimes he would have fit right in as a farmer somewhere in the Little House on the Prairie era. 

As far as the Clean Heart part of the challenge, God is doing some good cleaning and organizing there too.  Honestly, as I looked at the verse "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me." Ps 51:10 I had to admit that I hate to think of what God sees when He looks at my heart since I rarely want to look in there myself.  More often than not, it is full of idleness, selfishness, self-pity, covetousness, hatred, anger and more.  I know that it does not please God for me to remain in this state and is a horrible witness to my children and anyone else I meet.  So I prayed to God to change me heart, to cleanse me from the inside out.  I prayed for Him to make my heart like His, to align my will with His, to help me to be happy with the things that make Him happy. 

As I went through the garage, I prayed that God would bless the people who were the recipients of the things I gave away and that each who received would come to a saving faith in Him if they didn't know Him and would grow in their faith if they do know Him.  I repented of filling our lives with stuff and trying so often to use things to make me happy rather than turning to the things of God which will always satisfy.  I praised God for providing for us so abundantly.

Thanks again so much to Amy for putting this "challenge" together!  I am truly benefiting in so many ways!

-J