Cleaning out the Mental Fridge
Today I confronted the grandest and scariest of all the domestic beasts. The fridge.
Despite my best efforts, my fridge always clutters up with strange leftovers over time. Things also get lost there. Somehow, it is too deep and too high. I can barely see what is on the two top shelves. What I don't see, I don't deal with.
Looking into all the containers and sorting through all the compartments is the questionable love child of an exciting scavenger hunt and a cautious dance across a minefield. While the jar of olives I didn't know I still had was akin to mana from heaven, the hairy pasta that was hidden in a covered bowl at the back left corner of the third shelf made me nearly faint with revulsion.
While at some point in my past, things truly came alive in the fridge, these days, I find many leftovers before they go bad so I have definitely improved.
Every go-round, I promise to do better at one thing.
Today's solemn vow was "never again shall anything go into the fridge that is not in a see-through container". I have a habit of covering bowls of leftovers with a plate and just plopping them back into the fridge thinking that I will eat the leftovers later. Then I don't see them anymore. Then they grow appendages.
Anyway, everything in a clear container. Put the things that need eating in the most visible spots. This involves reorganizing everything. Deal with things regularly.
Like all domestic arts, I find the fridge-cleaning to be a wonderful parallel to how to deal with my mental health. Somehow, we can apply many of the tactics we use to tame our outer chaos to our inner turmoil and make good use of them.
The fridge bestowed the following (well known but still good to re-read) wisdom:
If I clear out my mental mess regularly, the piles of bollocks I have to shovel each time are smaller. This is the difference between a five-minute-cry and a two-hour meltdown.
Things that I can not see tend to be the most problematic. It never does well to just shove my issues into a box and leave them somewhere in the corner of my mind. Much like the pasta in the covered bowl, thoughts and emotions thus stowed away are pretty unpleasant once I open the box back up. I shall leave the boxing of nasty things to Pandora.
What I do not see, I do not deal with. Writing things down helps with this. Making a note about what to process and perhaps journaling about it is to the mind putting the still yummy pasta in a nice clear box at eye level is to the successful soothing of the fridge.
The more I do not deal with my issues, the more I do not want to deal with them. I can not skip meditation, journaling or any other mental health practice that is essential to me. If I do not feel like cleaning out the fridge this week and skip it, I will feel even less like doing it next week and skip it even more. Just like cleaning the fridge, attending to my mental health is not a one-off. It is a practice that I need to engage with regularly.
The domestic spirits have spoken.
The fridge is clean.
A new adventure awaits next week.
