Cleaning House 🧹

Like Cinderella do 👸🏼

Written by

Red Young

Published on

April 14, 2024

Spring Menu 📖Windy March: It’s Sommer Time 🌴April Showers: Updates/Spring Cleaning 🔺May Flowers: Emily McDonald vs. Doom Scrolling 💀

Sommer Time In Spring 🏝️

I recently had the honor of appearing on the 'It's Sommer Time' podcast 🎙️Sommer Hill stirred up a chat about love, role models, and relationships — tricky and misunderstood subjects in the Black community.

It resulted in a healthy, excited dialogue that spellbinded the studio, bursting into a spiritual powwow amongst friends. It's a refreshing, mature conversation that sheds light on critical issues 💡

I bet you’ll learn a thing or two about the minds of young men and women of today 📍I am eager to hear your thoughts!

Check out Sommer Hill’s YouTube and website as well. She’s doing great work in the media space and deserves recognition for it.

Don’t have time for the full video? 📺

Watch top performers on my YouTube and TikTok.

Housekeeping 🏡

I have a good sense of what it’s like to be a grouch.

I have lived as one over the last few weeks.

Just been a little down lately, and my writing, my most precious expression of emotion, has reflected that.

With all my talk of positivity and optimism, it’s counterproductive for my writing to be in this funk. I’ve decided to emotionally clean house. I also resolve to actually clean my house. Dishes are piling up.

With Down to Earth, I strive to build a community around healthy living and share what feels good. That’s it.

As a writer, I’ve noticed myself getting caught up in the quality of my content, rather than just saying what’s on my mind. It creates a frustrating cycle where I stress the result and lose sight of the process — the most important part.

I often feel pressured to write the next great American novel with each new edition of my newsletter, which contradicts the nature of this being a casual read.

Last week, I sent out a content survey to my readers, in a bid to learn what’s important to y’all. It has been both revealing and exciting to read your feedback. It’s brought a sense of focus to my mission of serving this community. I hope to make you feel heard, felt, and seen with my newsletter — in this way, I am your servant.

For these few sacred minutes every Sunday morning, it’s an honor to gift you self-love and offer growth. Still, accepting, and free.

This Substack was never about growth, numbers, or blowing up. That boxes you in, and we’re all about the extraordinary here.

My ultimate pleasure is serving the people I love and bringing value to their lives. If I do nothing else, I am satisfied with that.

In keeping with the theme of renewal, let’s return to form and plunge into the concept of spring cleaning, keeping close to what brings us joy.

Spring Cleaning 🧹

How to Mindfully Spring Clean

Spring Cleaning is all about clearing out things that don’t serve you or bring joy. It’s a process of reclaiming space in your home and spirit. With that in mind, step one is to:

Be ruthless 👊🏽 Clean every inch that you inhabit. Dispose of all garbage! Let anything go. That untouched food processor packed in the box? Regift it. Those pants you can’t find an outfit for, but would wear some time — out. The truly valuable items will have a strong claim to stick around.

Minimize things you see 👁️ A cluttered room is a cluttered mind. Your visual field, aka the things you see at any given moment, can determine your mood, concentration, and peace of mind. The less cluttered your place is, the more space you can make for clarity and stillness within. Have you ever seen a monk with a messy room? Didn’t think so.
Empty out phone, cloud, trash, tabs, and desktop files on your devices 🗑️ Do you realize how satisfying it is to close every tab in your browser? To free up 5GB of pointless videos fireworks videos from July 2019, or sunset pictures that are halfway blurry? Clearing storage is a worthwhile and practical reclamation of peace. It can be a wild ride of reflection if you’re into nostalgia. I enjoy revisiting my past and have learned to love parting with it 🧘🏽‍♂️

Instagram - @clutterbug_me

Cleaning keeps the mind sharp, and the body active.

Donate unwanted clothes 👔 I have a friend who would throw out his old or unwanted clothes by the trash bag. After countless rants about the mindless waste of clothes in landfills, he’s since changed his ways. I really hope people are not doing this frequently. There is a high demand for secondhand clothing, whether it’s a midwestern twenty-something living out their TikTok fantasies in a New York City vintage store, or the homeless family who could desperately benefit from a few pairs of socks. Donate your clothes!
Sell stuff 💸 Have valuable things you want to part with? Get cash for your collectibles, clothes, or really anything on Grailed, Depop, eBay, Facebook Marketplace, and Mercari.
1. Whether it’s once-loved sneakers or a bundle of nice coat hangers, whatever you end up finding, I would just recommend you price the items to sell. Why? Because squeezing every last potential dollar out of something you don’t even want or use is either petty or greedy, and it wastes a ton of your time. There is clarity and satisfaction from having one less piece and a few bucks to boot.
Enjoy the process ⏰ The journey is the destination here! A clean, calm space is the benefit, like a quarterly dividend.