mindful monday.

It is house-clearing time. Getting rid of physical and mental lint. I may have mentioned that once or three dozen times.

For example, I found the top of my desk this week.

It is also a time for pretty, calm, oasis-making. Many of you have done this years ago, and I wish I had. But no regrets. I'm not in a position to start over and buy all new stuff and I don't want to do that anyway. What I do want to do is organize and clear out and reposition and add color and eventually create a turquoise and white and clementine office in our attic. That day will come. For now, I'm creating a work space in the anteroom to our bedroom.

Yesterday we replaced our tall open shelves in the mudroom with an inexpensive black armoire we bought off of Craigslist. Suddenly the cookbooks and stereo equipment are still there, but not cluttering up my line of vision from the kitchen. Of course the lower armoire does reveal the wall that isn't fully painted, but that's life–one change sometimes requires another.

I've fallen in love with the idea of creating systems, of making finding things background and not foreground. Of having a system for cleaning, for purging, for simplifying.

And I've fallen in love with this site: Young House Love and their amazing list of how-tos and the colors they use and pretty much everything about it.

I've fallen in love with simple cleaning solutions. Enough with all that harsh chemical crap.

How to clear your email inbox when you're drowning.

First, care.

And finally:

This post about Trey Pennington's suicide yesterday isn't about decorating or cleaning–except it is. Depression is a disease we need to be more mindful of, we need to talk about more openly. People with depression–and I count myself among them–aren't deficient. We're not play-acting our way through life. We're not not happy. We do feel absolute, ecstatic joy–that's not a lie. Depression is more than that, and often completely manageable. There are many of us in this world. Many. We often come by it honestly as a result of our genes. Perhaps you are one of us. And until we can say out loud that we have depression and let people know we need help, more friends will die. Four people I know in the past two years have killed themselves because of depression or mental illness. I hope if you feel such deep sadness that you cannot move, if you see a gap you feel can't be overcome between your private self and your public self, if you feel despair and need help, if you know exercise might help and you can't get going, you will reach out. This is an important post to read and pass on to everyone you love. And if you find yourself in judgment of people with depression–that they need to suck it up and put on their big girl panties, that they are selfish if they kill themselves, that they could choose another way to be, that they just need to do yoga or run and stop whining about it–just remember that you would not say that about someone with cancer or heart disease, so stop saying it about people with depression.