Two of my close friends have something in common. They are both very messy. I love them dearly, but their houses look like Cocaine Bear went on a rampage — first on Amazon, buying everything in sight; then in the house after it all arrived.

Both homes seem to be on a pipeline from Amazon, receiving odd home goods, kitchen gadgets, skin products, bathroom inventions, electronic innovations, newer pillows, storage hacks, clothes, athletic performance gear, etc.

One of them told me once, “I like to have some nice things sitting around the house, so when dates comes over, they’ll notice and infer things about me. Leaving nice things around is like dropping hints about the type of person I am.” The friend pointed out an electronic toothbrush standing on its charger, which would highlight good oral hygiene. It stood on a maxed-out counter full of soaps and perfumes and hair products and lotions and a million other things that actually prevented the bathroom from looking ‘nice.’ (My interior design inclination is toward minimalism and hiding as many of these things as possible!)

The mindset of these friends, in other words, is that ‘adding more nice things to their homes will make them nicer.’ You can see the logic. 

More nice things = More nice home.

In reality though, subtracting many of the things from their homes would actually make them appear far nicer and more comfortable to guests. Subtracting many, many things…….

I realized that this is true, not only of the interiors of our homes, but the insides of us. While I may not be guilty of a messy home, I am certainly guilty of a cluttered soul and mind. I often think that adding just the right podcast will cure me, or one more book will be the magic fix I’ve been looking for. It always seems like it’s out there, just the one more magic thing that will finally be it. 

But nothing we could add to ourselves will ever be the solution. In his book Forty Days to a Closer Walk with God, Christian contemplative writer J. David Muyskens wrote,

Spiritual growth is more about subtraction than addition.

Most of the great spiritual practices are matters of subtraction, not addition: when one fasts, they subtract food; in silence, one subtracts noise and distraction. When Jesus was in the desert for 40 days, He modeled both! And when we imitate this annually in Lent, we practice giving something up rather than adding something in.

Maybe this is why Marie Kondo blew up in popularity a few years ago, because she had actually tapped into the ancient notion of joy through stripping away.

Perhaps what you need, like my friends’ houses, is to remove some things rather than to add. Maybe you need some more negative space, some more unfilled margin. Some more silence. 

I operate the same way about productivity: I need to always be outputting, or else what am I doing with my life? But what if the purpose of life is not to be as productive as possible, but as present as possible? That would require some subtraction.

If our days are so chock full of stuff, how on earth is God supposed to speak into them? More space is needed.

Maybe you don’t need to add more things to improve your life; maybe you need to subtract.

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