Creating whitespace in your life may be the most beautiful act you can do for yourself. It creates calm, peace, centeredness, and overall feeling of well-being. And while physical whitespace is great, this is about more than that. It is also about the whitespace we need in other areas of life.

Life has been hard and crazy, and it has left little time or strength for my home or myself, especially being a caregiver with a long list of things to do all by myself.

I know a lot of people talk about how hard life is, but when you are a caregiver for someone with a disease that is basically the combination of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and ALS with a little schizophrenia thrown in just for fun, it is true. We aren’t just saying that. Oh, yeah, and it is fatal…in about 20 years. He has been symptomatic for 23 years. This disease is rare and often referred to as the worst disease known to mankind. Caregivers will rarely tell you why. It’s too hard. All of it.

Seven years ago, I decided I had to figure out how to still live a life with some beauty in the midst of all of this. Because I’m tired. Because it’s hard. And because I matter, too.

And so do you. Whatever your story is.

I am the type of person whose skin will crawl without a certain amount of quiet or solitude. That is a rare commodity in this house. But this quiet and solitude is not a luxury for me. It is survival for some of us. We wouldn’t just enjoy it. Our sanity depends upon it.

We need this. The whitespace. Maybe even a beautiful and calming whitespace. I need a beautiful space in the midst of the mess. A space that is beautiful and calming. Peaceful. Cozy. A place with breathing space for the days when it’s too hard to breathe. A space that I can go to replenish my soul. I need a life with a little bit of breathing room. It is where I regroup.

I need it to survive.

As I am writing this, I just realized one of the notes I made about 2018 was that I wanted it to be a year with more white space. Less worry. Less things to do. Less stress. More trust. More calm. More white space to live, to breathe, to heal.

Whitespace is normally a term used in the context of documents. It means unused space, more specifically, it usually means space intentionally left blank for various beneficial reasons. It is a term that came to my mind while thinking about a brand new year a few months ago. I honestly didn’t know it was a real thing and had to look it up. It had come to me out of nowhere, or maybe just a deep place.

I had forgotten about that. I guess somewhere in there, I knew. There is a power that comes on the scene when we write things down. We might forget them, but they still exist. Be careful with written words. They are the strongest kind. Use that power for good.

Am I reaching too high to think that I can have all of this in the midst of the storm? Or maybe that is especially when we should seek this. Yes. I think that is it.

“It is often the times where life is the hardest that we need to be the most gentle with ourselves and take care of ourselves.” 

-Topaz

So in an effort to be kinder to myself and take better care of myself, I am creating more whitespace in my life this year.

Several years ago, I had created a cozy space for myself by a window in my bedroom. It was a space for me to curl up with a favorite heavy throw that seemed to calm my anxious heart. It was also a place where I would write in the early hours of the morning. God always seemed to meet me there. I still think about that space today.  It was magical. I felt at peace there no matter what was happening around me. That area got repurposed as our life kept changing, but I am working on finding and creating a new space.

A big part of creating a space we love often involves less than more. It can be more important what we take away than what we bring in.

Less equals more.

“Less stuff, less work, less expense equals more money, more time, more joy. Less equals more.”
-Topaz

I am working on all these areas, but the space around me is calling to me the loudest, creating safe, quiet, peaceful spaces with less things. So I did my living room in the picture over to the right this weekend. I am pretty happy with it, but I still have a few things left to do. For whatever reason, clutter is driving me crazy. Do you ever get like that? But the things that do not belong are not always obvious. Sometimes we have to take a step back to see it. I do this thing where I will take a picture of a space, usually mid process, because I forget to take one before I start. I look at the image I took on my phone, and it is then I can glaringly see what the naked eye has got used to not seeing. But it wasn’t okay. It was hurting us all along and doing much more damage than we realized. Clutter does this to us. We just couldn’t see it until we looked at it with fresh eyes, sometimes the lens of the camera gives us that. It is kind of like when you do not see the tree growing out a person’a head when you are taking the picture, but you cannot miss it when you look at the picture.

So I encourage you to create more white space in your life where you need it. Apply this concept to your physical space, your relationships, or just the general busyness of life. We are all always busy. That is not always a good thing. I often find I have more time with God in the whitespace of life. I wonder if this is what He means when He says to be still and know that He is God. He knows we have to be still, which is much more easily done when we intentionally create whitespace. It stills our overstimulated minds. We learn to slow down and breathe in the whitespace.

Create some whitespace in your life. Learn what to take away and what to add. Be intentional with your space, with your life. Be kind to yourself. Take care of yourself.

10 Ways to Create More Whitespace in Your Life

1. Declutter. All of it. Get. It. Gone.
2. Say no more. A lot more. Say no to too many activities. Leave yourself breathing room.
3. Prioritize your relationships. We cannot be everyone’s friend as much as we would like to. There just isn’t enough hours in the day. Sometimes we have to pull back or do group things and spend time with everyone at once.
4. Only fill your home with the things that matter or things that are useful. Or things that are beautiful.
5. Spend time with the people who matter but realize we have to say no to others to make that happen and still have time for ourselves.
6. Say yes to more time just for yourself.
7. Create a space you love with the things you love. Be intentional with this space. But leave whitespace. Leave unused space.
8. Leave time in your life where you have nothing you have to do, nowhere you have to be. See what happens. What would you want to do for yourself with this time? Read a book, listen to music, spend time on a hobby, write, journal, take a bath, have a cup of coffee or tea or a glass of wine?
9. Create a special place and time in your life where you have some time, some regular time to think, to journal, to create, to meet with God. You will come to treasure this time and space in your life. Take this time and space and use it for positive and creative thoughts. Make it a happy place. It is not a place and time to bring problems or negativity. Make it a place of peace.
10. Organize your life. This may mean decluttering, organizing, and developing a better plan for your daily life, because some things just have to be taken care of, but be sure you are not making it harder on yourself by not having good and regular systems in place to make the rest of your life easier to open up more breathing space for you without the stress of life hanging over your head.

Whether this whitespace for you is an actual room, time, solitude, less busyness, less clutter, whatever it is, you need it. Your body needs it. Your minds needs it. Take care of yourself. Carve this space out for yourself. Create more whitespace in your life, to live, create, and breathe.

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