Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
113. Spring Cleaning for the Soul
Spring cleaning isn't just for your closet—what about the things we’ve been carrying in our hearts, homes, and relationships that need a reset?
In this episode, Jason and Lauren take the idea of spring cleaning beyond junk drawers and cluttered cabinets and dive deep into the unseen spaces of our emotional, relational, and spiritual lives. From the bathroom cabinet that hasn’t been cleaned out in a year to the mental tabs we’ve left open way too long, they explore what it looks like to make space for peace, connection, and growth in every area.
What You’ll Hear:
🧠 Emotional & Mental Inventory
- How unspoken expectations, resentment, and grief can clog up your inner world
- What decision fatigue and overthinking might be trying to tell you
- Prompts to help you recognize what you’re still holding onto that you no longer need
💞 Relationship Reset
- Signs of relational clutter in marriage, dating, or singleness
- Are you acting like roommates or partners?
- How to replace criticism and avoidance with curiosity, gratitude, and fun
- A powerful question to ask: What’s gotten dusty in our connection that needs tending?
🙏 Spiritual Alignment
- Are you going through the motions or truly connecting with God?
- How to realign your priorities and make space for spiritual renewal
🧹 A Fresh Start
Jason and Lauren offer three simple “spring cleaning” actions to bring clarity and freedom:
- Have a marriage check-in
- Delete digital distractions
- Forgive (yes, even that one thing… again)
Plus, a gentle nudge to revisit those New Year’s goals with fresh eyes and grace.
Takeaway Question:
What’s one area—internal, relational, or spiritual—where you want to clear space this season?
Patreon
If you've enjoyed this podcast, would you consider financially supporting the show? Every donation, big and small, helps the Vallottons continue to prioritize making this content for you. Click this link to support! Thank you!
For information on the Marriage Intensive and other resources, go to jasonandlaurenvallotton.com !
Connect with Lauren:
Instagram
Facebook
Connect with Jason:
Jay’s Instagram
Jay’s Facebook
BraveCo Instagram
www.braveco.org
We're the Valetans and we are passionate about people.
Speaker 1:Every human was created for fulfilling relational connection.
Speaker 2:But that's not always what comes easiest.
Speaker 1:We know this because of our wide range of personal experience, as well as our years of working with people.
Speaker 2:So we're going to crack open topics like dating, marriage, family and parenting to encourage, entertain and equip you for a deeply fulfilling life of relational health.
Speaker 1:Welcome back everyone to Dates, mates and Babies with the Vallottons.
Speaker 2:We are here, live from home today with our dog.
Speaker 1:You'll probably hear pup.
Speaker 2:Pepper going off in the background. She wants to play. That's because it's finally sunny out and, folks, we are heading into spring. Praise the Lord. I know I'm so thankful we are. We're actually going to do a very seasonally appropriate episode today, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to be talking about spring cleaning for the soul.
Speaker 1:That's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, spring cleaning for the soul and our relationship, life and any other area that might just need a little tidy up. Now that we are heading into some outdoor weather, some sunshine, love, what do you think?
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I think it's really appropriate and it's easy to just go into your year right and plow into it without stopping and going Hmm, how are we doing so? Things I need to get rid of? Am I ready for the season that's ahead? And that's what I really think when I think about spring cleaning is it's really preparing you for what's to come? I know for us, the start of the year has been wild.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it has.
Speaker 1:We are. We started at like. We didn't ramp up we were just up.
Speaker 2:I know I was actually just talking to somebody at church yesterday and it sounds like I've actually had a few of these conversations. It sounds like quarter one of 2025 was a lot for a lot of people. We were talking about a friend of mine at church. We were talking about how normally like January February is kind of this reset after the holidays and you kind of have this slow start to the year. You really get to go slower, assess everything.
Speaker 1:It's quiet, you're inside, um well, part of that is honestly just having the elections this year poses a uh, just a tiny bit different of an emotional weight that that people are carrying and like an interest in the world and what's happening and what's going on. But also, I mean, for us it's it really is like things in in Braveco's ramped up so much and. Yeah, and then just our own personal life.
Speaker 2:You're writing a book, yep, all that stuff, we had some travel, we had kids' birthdays, I had a couple big conferences at church, so it's just been a big first quarter, right, uh-huh. What that has felt like to me I don't know about you is I really rely on that first quarter of the year normally to make a lot of assessments and and and make a good strategic plan for our year. This year it felt like I had to do that best I could in December before Christmas, and then you just hope you kind of make it through the first quarter, and so now here we are, kind of with a little bit of a breather. It's still full, but we have like a couple of weeks to breathe before we hit the ground running again.
Speaker 1:I'm like, yeah, better breathe quick, because we are even the pace is picking up, babe.
Speaker 2:It's picking up, but we have a couple of weeks and so here we are, at the start of spring and you guys, what we wanted to do today is talk about. I mean, spring cleaning isn't just for our closets, right, don't get me wrong, that's happening around my house right now. But what about the things we've been carrying in our hearts, in our homes, inside of our families, in our marriages, in our relationships that just might really benefit from a reset?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's that look like to you, ben?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean on a practical level not to become too metaphorical here, but on a practical level. It's literally. I opened up our bathroom cabinet two nights ago to try to find something and everything spilled out. Everything spilled out, and I'm a pretty tidy person. So you know I don't like clutter, I don't want the countertops to be full of things. But last week I had two moments. The bathroom cabinet exploded on me and I had to like okay, this empty bottle gets to be thrown away. I don't even need this anymore. What is this? This is toxic trash. I'm throwing it away, you know. So I had that moment. And then the next day I looked at our kitchen counter and we have this drop zone.
Speaker 2:Anybody have a drop zone in your house. I know you do. It's that spot where, whenever anybody comes inside from the car, it's where you put down all the things you don't actually know where to put, and that for us it's the corner of our kitchen cabinet and it gets piled up with papers and toys and my purse, my planner, anything that I've had to take away from the kids, you know, like all the junk. And I had this thought I got to change this drop zone. This drop zone needs to happen in the laundry room at minimum, so I don't have to look at it all the time. But then I had this moment where I was like, okay, does putting a drop zone out of sight actually solve the problem? Zone out of sight actually solve the problem? There you go Right. Or does it just hide it away so that you don't?
Speaker 2:have to address it, yeah, and so I was like, okay, if I'm going to move the drop zone, I actually have to commit to putting things where they belong, instead of using the drop zone for everything, yeah, so, anyways, here's that's my metaphor for for how we can, if we want to approach this opportunity for some spring cleaning and get really intentional about whatever areas of our life are cluttered.
Speaker 1:I think it really helps when you break it up into categories, so when you look at, like, what's the emotional, mental clutter that you're carrying around?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you really start to think is there, do I have like any unprocessed stuff going?
Speaker 2:on.
Speaker 1:How am I doing internally? And I think everybody really wants a life of peace and of rest when we talk about internally.
Speaker 1:I mean it's one thing to. It's not like everyone just wants to lay down and not do anything but internally, this we, your ecosystem, a lot of your ecosystem is experienced through your internal world, not just your external world, and if your internal world is really chaotic, then it makes everything else around you feel really chaotic. Well, what does that chaos look like? To me, it starts with how am I experiencing my inner world? So, my mind, what am I thinking about? What am I feeding myself on? What am I consuming emotionally? What?
Speaker 2:am I consuming emotionally.
Speaker 1:It's the difference between, like I'm spending lots of time focusing on what God is doing and spending a lot of time in prayer or meditation, or you're listening to worship music or looking at a problem with His hope, not avoiding problems. But am I doing that? How is my mental, emotional world going? And as well it's to me it's, it's things like um, are there things in my relationship that I'm not saying or I'm holding back?
Speaker 1:on and therefore, I'm in this internal battle right, which happens a lot If I'm not careful. It happens where I just let things go in our relationship and I don't go hey, babe, that hurt my feelings or hey, I actually don't love the decision we made here. So this portion of I have things going on inside my mind that aren't feeding me life. Yeah, it's a great spot to go hold on pause timeout. This, left unchecked, leads me to a place where, all of a sudden, I don't enjoy my life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. I'm just thinking about my own, you know our, my own season.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I'm thinking about okay, if we're breaking it down, like you suggested, with emotional clutter, so how do you know if you have emotional clutter? And you kind of gave some prompts like how are you experiencing your inner world? What are you feeding yourself on? But I'm thinking of things like are there loops? Do you have loops going on in your head when maybe mentally and emotionally, there's some kind of unprocessed grief or unprocessed pain, or like an overthinking or a decision fatigue? Or for me, what happens is I find, um, I'm dwelling on something.
Speaker 2:Is there something that I'm dwelling on and I can say there's been in this season. Um, I've had a couple of different things pop up where I'm dwelling on. You know, we have one. One of our kiddos is in a just that young adult phase where they're figuring a lot of things out and looking at what's next, and as a parent you can feel the weight of that because you know that that's a really big decision-making time of somebody's life. But you can't actually overstep and get in there and sort it out for them and you can only help if they ask for help really, and so certain things like that, and I found myself dwelling on that a lot. So what I know I need to do, right, so that's, let me just give a couple examples. So that's like one to um, you know my mom.
Speaker 2:My mom died about a year and a half ago and I'm at this season, or the part of grief now, where it's never not sad that my mom's not here. But I have a lot of days where I don't drown in sadness. Thank God that we're kind of past that part, and but every now and then it'll crop up and typically it it I get really sad when I think about doing more milestones without her. So we know we're raising our littles. We've got a son and a daughter-in-law who are having a baby in August. We're having their gender reveal party this week and I just think about, like, ah, the milestones that my mom is missing or things like that. So these are.
Speaker 2:I'm looping in my mind on a couple subjects and I know, okay, pause, I actually can't afford to just loop on that because it is clutter, it's cluttering up my mental space. I need to do something productive with it. So it's it's the drop zone, right, I can put it on, I can stick it in the drop zone and I can look at it every five seconds throughout the entire day, but not actually address it, or I can make a plan for it. Then it moves from being clutter to actually a place of resolve or power in my life, and that's what I know for myself, like I need to do a little bit of that.
Speaker 1:Well for me um a lot of the areas in which I would feel overwhelmed or we're using the word clutter but I think decision fatigue is. The other day I sat down and I just went. Okay, is the way that I am keeping my tasks in my life. I know you guys probably heard you guys are hearing pepper.
Speaker 2:She's out of control right now.
Speaker 1:She wants to play so bad is the way that I'm keeping tabs on my tasks in life effective? Is it really effective? And if it isn't, then I really have to change that. For instance, sometimes I get into my day and I start to go like wait a minute, what is it that I'm supposed to be focusing on? Or I I'll accomplish a task and be like what's next, and sometimes I won't know until my next team meeting, and so I've had to really just go back to making sure that I know what the big priorities are in my season. So I started to do that. I actually sat down. Funny enough, I sat down with chat GPT and just went.
Speaker 1:Hey, I'm feeling a little bit lost sometimes on what my priorities are for the season and what my daily tasks should be to accomplish that. Can you help me sort this out which? Was awesome because it helped me go through and go. Ah, you have four events coming up and this is the timeframe and here's all the things that you need to get done in order to accomplish the next three months of X Y or Z and anyways.
Speaker 1:But for me that would be like this realizing that I have too many things on my plate to not have a really clear focus on. I finished this. Now I need to switch to this. I finished this. I need to switch to that, and otherwise I get to this place where I know that there's stuff to do, but I don't know what the most important thing to do is, and I'm not sure, and I'm not sure, and I'm waiting too long to get on the task. So I'm feeling always behind totally.
Speaker 1:And that always behind out of um feeling like I'm not sure what I should be working on right now, what's the? Most important is to me is a really tough place to live.
Speaker 2:And I think that a lot of people get into these spots. Even relationally right Like these are very relatable spots to get into. It's easy to find yourself in a marriage or in a relationship maybe it's with a family member or a child where you really want to be moving the ball forward. You really want to establish a season where you're really connected and finding one another amidst the wildness of life. You know it's going to take intentionality and you're just not quite sure, um, what, what to do?
Speaker 2:I remember we just finished up a marriage intensive and there was one couple in particular in our intensive who they just talked about how they happened to be in probably the busiest season that they've experienced as a married couple.
Speaker 2:They've been married for like a decade and between kids, with school and a new, a new career for the husband and a lot going on at home with kids activities and sports and school and all the things.
Speaker 2:They didn't even know where to begin as far as carving time out for more connection and working on their relationship. They didn't even know where to begin. So we began to talk with them about okay, even if you just prioritize 10 minutes when you crash into the bed to do your emoti-map and actually connect on an emotional level. Make that a starting place. You know you're going to get that every single day, regardless of how wild the day was. So the point being, it's not, you know, when we talk about spring cleaning, when we talk about decluttering on a relational level things sometimes our closest relationships, when things are cluttered or chaotic, our closest relationships are the ones that actually take a back seat for a second. And I think we would both say that that might be one of the most important areas to actually do some spring cleaning in, because if your most important relationships are intact, on the same page, deeply connected, then going through and decluttering other areas of life as a team can be so much more accomplishable and also really fulfilling when you do it together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which brings us to uh, if the first section is like that emotional clutter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the mental emotional.
Speaker 1:Then the next one would be relational. So really taking a look at how are my relationships doing in? This season and are they thriving? Do is my marriage at a spot where we are continually sewing in to the bank account Right? Am I? How? How am I doing in putting that emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, uh, money into our bank account so that we are not coming into the summer on E?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And so it's really going back to again, like making sure that my most important relationships are getting the fuel and the attention that are needed in order to thrive.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Otherwise, those are the first things that get put on the back burner. The busier work gets, the more apt we are to go. Oh, I have to focus on this thing and not this thing. And the truth is, I was counseling with a couple just last week and they both were saying we're so busy we don't have time for for everything, and my response is well, you don't have to be at home for two hours a day pouring into each other.
Speaker 1:It's actually more important, like we've talked about so many times on this podcast, that if you're really busy, that you're putting those reminders in your phone to remind you to send that text message that says, gosh, I'm so thankful for you. Or, when you come home, to turn towards each other the first thing and to really love on each other. Or it's the intentionality, it's the quality of time, not the quantity of time, it's the thoughtfulness, it's not the fact that you don't have 20 hours to spend with one another, and I really do feel like that's where people are missing it when it comes to this relationship. Like growing your relational capacity, making sure that it's full, is in the busy seasons. If you know that it's going to be busy, then communicating about that, feeling proud about how you're going through it together, feeling like you're accomplishing something together and building something together, is so important. Because it's not. Your relationship doesn't grow necessarily on the vacation times when you're together.
Speaker 1:Really, it grows in those seasons when you're like, okay, we're coming into a busy season, we've got a lot of stuff happening, how do we want to tackle this, what's our strategy? And then making sure that we're really doing a great job, to prioritize that that builds so much trust and relational equity with one another. So, as you're getting ready to jump into this next season, take an inventory in your relationship and look at how are we doing right now? Can we sustain the pace that we're going up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like that Um. I I was talking um um with a girl who, uh, we've known for a lot of years. She's young adult age in a dating relationship pretty new, like in fresh dating relationship. And I, you know, we started dating in February, the year that we started dating, which was 2010. Yeah, and something about like spring love is in the air. It's just a fun time, relationally right, like if you're in that dating season of life or you can get back outside, you can go for fun dates, adventures, things like that. And I was having a conversation with this young girl in our life about just kind of health goals inside of a dating season and I appreciated so much how committed she was to doing this newly, this fresh dating season, doing it really well.
Speaker 2:And I think sometimes for those listeners out there who are not yet married, who are excited about that season of life but are currently dating or or very single, whatever it might be, I think that on a relational level, this is a good time of year to actually go what season am I in and how do I do it? Well, so it's not just if you're married that you have to kind of take stock and assessment right Cause, like, even if you're not married, you probably have relational goals and you're a quarter way into 2025. And so either you are on track with some of your goals in life or you are realizing like, wow, this quarter blew past me and here I am, or you know. So I'm thinking about things like. I'm thinking about things like okay, what areas, uh, you know, where are you plugging in and being really intentional?
Speaker 2:If your goal is to actually meet people and be available, how are you positioning yourself well for that? Where are you plugged in? Where are you involved? Where are you serving? What does your work life look like? What margin do you have outside of work? How good are you doing at investing in friendships? What does your friendship circle look like? What margin do you have outside of work? How, how good are you doing at investing in friendships? What does your friendship circle look like? Do you need to expand your circle? Not and I'm not even saying that your goals should be to date and get married, necessarily in this season, but even just knowing with, with a realistic expectation like what is my season and how am I being powerful inside of that? This is a great time of year to do that.
Speaker 1:It is, yeah, I love it, and making sure again, to me, that last section would be the spiritual component of your life and going back to like, like, is God at the center of my life and am I living a a life that is pursuing?
Speaker 1:his presence is pursuing his lead-ins, his lead-ins, his guidance, his guidance, his lead in my life and I was thinking the other day like the, the spiritual life. Our spiritual life should be like so incredibly exciting when we are allowing God to lead us and to guide us and to speak to us. It's this incredible journey. It's so easy to get out of that mode. This year I had a really incredible dream about BraveCo and my target for that, and it was this massive gift from God that really helped to go. Jay, this is where I want you to go, this is the target, and it just made this like I don't know. I just feel like I'm on this adventure with God, growing it, and I know last year, around the prophetic conference, you started having all these crazy prophetic dreams. That it was kind of like a season where, yeah, you just started writing down every night you were anticipating okay, god's speaking to me and he was speaking to you in these crazy ways and it still continued, even even to this day of like.
Speaker 1:we're on this journey with God where your relationship with God it's so easy for that thing to get stagnant because opinions on what people should be doing, opinions on what church should look like, opinions on what worship songs should happen, opinions on where God should have come through but didn't come through. I'm in a hard time. I don't want to be in a hard time. All those things pour water on our adventure with God and realizing I think it's back to. We live in this very uncertain life with a God that is the God of mystery that I don't get to fully understand. I get to trust and I get to live with faith and Pastor Bill talked yesterday about James 1, that consider it pure joy when you encounter various trials.
Speaker 1:The testing of your faith produces perseverance and ultimately, when perseverance runs its course, you don't lack anything and it's back to like. God is building inside of me this massive perseverance, this faith that is willing to follow his call, and out of that I get to this place where I don't lack anything. I trust God and so, again, it's a recalibration, time of year to go. Okay, I'm coming into this, I've accomplished the first quarter of this year. Are my priorities in the right place with God?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And am I focused in charging and pushing forward, and so it's just a really great place to recalibrate and to go. God, what are you pressing into?
Speaker 2:right now. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Well, I just think I mean for ourselves and for those of you that are listening, I think it's a great prompt for us all to even be able to identify an area where we might need to clear some space, where we might need to give some attention, where we might need to make some adjustment. I mean, you know if, if I could give myself some homework, I think it would be okay. Have a check-in about our marriage, babe, like where are we?
Speaker 2:at in our goals, Like how connected do we feel? What do we think that our coming season needs in order for our connection to stay strong? Is that in place? Um, you know what distractions, if I know my season and I know what my main priorities are, then what distractions need to go? Um, you know, if I know my season and I know what my main priorities are then what? Distractions need to go. Yeah, you know, if there's that relational thing that needs addressing. I named a couple.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, okay, what's my plan for that? What am I going to do that it doesn't actually become clutter in the drop zone? It becomes an area of intentionality for me that I can actually move the ball forward on something and then maybe even kind of hindsight, looking back at the quarter going okay, I had some goals in January. Where am I at with those? Does it still feel like those are in alignment with the season I'm in? Do I need to adjust them? And let's, let's like, take some honest assessment?
Speaker 2:But ultimately, I think that the invitation right invitation is into this beautiful season that's marked with life and abundance and a lot of promise, and go OK, how can I be in alignment with the season that we're in and how can I move into this coming spring season with a lot of intentionality, proactivity and those things make us feel really powerful. We feel like we get to be a part, we get to be co-labors with God. When we're in a position where we feel like in alignment and aware and intentional, then we get to co-labor and that's it's such a fulfilling posture.
Speaker 1:John Maxwell said. He has a quote that's he says something like don't ever be impressed with setting goals, be impressed with finishing them. And it really it's a great time of year to go. Am I on track to finish what I started the year going? This is what I want to chase after. Is there any recalibration? Am I off the path? It's the compass with the true north. The beautiful thing about a compass is if you shoot a line on your compass and you're following that line, that path, and you pull out your compass again because you've been walking an hour, you can see oh shoot, I'm off course, I'm off my mark, I'm off my line and you can get back on track. So that's really where we're at this year.
Speaker 1:It's where we're at in the year. It's a time for recalibration, it's a time for assessing, it's a time for some feedback, to recalibrate and to get back on that line, um, full speed ahead. So, guys, hopefully this was helpful for you. Um, if it was, please forward it or share it, give us a like and leave a comment. We just love reading your comments. It helps our podcast so much. Have an incredible week, y'all. We will talk to you guys next week.