There are plenty of ways people excuse not caring well for their belongings.

They don’t pick up their clothes from the floor at the end of the day, they say, because they’re too tired.

They don’t tend to their home because, they lament, they’re too busy.

They don’t dust their bookshelves, vacuum out their cars, or organize their desks because, they swear, they’re too anxious.

But the real problem for such people isn’t that they’re too tired, too busy, or too anxious; the real reason is that they aren’t prioritizing gratitude.

How you care for your belongings is a reflection of your feelings towards them. If you are consistently not making the time to care for your belongings–to clean them, mend them, rearrange them again to make them like new–you’re demonstrating to yourself and to the world that those things must not really be important to you. The world will then internalize that fact, and will prevent you from receiving those things you dream of having, the ones you tell yourself and others you would take care of because their worth would warrant proper care.

When you live with gratitude as your guide, your entire life changes. You begin to see that looking after your belongings is not a chore to be dreaded, but a privilege. You begin to see that every small act of tending to your environment is an opportunity to display your grateful attitude.

And the more you are grateful for what you have, the more the world will seem to reward you by bringing you further good.

When your heart is as pure as yours is and you channel gratitude unrelentingly, you begin to look after your belongings happily because you see that not only are each one of those belongings a reflection of how fortunate you are and have been, but also because you reach a point where it feels better to treat your things well than it does to shrug your shoulders, say “I’ll do it later,” or never do it at all. 

You treat your belongings well not because they have feelings, but because you do. And as a feeling being, you can’t feel good knowing that what has been entrusted to you is deteriorating as a result.

You care for your belongings because bettering the world is what you want to do, and you recognize that all efforts in that respect must begin with you.