Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Building A Better Castle


















Looing around my house this morning, I've had an epiphany.

It occurs to me that my recent level of dissatisfaction is not because our house isn't lovely -- it is.  It isn't because our house isn't comfortable and welcoming -- because it is that, too.

What is really bugging me is the bits of clutter and piles of crapola crammed in nooks and crannies and corners and bins and...well, you get the picture.  It isn't a lot of clutter compared to how bad things have been in the past when life has gotten well away from us.

But I know it is there, even if it isn't obviously sticking right out there in my way.  Does that make sense?

The pile of items crammed in the back of the closet that just need to go?  They bug me.

The magazines I keep swearing to get through at some point and then pop in the recycling bin?  They bug me, too.

There are a whole host of "get to them at some point" things just needling at me from various points in the house at all times because, frankly, they just are not getting done.  I only have so many hours in any given day and, honestly, my days are crammed a wee bit full at the moment.

But instead of beating myself up today for not being able to perfectly manage all of this immediately, I'm going to cut myself a little break.  And I'm going to make a list of everything that needs to be done and tackle it, one by one, until it is all gone. 

One thing a day.  Every day.  Until it is done.


Making a list also gives me the ability to assign tackling jobs to other persons in the house which, quite frankly, is something that is long overdue.

My goal is to get things where I want them sooner rather than later, to clear up a lot of this dross so that The Peanut and I can have fun when school is out and summer starts instead of me spending the entirety of her first week off trying to straighten things back up to a normal level of less chaotic decency.

Mentally, I'll be a much happier person if my ever-growing "to do" list isn't nagging at me nonstop.  The visual boost of not seeing the little things that need to be done every time I walk through a room will be a plus as well.

There is a lot to get done.  But by breaking it off into smaller, more manageable pieces, I'm hoping to be more productive and less frozen by the enormity of it all.  Will let you know if this strategy really helps us build a better castle, brick by brick.


(Photo by Christy Hardin Smith.)

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