I rescued several large boxes from the work recycle pile and brought them home. First they will be filled and juggle around the contents of our kitchen. Then they will be re-used and filled and juggle around the contents of my closet.
It is time, and I am overwhelmed. I am overwhelmed with the stress that messiness around me causes me, even when I know in the end the improvements will be worth it.
My house is FAR from neat and tidy. There are always piles of papers on various counters and surfaces. There are always boxes of something setting around. There are always little piles of this-and-that neatly (often not-so-neatly) cluttering our house at all times. I long for order, but I do not have the time, the patience, the stamina, the help, to attempt to stay ahead. As my husband sits on the couch holding the tv remote, he assures me time and again that our house is not as bad as I think. And perhaps it isn't, but it does cause me stress and unrest on the inside, which in turn can cause snappy and snippy on the outside. The last two years I have been trying very hard to let go of my perfection expectations and overwork tendencies, but apparently I still have some more work to do inside on this little issue in my life ;-)
Truth be told, I could and should probably get rid of over half the contents of our house. But we're not moving, so I don't. This is another struggle I go through year after year after year. I struggle all the time with "stuff" - the stuff that I allow to fill my house and my life which leaves me at a battling crossroads between contentment and insanity. I have it, but I don't usually need it, and I often don't have room for it, but I go ahead and get it and / or keep it anyway. It's just easier. At least that's what I tell myself... but is the stress that that mess causes me actually worth it?
How much freer and lighter and happier and cleaner would my house be, would my life be, without all this "stuff"?!? Of course I already know the answer. And yet... here I sit surrounded by "stuff" and needing to do deep regulation breathing to keep myself from completely flipping out.
All along I have used the "well, we aren't moving, so I'll just keep it" excuse. And then one day the beautiful trees in our backyard came down, and great excavation began... and now when I look out my window I see the back of a strip mall, next to a new gas station. I swore to myself I would never publicly complain about this... but it has left my husband and I at a crossroads as to what to do about where we live. My husband builds beautiful houses for a living... he could build us something amazing. But that would cost money, and it will also greatly impact our strategic future planning of someday retiring and living in a full-time lake home. And even more than the money issue... for me it's a stress issue. The thought of what would be involved in even considering getting our house ready to put on the market, listing, showing, selling, and then the reality of packing, moving and unpacking... oh dear, I almost pass out from just starting to try think about it.
I can't even... so I won't. After much discussion, and even looking at a few lots available in town, we have decided to "Love It instead of List It." Yes, I watch too much HGTV, but it's our reality. So now that we have embraced that decision, we have begun the process of "loving it" again. Which means, it's home improvement time at our house. We put in a fireplace and feature wall. Next we will be getting new countertops and redoing our laundry area.
I want the improvements, but I don't want to do the work or pay the money required to achieve those improvements. The amount of work I know I have before me in prep, packing, and patience leaves me uncomfortably edgy.
Home improvement means mess. It means inconvenience. It means making some decisions, spending some money, and still packing some boxes - cleaning and shuffling, keeping what is good and needed, getting rid of that which is not. It means choosing contentment, choosing to stay - but also choosing to improve, update, clean, and better.
It's just like the journeys of our lives. We always have the option to change or to stay status quo. Sometimes it's time for the big moves, sometimes it's time to stay put, and sometimes it's time to stay but embrace the inconvenience and hard work of making some needed improvements. To turn up and tune up our personal vibrancy, updating our approach and outlook to this life God has given us to live.
So I have begun to pack the boxes in my kitchen so my husband can move in and start the update next week. I'm trying to push myself to get rid of things quietly resting in the dark corners of my cupboards that I don't use often enough to justify and allow them to continue to take up the space they consume. (Of course this means we're going to want waffles next week now that I've gotten rid of the waffle maker we use once a year).
It's all making me uptight, stressed, irritable... and I stopped and tried to figure out why. More deep breathing... The extreme mess of improvement is uncomfortable, inconvenient, and often costly. It's taking things out of dark places and putting them outside, on top, into the light for awhile during the process of cleaning, changing, refining. And it's knowing that the work will never be done. As soon as one project is complete, there will always be something else... there will always be something else.
How many little things (and big things) are quietly resting inside us that we need to slow down long enough to actually see, pick up and examine, and decide to either finally part with it and free up the space, or get it out, dust it off, change it up a little, and start using again. What gifts, talents, grievances, angers, habits, do we need to do some home improvements to in our own lives? And are we willing to take the time and investment to endure the messy process of ultimate improvement?
At times this quest and hope for personal improvement can get so overwhelming we want to stop, to quit, to run away. But we can't quit... we need to figure out how to continue forward, somehow ~ someway... to continue to work on the projects at hand... work on reaching the goal, the completion for this moments required work, and then continue all they way through the cleanup process afterwards. It always has to get worse before it gets better.
If we allow ourselves to dream, allow ourselves the honesty to embrace needed and desired changes, figure out how to hang on through the mess, not losing sight of the vision we clearly had at the beginning... we all have the opportunity of achieving an amazing transformation, a big reveal and wow-factor of improvement from both inside and outside. But we have to do the work, nothing will happen until we actually get up and do it.
In the beginning, it will be scary and hard and a little bit exciting. In the middle, in the mess, in the stress, in the overwhelm, that is where all the the real transformation occurs. Embrace the mess, endure the stress, and start the home improvement transformation process to start becoming the beautiful new you - inside and out - that you know you have the potential to be. In the end, it will be worth it - because YOU are worth it!
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