Working With What We Have

In recent years, at the beginning of the year I have been hearing things like ‘What is your word for the year?’ ‘What is your intention for the year?’  I don’t know if I have a word or intention for the year, but I do plan to do two things this year:

I am going to cheer myself on more.

I am purging and organizing our house.

Okay, maybe that’s three things.

Cheering myself on is an ongoing process; it can’t really be planned out.  Purging and organizing, on the other hand, can be done as you go or could be planned out.  As with many things, I am doing a combination of both.  I am looking around, thinking of what I can do, and then writing it down so I don’t forget later.  And, of course, it feels so good to cross something off of a list, but first you have to have a list to cross things off of.

I watch home renovation shows and they talk about the house not working for the family.  The designers come up with a plan to make the house both beautiful and functional, and the homeowners are inevitably blown away by the results.  And I think to myself, “There must be a way that our house can work better for us!”  But we are not currently planning on doing a renovation or hiring a designer – my husband is now reading this feeling oh so relieved – so I am looking around at the house to see what I can do.  What I can get rid of, and what I can do with the space to make it work better for us.

I’m working with what we have.

And it’s going to take some time.  Let’s face it, most of us do not have days or weeks to spend just on purging and organizing our homes.  Most of us have heard of the Marie Kondo method where you get rid of anything that doesn’t “spark joy”.  I think there is something to that.  Whether or not I am able to follow it may be something else.  And using her method, instead of doing it room by room, you do it by category. For example, put all your books together in one room and then go through them.  I know people who have great success using her methods, and I can see the logic in it, but that one is not for me.  I would probably get interrupted part way through, maybe lose my momentum, and then have a big pile of books sitting in the middle of our living room much longer than I would like.

So, I will go maybe not even from room to room, but from small project to small project and see what happens.  It doesn’t sound very efficient, but I think it will work for me.  As I said, it is going to take some time.  I try not to think about how much time because then it will be overwhelming and I may just stop trying.  So, I will do my best to focus on one thing at a time and go from there.

And hopefully, in the end our “vintage” house will work better for us.  I was working on one project and part way through wasn’t sure that it was going to make any difference at all, but I finished it anyway.  And once I started to live with it for a little while, I realized that it really did make a difference.  Success!  I was so happy, and it encouraged me to carry on with the next project, which I did, and it has made a difference too.

I am far from a professional designer, but I can try my best to work with what we have and try to make it work better for us.  And isn’t that what we are all trying to do in our lives?  Working with what we have and trying to make it better?  Maybe we are trying to get a promotion or a new job, trying something new, saving up for something we have been looking forward to, trying a new hairstyle or colour…. Or maybe you are going through a difficult time or are sick and the biggest thing you are able to do to make your day better is to make the bed – or even to get out of bed. And that’s okay.  You are doing your best.  And sometimes our best is darn hard to do.  For whatever it’s worth, I, for one, am proud of you.  Whatever it is, we are working with what we have.

Who we are may be pretty great.  But we can always work with what we have to become better people.

So if you will excuse me, I’m off to cheer myself on for having done three projects that have made a difference in our house.  And then I will figure out what the next one will be.