“Finish the rug,” my mom said, “It will build character.”

So I laced.  I grumbled.  I laced some more.  Two weeks passed.  I looked at my ball of braid and realized, “I’m almost finished.”

Rug making is much more satisfying once you figure out how to make it lay flat.  For me, that meant deciding to break the number one rule of braided rug making.  When you are lacing an oval rug, you lace every braid until you get to the end where you have to increase and skip a few braids.  You are NEVER supposed to skip braids on the inside only skip the outside braid.  This would work great if I had been more careful to make sure that my braids were always the same thickness and the same tightness.  The number 2 rule is that you NEVER skip on the flat sides of an oval.

With my braid size varying, I would stay consistent with my lacing only to find that my rug resembled a basket.  I broke the rule and started placing skips on the inside and outside braid as necessary.  Then I broke the #2 rule and placed skips on the flat sides of the oval.

The rug was still humpy and bumpy when I got done, so at my husbands suggestion, I turned the iron on hot and steam pressed my rug flat.  The fabric was mostly cotton and the lacing was 100% cotton.   I wasn’t convinced that ironing my rug would work, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try.  I put the rug on the floor beside my bed.  Yep, that’s my crazy quilt thrown on top of the bed.  I actually wove the seat of the stool in the picture too.

As I was preparing my little corner for this picture, I realized I have a bedroom that is actually decorated, and I am not ashamed to show it to you.   This is my happy place.

“What do I do with my life now?”  The house is clean.  Our plan is working.  What can I do after Messy Room Syndrome?

I took three days to just think about my future.  I have wasted so much of my life already fighting this battle, I don’t want to waste another minute.

FOCUS

The key that brought me into this new situation was learning to focus on just one thing.  I know I need to carry that habit forward.  Flylady says, “Focus makes me fabulous.”  Dave Ramsey calls it “gazelle intensity.”  I just know it gets the job done.

Maybe instead of trying to do everything in balance all the time, I should focus my intensity on on project.  If you look at a day or a week in my life, it may look out of balance, but over the course of a year or 5 years or a lifetime a pattern of balance will emerge from the periods of focused intensity.  What’s more, the periods of focus will result in goals met and dreams accomplished.

What’s the next big thing?

The next thing that has been irritating me for a while is the extra 35 pounds of fat I am carrying around.  This is Fitness Feburary in my house.  I’m setting up my own at home Biggest Loser Ranch and working to lose this extra weight and built some muscle.  Hopefully it won’t take me quite as long to declutter my body as it took to declutter my house.

Hi my name is Sunny and I’m a messy.  Flylady would call me a SHE (Sidetracked Home Executive).  I’m not lazy, I just distract myself rather than making the decision of where to start.  I’ve never been a cleanie.  I was not BO (Born Organized).  I call it Messy Room Syndrome–a genetic tendency towards disorganization, difficulty making decisions, and a love of projects and crafts.  The combination spells disaster.  That and lots of unfinished projects.

Wiggles, on the other hand, I think he is BO.  Born on his due date, first smile at 6 weeks, rolled over at 2 1/2 months, first tooth at 6 months, crawled at 6 months, walked at 13 1/2 months… He thrives on order.  Even as a little bitty baby I could tell the difference in his disposition when the house was clean compared to when the house was messy.  At 9 months, he started helping unload the dishwasher.  His job is silverware.  After every meal I hand him a wet wipe and he washes his hands before proceeding to wipe down his high chair tray.  Somewhere way back in the family line there must have been a recessive BO gene.  Wiggles got it.

My mom told me to foster that cleanie instinct in him.  I promised to do my best.

I used to wonder what life would be like living in a clean house.  After I found Flylady, I went on a 5 year decluttering binge.  I could see gradual changes in my home, but something still hadn’t clicked.  I was quite distraught after my Birthday decluttering.  I could only find a few things to part with.

“I’m running out of stuff to declutter” I complained.

“That’s wonderful,” my sweet husband replied.

“But the house still isn’t clean.”

Only then did Brenton let me in on a little secret, “You know, you might actually have to start cleaning instead of just getting rid of stuff.”

Oh how I loathed the thought, but I knew he was right.  I began looking for a system that works for me.  My root problem is not that I am lazy, but that I have a hard time deciding where to start working.  I look at a room and feel overwhelmed.  Instead of deciding where to start, I find a book or pick up the computer and distract myself from the stress.

Brenton was reading the parenting book Dare to Discipline which suggested using rewards to motivate children.  Now, we have a chore chart posted on the fridge.  Brenton and I have 4 daily jobs each and we get our pay every 2 weeks. We are paid per the jobs completed and if all the jobs are completed for 14 days, we get a small bonus pay.

For a month, the house has been clean.  Brenton’s mom came to visit and we did a quick clean the night before but nothing as tiring or stressful as my usual marathon of hypocrite housecleaning before company arrives.

While she was here, she helped us take care of some nagging projects.  When she left, I looked around the house and said, “What do I do with my life now?”

The house is clean.  Our plan is working.  What can I do after Messy Room Syndrome?

Anything I want!

New Year’s Day is always so fresh, so hopeful, so inspiring.  It offers a new start with no mistakes in it yet.  Seven days into the new year and I already ditched my long weekend run and the house is a mess.

The good news is that tomorrow can be just as new, just as fresh, just as inspiring, and just as blemish free as midnight New Year’s day when we watched all the fireworks go off, blew those funny little whistles, and yelled “Happy New Year!”

Tomorrow is a fresh start.  Pull that funny whistle out if you need to and yell, “Happy New Day!”

P.S. In my defense, I was fighting a cold all weekend and we started remodeling our bedroom.

This year I have decided to keep it simple.  I’m not making a bunch of resolutions that will inevitably result in failure by January 21.   I actually only made 2 resolutions this year.  I have a really LONG New Year’s to-do list, but I’ve decided to make 2 resolutions and  work towards those resolutions above all the other to-dos on my list.

1. Run a marathon in May 2010.  My only out on this one is injury.  If I do have to miss, I’m going to aim for Sept 2010.
2. Develop the habits to keep our house no more than 15 minutes from clean by August 2010.

Neither of these are actually New Year’s Resolutions because I’ve been working on them both for a few months now.  I must not be a very good resolutioner.

You heard it first here.  Sunny is going to run a marathon and get her house clean.  What was that about keeping my resolutions simple this year?

When I put Wiggles to sleep each night, I am deeply reminded how much I desire for him to have the courage to follow his dreams.  I sing a little song to him and one line says,

“I have just one prayer for you, may your every dream come true.”

Each night, as I sing that song, I am convicted.  How can my baby learn faith and courage if his parents don’t model it for him?  How will he live out his dreams if I don’t have the courage to live out mine?

In Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby, the step after hearing God’s calling is facing a crisis of belief in which a person much choose whether or not to follow God.  That crisis of belief comes from looking at the huge, scary, overwhelming thing God is asking me for and thinking, “There is no way I can do this.” The problem comes when I look at God’s calling with myself in the center.  When I put God in the center the question becomes, “Is He really going to do all this through me?”

A God-centered life moves the problem of failure onto God’s shoulders.  The crisis of belief is me facing what I really believe (or don’t believe) about God.  Is He really big enough to carry out all that He promises?  Will He be faithful?

I cannot look in the future to know the final results.  I can look back, and He has been faithful in the past.  His record indicates that He will be faithful in the future.  I have to live in that trust and step forward to say, “Her am I, Lord.  Send me.”  If I live in a crisis of belief always questioning God, His purpose, and His plans, I will raise a child who lives always questioning God, His purpose, and His plans.

The dreams I have in my heart have been planted there by God, but I approach them with a crisis of belief.

I don’t know what I fear more:  Not having the courage to live out my dreams, or Wiggles not having the courage to live out his.

It happens every time I get away from my blog for a while.  I sit down and think, “What can I write that anyone would read?”  It’s been so long since I’ve posted, I wonder if anybody still reads.  When was the last time I posted? (goes off to look) OCTOBER 28! Practically a whole month has passed without me sitting down here. What happened?

Oh yeah, I remember–We went to a wedding. Then when we got back I got my wisdom teeth removed (4 impacted teeth, lucky me). Sunday, while I was still recovering from wisdom teeth extraction, Wiggles got sick (Roseola we think). After a few night of getting little to no sleep, I had to recover a few days before sitting back down at the computer.

Here I am. I’m not sure we are out of the chaos yet. Looking around the house, I’m actually quite sure we haven’t recovered from the chaos yet. (Do I get a “get out of house cleaning free” pass for this week?) I do think I am getting my feet back under me, and the late nights when I couldn’t sleep have given me some “thinking time” that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

I’m thinking I need to stay up till after midnight every night.

Some days are just zero days.  In hiking terms, that means that you have decided (or been forced) to take a zero-mileage day.  Today was a zero day.  Most of my zero days come after pushing it too hard and ending up with a migraine.  I headed off the headache, but the stomach ache remained.  I’m still trying to decide it the migraine headache is easier or harder to deal with than the migraine tummy ache.  At least with a tummy ache, I can lay on the couch, eat saltines, and watch chick flicks.

water lilies by Monet

“Anything worth doing is worth doing right.”

For years, I have hammered that saying in my mind. I live with internalized cliches that tell me to expect perfection every time, the first time.  This constant demand for personal perfection does not leave any room for me to be a beginner and learn a new skill or even to be an amateur and learn to love a craft.  Voices of excellence ring in my head saying, “Be the matter great or small, do it well or not at all” (Zig Ziglar).

More often than not, I opt for “not at all” because I can’t “do it well” enough.

What if there was more to excellence than perfection.  What if doing it well means putting your heart into a project and spending your best effort regardless of skill level.  What if excellence is always striving to be better than you were the last time. The practiced concert pianist didn’t become a professional overnight, she got there through practice.  She probably began with chubby toddler hands beating antique ivory keys on an out-of-tune piano, simply delighted with the noise and blissfully unaware of scales, harmony, or Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.

She began with noise and eventually learned to peck out “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”  It wasn’t by accident that “Mary Had a Little Lamb” eventually became “Moonlight Sonata”.

What if it was okay to just make noise (even out of tune noise)?  What if it was okay to just throw up some colors on a canvas, or just string words together on a page? The same way that noise became music, colors become Monet’s Water Lilies and words become Romeo and Juliette.

Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Money all knew what I have forgotten anything worth doing is worth practicing on, working at, and doing poorly with enthusiasm.

“When a task is once begun, leave it not until it’s done.
Be a matter great or small, do it well or not at all.”

]]> http://dandelionsanddaydreams.com/blog/simple-living/live-enthusiastically/feed/ 3 http://dandelionsanddaydreams.com/blog/simple-living/create-your-own-bed-and-breakfast/ http://dandelionsanddaydreams.com/blog/simple-living/create-your-own-bed-and-breakfast/#comments Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:26:13 +0000 Sunny Daydreame http://dandelionsanddaydreams.com/blog/?p=1352

Melissa over at The Inspired Room posted an article last week about Creating a B&B in your own bedroom.  Be honest, you would love to live in a Bed and Breakfast all the time–fluffy pillows, soft bedding, and a jacuzzi tub–sounds heavenly doesn’t it.  I would love to have a bedroom retreat one day.  Actually I would love to have my whole house be a personal retreat for my family and me.

Right now, my bedroom is more similar to the honeymoon suite in It’s a Wonderful Life than it is to the romantic bed and breakfast we stayed in on our honeymoon in Kitty Hawk 5 years ago.

Instead of thinking about soft wall colors to paint and pretty framed mirrors to hang on the walls, my focus is soft pink fiberglass insulation and drywall to hang on the walls.  Flowers on the nightstand have been exchanged for a baby monitor.  Fluffy rug to sink your toes into first thing in the morning, I’m waiting to get flooring installed over the plywood and then someday we will get to sand and finish that flooring.

Still, Melissa’s article is great.  Her first point is abosolutely on the money–keep it clean.  If the house was clean, the rest is just window dressing.

The enchantment of a bed and breakfast is not the decorations, it’s forgetting the to-do list and focusing on your spouse and yourself (and family if it’s a whole house retreat).  So tonight, I’m going to do my best to ignore the cheerios ground into the living room carpet, Pretend like the mega blocks scattered across the floor are a path of rose petels, light a candle and snuggle with my Honey.  If I ignore the cheerios, he won’t even notice them.

If you need a reminder about attitudes, skip to about 5:45 on this video.  Romance can be found anywhere. It’s all about attitude.