It seems that the more I strive toward wanting to make things a bit simpler, easier, better to cope with, the more they just get complicated. I can write fairly inane posts about cleaning out my closet or wearing certain clothing, etc, but really that is just a few minor things. The rest of our lives just seem like a complicated mess.
Life would be much simpler if I was alone in my bubble. I’d have my puppy. I’d have the couch I want. I ‘d eat the food I wanted to eat when I wanted to eat it. I’d listen (or not listen) to whatever music I wanted. I wouldn’t own a TV. Or Legos. I wouldn’t have chaos when I walked in the door at night. If I felt like leaving the house, I just would.
Most of us have relationships though and not everyone sees eye to eye in relationships. They’re messy and fraught with stupid details you’d never think about if you were alone in your bubble. Stuff like, you want take out from a specific restaurant. You are the only one who likes it really spicy. One won’t eat fish. One doesn’t like curry. Husband wanted something entirely different. Or you need to run to the store for 2 items but this now entails getting 2 other people dressed with coats and shoes, buckled into car seats made by satan and then get them out of the car seats and into the store then drag them up and down the aisles to find 2 things while they ask for 20 other things you must say no to then drag them through the check out line where they try to steal gum then out to the car to put them in the satan car seats again and drive home usually to find you have forgotten 1 of the 2 items you went for. It used to be: go , come back. End of story.
My favorite is that you start getting rid of stuff and suddenly your mom brings you things from her house because she too has started getting rid of things. Ugh.
Commitments are messy too. Even though we don’t have our children involved in any after school activities my husband often has to go out in the evenings for work and it messes up my dinner plans. We have been helping to lead music at church so we are now committed to weekly choir practice and that entails a rushed dinner and then trying to practice music with children running amok in the church. (There always seem to be children running amok in the church though, so this isn’t all that unusual, lol). Other things pop up like illness and funerals and such. Schedules become loose guidelines and this girl who likes everything planned gets rattled.
I keep trying to figure out what else I can get rid of to make the other stuff flow more smoothly. Less paper. Less pets. Less junky nick knacks. Less clothing. Less of everything but other stuff creeps in to take it’s place. It’s as if stuff breeds when you aren’t looking. Vagabond “stuff” hides in your basement and spare room threatening to creep into your regular living space at any moment. Legos get banished and suddenly reappear to taunt me. Same with books and blocks and stuffed animals and and and….
I clear out my schedule and then people want my time. I’m trying to balance saying yes to those who matter the most to me without stressing myself out too much. Good luck. Life is a mess and stress is all around us.
You can pretty easily tell by my rambling and ranting that life is pretty messy right now. I’ve been sick with one thing or another for a few weeks and I am sorely tired of it. The weather plainly sucks here and we’ve been stuck indoors for way too long. It’s grey and depressing. Life has been overwhelming and my thoughts are fuzzy and chaotic. I’m beginning to think that all those people who promote simplicity are on some kind of drugs. Them and the moms who throw Pinterest-worthy birthday parties. On drugs. All of them. It’s impossible. Who ARE these people whose homes look like that? Where did they lock their children?
While I will never be a Pinterest kind of mom, I do eventually come back to wanting less. Maybe it’s just the journey to try keeping the best stuff front and center and not letting it get buried under second rate stuff. Maybe it’s saying no a little more often. Maybe it’s not expecting so much. Or maybe it is actually dreaming bigger, seeing the whole picture so that perhaps the little details don’t get so much importance any more. Whatever it is, I’m still working on it. Maybe one of these days I will get it right.
Wallowing in imperfection,
Liz