How are you doing? Yeah, same.
I started ‘Paper’ back in April, and here we are almost July, and I think I’ve sorted through most of them. Maybe. It’s tough to tell. This house is getting crazy (in many senses of the word) and it’s hard to know if there’s more to uncover.
Our home renovation work got halted in March, so our new hardwood flooring is sitting in dozens of large, heavy boxes taking up much of our living room.
Our family room is looking increasing like a Gymboree location as we continue to search for new ways to keep our 3 tiny people happy and active enough to get out the wiggles and giggles while it’s close to 110 degrees outside (Yay, Arizona summer).
I’m attempting to implement toy rotation to give a sense of ‘new and exciting’ each week or two, so all the toys I’m taken out of rotation live in large plastic tubs that I have nowhere to store.
Everything feels like it’s simultaneously in-flight and on-pause as we live, struggle, and deal with this absolutely insane world that we are all collectively sick of.
So, I just wanted to check back in. And mention (remind myself) that it’s okay. Okay to take a break. Okay to not be having a great day, week, month. Okay to be sick of all this.
Especially if you’re like me with kids. Little kids. Who demand so much of our time and energy, regardless if we’re running on empty and don’t have much to give. Little people with big smiles and big giggles and big hugs. And that’s the important stuff. The piles of other things can wait.
I finished up a couple of sort of/miscellaneous ‘paper’ things this week that I could think of – gift cards, a stack of toy manuals and kid stuff stuck in my kids’ closets, one last miscellaneous drawer filled with things like scrap paper, post it notes, checkbooks, stamps, and many spare Christmas lights. Felt good to get back to organizing, something I can control, which helps me feel productive, and puts things in an order that makes me feel calmer. And felt good to take it in small chunks, not too much time keeping me up late, just a quick organizing break between all the other things.
My husband is still working through some of his paper stuff (and reminder, everyone goes on their own tidying journey. He’s independently decided to clean out some of his stuff alongside me). We want to go through the dozens and dozens and dozens of manuals I uncovered together to figure out what we still have/need.
And then I’m excited to move on to ‘Komono’, i.e. everything else that isn’t sentimental. And I confess, I’ve sneaked ahead to tackle small things along the way that were sore spots. Kitchen drawers that I was fighting with, kid art supplies that were devolving into chaos. We redid our 4 year-old’s room for her birthday and reorganized our playroom loft while we were at it (maybe future blog post). I consider all of that work ‘pre-tidying’ and totally expect to revisit them when their order # comes up. It’ll just be less to go through again.
Anyway. Hope you’re well and safe. Hope you’re being kind to yourself. Hope you’re taking breaks from the things that don’t serve you. Focusing on the good, even if it’s small. But letting yourself have a not-so grateful day when you need to. And we’ll get through this, one day, one task at a time.
