Unbeknownst to my children, they have been involved in a new wave of living for them and for all of us. Several months ago when something unexpected changed the shape of our lives, I got to chose not to be a victim or let it slow down the amazing life straight in front of me. But it did allow me to see our lives with new clarity and for that, I'm uuber thankful!
One of the biggest things I noticed was I had little clutter in the house, but great mess. If I had no clutter, why the heck did I have mess?! Well, that's when I started learning about habits. I actually was studying habits in a completely different mind frame but I realized that learning about habits carried into many aspects of my life and I could learn a lot about noting the habits that were my own and my kids. My husband and I looked at our business habits too, our money habits and our lives that were often controlled by habit.
Circling back to that lack of clutter but still messy - I realized I had few habits of running a household. That sounds silly but let's be honest, my childhood sucked and I had horrible role models. So, how can I have a messy non-cluttered house? Well, I define clutter as an overabundance of items or belongs that stack up with a specific place it belongs. Mess is simply things that have a place and aren't in them due to lack of boundaries or habits.
This is a really important distinction for me as I learned that most of the belongings we have aren't useless. They are purposeful and used! Some used constantly, some less frequently, but 98% of our house has set places for our items. Knowing that - we still were battling messes! I found the root of my problem - me.
I am the tone set in the house. If I am lackadaisical about putting away things, my kids will be too. If I am diving in a book because it's great but ignoring our basic chores of putting away laundry, my kids will too. Combine this with the 'I don't want to be a nag' mentality and I was setting myself up for serious issues long term. Instead, I had to take pause and think about my little people as character training for a lifetime. Here's my goals:
I want my kids to develop a fantastic work ethic that is intrinsically driven.
I want my home to be organized with purpose and lived in.
I want to be the example in the house for how things should run.
I want to spend less time cleaning large messes and more time having some real fun!
Here's some examples:
Not just the new paint or the new hoop rack - but we've been living out better character traits too. I am in a womens fitness challenge right now, which is a great motivator to keep me from stalling in my progress, but each of us had to choose a personal challenge. Something to push us and mine was "Put the house to bed clean". ITS AMAZING!!!!!! We spend about 20 minutes in the evening after dinner but before bedtime stuff just cleaning up. It's not just my kids picking up their stuff (though that is most of it) but me and Damon too. We have gone to bed with our kitchen completely clean every night and it's so great to wake up to tidy and orderly. Ahhhhhhh. Love this habit of ours.
It's been an amazing month! Damon and I are committed to changing things in our lives and we're taking Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. It's nothing we haven't heard already. We have the audio books, we have listened to FPU from 2002 in audio too... but we hadn't ever really taken the steps. This class is awesome and it was thrilling to sit down together to do our "homework" for the week. It felt like such a collaborative effort and was damn cool to rate our confidence and hope levels for our finances at a 10 each from both of us.
Yes. Yes, indeed. We have hope and completely confidence. What a great feeling!
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