Let's be real.
I don't know if this happens to anyone else but I have this self-sabotaging habit of starting projects, getting super frustrated halfway through and walking away, leaving a bigger mess than before.
My kitchen cabinets are a perfect example of this. Four, yes four, weeks ago, I decided I wanted to clean out my kitchen cabinets. So on a Saturday, I got to work. I started in the big cabinets below and was able to rearrange a couple of them and filled one box to go to Goodwill. I should have stopped with those two.
I didn’t.
I decided to move onto the higher cabinets where our Tupperware lives. I pulled everything out of these two cabinets.
Then I got bored, distracted, saw a squirrel, something. I left everything on the kitchen countertops.
I mean...EVERYTHING. ALL. OVER. THE. KITCHEN. COUNTERTOPS.
It was a mess.
And then I proceeded to leave town for 4 days. I bet you thought I’d get it all straightened out when I got back right?
Nope. Then it was the 4th of July. (Play imaginary montage of fireworks.)
Oh so, after the 4th, right? Yeah sure, 3 weeks after.
I made my family live around this mess I created. We went for weeks with barely any counterspace to make meals. We couldn’t do anything and all three of us would get so frustrated each time we walked in the kitchen.
Does that happen to you too? You go to confront a mess only to stand there staring at it and then you just turn around and walk away. That might just be me and my lazy self. I dunno.
But last night, on a Monday night (gasp), we had had enough.
My 11 year old daughter really had had enough. She’s a much better organized adult than I am. I’ll admit it. She wanted to make cookies but had no room so she started going through what I had pulled down and cluttered all over.
And of course, I didn’t think she was doing it to my satisfaction so I stepped in and started doing what my grown-ass self should have done weeks ago. Between the two of us, we rearranged and decluttered so much stuff out of these cabinets. We went from having to duck when you opened a cabinet door so things didn’t fall out and hit you to a nicely organized haven for my Tupperware and kitchen staples.
I’m sure there is all of this reasoning behind why people do this. I’m sure I could pay a therapist to help me with this. Maybe I should. But I do now 100% what works - just doing it. Nike had it right all along in this respect. Just do it.
There isn’t a magic cleaning fairy that will come and wave her wand to make it all go away. Well, maybe there IS a magic cleaning fairy for those of you that can afford it. That is not me.
I am my own cleaning fairy. I normally suck at the job but yesterday I had a victory. These two cabinets were my one tiny victory in a house full of battles.
Go make your own victory today. Just do it.
