progress

It's May, and I figured it was about time for an update on my progress on living a joyful life as set out in my November posts. (I'd link to them, but I haven't written here since then so just scroll down.)

I am slowly but surely winning the war against clutter in my home. Slowly. But surely. Sometimes it feels like two steps forward, three steps back. I get the nursery all organized and clutter-free, and then someone returns a bag of baby clothes I lent them, or my child outgrows his current size, and I have to start all over. But I have a system in place now, so every time it takes me just a little less time to get it under control.

Sometimes it feels more like two steps forward, one step back. This I can live with, because at least I'm still moving forward. I have hired a woman to come help with the cleaning every couple of weeks. This motivates me to get areas of the house organized before she comes so she can really clean. The first time she came, she got to the kitchen and the bathroom. The second time she was able to do the kitchen and bath, and the floors and windows and dusting. She comes back this week, I want her to be able to clean every room of the house.

I am also coming to terms with the fact that having a perfect home is a pipe dream. I can have the family room picture perfect, leave for five minutes, and come back to a disaster. That is life with an almost-toddler. And you know what? Life with an almost-toddler is the most wonderful experience I've ever had, and if that means living in perpetual mess, so be it.

Because perpetual mess doesn't have to mean perpetual chaos. Sometimes a mess is a creative mess. Sometimes you have to make a bigger mess before you can find the system.

Madeleine L'Engle writes of Cosmos vs. Chaos. The act of creation is truly the act of finding the cosmos in the chaos. Our molecules are held together and organized in such a way that we are able to walk around and interact with the world around us. Does that make us any less messy? Absolutely not. Cosmos can be messy, usually it is. But it's how we look at that mess, how we perceive it, how it operates and functions.

So maybe that's a better way to look at things. Cosmos vs. Chaos, instead of Clean vs. Messy.

Finding the joy in the cosmos of my life.