Coming Out of the Closet, Bag & Box…#6
WWMD Part Deux: Rubik’s-cube-of-life
Dory: Hey there, Mr. Grumpy Gills. When life gets you down do you wanna know what you’ve gotta do?
Marlin: No I don’t wanna know.
Dory: [singing] Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swim, swim.
Marlin: Dory, no singing.
Dory: [continuing] Ha, ha, ha, ha, ho. I love to swim. When you want to swim you want to swim.
Marlin: Now I’m stuck with that song… Now it’s in my head.
Dory: Sorry
Okay, so if it’s not already clear, I’m Marlin in this scenario. And Miriam is Dory. And Dory is one of my favorite film characters EVER. So I listen to her. Miriam that is.
And when I get to feeling absolutely overwhelmed by the task at hand, and the questionable decision-making that got me here to begin with, I ask myself: What Would Miriam Do?
Miriam would just keep swimming.
But – really? Between you and I? For all the work we’ve been doing, and the progress we’ve made I’ve been feeling discouraged. Like it’s all just a tiny drop in the bucket of disorganization, dysfunction and regret. And my sweet husband, whose picture you will not find in the dictionary under the word “supportive” thinks the whole process is just smoke and mirrors: Sort crap into boxes. Move boxes to another room…
Now, I know (and you, dear reader, know) that that’s not true. I am partially through a real life Rubik’s-cube-of-life mission. I need to accomplish task A before I can move on to task B, only to return to task A and get it to where it needs to be. That’s how the cube — and life — come together.
My primary guide through this mission is Miriam who, in addition to holding my hand, assures me that we are building a sustainable system.
And I believe her.
Which is the lesson of the day: Trust the process.
If you’re like me, and have the attention span of a gnat and the patience of rabid puppy, this could be a tall order. Perhaps an impossible challenge.
But as deficient in attention and impatient as I am, I am also tenacious. I will keep banging my head against the wall until all the pieces come together. And now that Miriam has redirected the head banging effort to the proper wall, and I see the initial results, and I can share my vision of my house with her and she can believe me — I can believe her back. I can trust in our ability to pull all this together.
It’s not smoke and mirrors. It’s just not a quick fix.
Of course, it’s easier for Miriam. She gets to walk away. I have approximately 20 cans of paint in the trunk of my car, which I’ve cleared, out of the laundry room. They are all likely to explode and kill my entire family some hot mid-day excursion as we drive around town and I anticipate that in just an hour, a day, a week, next week, I’ll bring it to the toxic waste depot (yeah, there is such a thing and, no, I still haven’t made it there).
You see, that’s what makes me so bad at this. It’s what got me here to begin with. The lack of follow through. The minute Miriam leaves my house I feel lost. I putter around, staring at, you know, a supermarket receipt that’s been on my kitchen counter since 2007. And I can’t remember why I kept it, so I still don’t throw it away.
Until I ask myself: what would Miriam do? And I listen to her voice in my head, telling me that if I don’t know why I need it, it’s okay to let it go.
So — before I continue to whine:
When I was working the other day, and stepped into the living room to check on the kids who were being terrifyingly quiet I found them playing with LEGOs. They had retrieved the LEGOs, on their own, from the box into which they’d been sorted and stashed. And when they were done playing, they put everything back in the one box and returned the box to its accessible, designated place.
That, my friends, is a minor miracle.
And if you think that was just happy coincidence, check it: they did the same thing, later that day, with the Play-Doh.
Do you know how remarkable this is? That LEGOs and Play Doh are grouped, easy to access? That they have a place to live from which they can be retrieved and to which they can be returned? That my kids take the initiative to make play time happen because they know where to find the LEGOs and can get to it themselves?
The clean up was easy and, to my kids, empowering. The act of being self-sufficient is, at their age, its own reward.
So here are the thoughts of the day: If I can continue to grin and bear the seemingly overwhelming logistics of clearing away the clutter, I’ll reveal a system that’s actually sustainable and, oddly, affirming.
And my frustration? Like the stuff – it needs to be recognized and then put in a container in a designated spot. By all means, I can find it, play with it, and indulge in it to my heart’s content. But then I need to know where it goes, keep it from cluttering my spirit and stealing space I could use for more noble, constructive emotions, and I need to put it away.
So I can have room for Miriam’s song to get stuck in my head.
Tags: organize, project management, reward, simplify, systems
If you sing On Top of the World by the Carpenters the song will go away. Not sure about my voice in you head.
Yes, the key to being able to find something each time is to putting it back when you are finished with it each time. But for some reason, we are allergic to that “other half of the action.” Just disposing of every piece of mail–handling it once–that enters the house can alleviate many “now where is that” search missions.