This little family has allowed life to spiral a bit. In our “Post Renovation Era”, I’ll be honest and say I’ve lost a little motivation. It was almost as if the renovations were this huge Sward of Damacles over my head warning me, “keep everything else in order or the sword drops.” The sword’s gone now. Chaos – albeit a small, controlled chaos – has reigned. And it was everywhere. I have been the second-to-worst mower of our five-house little neighborhood; I’ve also allowed the house to get a little sideways; work has slowed down for me; and I was admittedly overspending.
Chaos.
Not at all the tight-ish ship I take pride in running. Perhaps more importantly, I could feel myself slipping into that de-motivating “I don’t care” mode. Along with it’s twin sister, the “It’s not that bad” mode, this can be a death knell to my orderly life.
Today?
Today, we get our you-know-what together (and by “we”, I mean mostly me… 😊). Some of it may be completely lost, some is scattered from room to room and some is just that far gone that it’s going to take 1-2 passes before we get back to good. S’okay. I’m up for the challenge.
First thing on my list? Last night, I got rid of some recurring expenses I didn’t necessarily need. The spending – which is my personal canary in the mine – had to stop. When I start throwing money at the problem instead of just fixing it, I know I have to realign myself. Last night, I started the process.
Next up? Three loads of laundry on the line today along with mowing my grass and cleaning my bathrooms. That alone should get my house back to good. I vacuumed Sunday so I can vacuum tomorrow and still be fine.
Finally, I have about two hours of billable work to do and another hour or so of business development. It’s time to get a little more serious about finding new work. Again, I did some reasonable efforts yesterday on that front, but I need to be consistent.
My end game? By the end of the day today, I will feel a bit more calm. By the end of the week? My goal is that we roll into our Friday evening with a clean house, less than a full load of laundry to do, stocked groceries, healthy dinner, mowed lawn and a sense of peace that only truly reigns when the house is good and clean.
If all of this sounds terribly pedestrian, you’re not wrong. I don’t live life in the fast lane. In fact, as I enter the pre-retirement phase, it’s really more about simplifying our lives. Everything I do is somewhat filtered through that lens – even the routine stuff. Today’s cleanup? I’ll also make sure that anything out of place goes to its forever home, even if that means it needs to leave our domicile to find that home. While grass mowing is never permanent and we’re in the phase of the year that the grass needs to be mowed every 4-5 days, the efforts we have made with landscaping over the past couple of years have all been designed to make mowing easier. Eliminating drainage ditches to reduce spin trimming, making deck-dwelling planters to replace our yard-dwelling spice barrels which were difficult to use the tractor around… . You get the picture. Even the super simple task of hanging clothes ensures that we don’t squander electricity we didn’t need to waste.
But as the self-appointed chief operating and financial officer of our little family, it does start with me. I’m the one working part-time and this was a deliberate strategy on our part to make our busy professional lives easier.
More than anything, this is what I find satisfying. I actually love being home-oriented and making this house run efficiently and smoothly. Perhaps its being the daughter of a registered nurse-turned-homemaker, but I like a tidy house. (I blame my dad for the constant renovations – he was a true weekend warrior.) I’ve also come to truly value economically the rewards of an orderly life. When things get chaotic, I tend to spend more money to paper over the cracks. Dinners out, using the dryer, hiring help. Even my grocery bill goes up by about 10-15% when things are chaotic. I buy pre-packaged foods, duplicates of things we already had (because I didn’t do a good job making a list) and things we just won’t eat to fill in the perceived low spots in our pantry.
Today, I am all about regaining control. I can’t mow until the grass dries and until after my 11 a.m. call. But, I can start laundry, do my business development and clean bathrooms. After my call, I can shut the computer and mow to my heart’s content, all the while keeping the clothesline full to let Mother Nature do her thing. At some point, I’ll figure out what’s for dinner but there is a stocked freezer that should help the process.
Lastly?
When it’s all said and done this afternoon, I’ll sit back and survey the progress. And deep inside, I’ll have fed that angry beast that dislikes any sort of chaos.
It is time to get back on track and move past that immediate post renovation phase. Summer is on its way – with a good preview this week – and I want to position us to enjoy it.
The Yuppie Homesteader 