Doing things right

Generally, I am one to do things right and thoroughly. People sometimes confuse this with being a perfectionist, which I am not. There are lots of things where "good enough" is best way to do things in terms of the effort-reward balance. My best example of this is making our bed, which I do every day. I really like a made bed, but I don't fee the extra time to do it perfectly is worth it.

Today was an interesting example of this for me. Because of the ongoing renovations, some of the things that belong in the house are in the garage and vice versa. Granted, the shop vac is much more logically stored in the garage, not the living room but when you use it every few days and the garage is difficult to get to, jam packed and disorganized then the living room starts not to seem so bad. We also adapted to living in construction mess, thinking it was only temporary and that we would fully finish unpacking and put everything away when construction was done. Well, we moved in almost a year ago, and the end to construction is nowhere in sight. So, I have started to try to properly place one thing a day by moving it from the house to the garage or vice versa. Within the house and garage, I try to put the items away as best as is possible right now.

Today's item was a suitcase to be moved from the house to the garage, and inside it I added a bunch of small tote bags (carry on bag, briefcase, backpack, etc). The problem was, this suitcase was covered in thick drywall dust. My inclination was to do it "right" and clean not only the suitcase but the tote bags as well. That led to me wanting to clean the cabinet in the garage where luggage is stored, which has sawdust from the nearby table saw on it. That led to me wanting to remove all the luggage from the cabinet, clean it, clean all the luggage, go to IKEA and buy doors for it (the cabinet is leftover from the kitchen and doesn't have doors yet), move the table saw, clean all the sawdust, and reposition the table saw elsewhere. That led to me wanting to clean all the tools in the pile near the table saw and organize them. That led to....... and so on and so on, you get my drift. Granted I am very much looking forward to living in a neat, clean space that doesn't look like a construction zone, and in fact am looking forward to doing all these tasks, but this is a long way off. After getting really overwhelmed by all of this, I decided to put the suitcase away dirty. Ugh..... just thinking of it bothers me, but I think it was the better choice for now. I cannot wait to really dig in and organize everything and really unpack. I look at pictures of neat, organized, functional garages with such envy and cannot wait to do mine. Not to mention the house too!

Along these lines, I have also been decluttering and organizing along the way, two of my favorite things to do. As a reward for losing some of the weight I put on during the remodel (take out food and stress) I used a gift certificate to buy some new clothes. I immediately came home and got rid of the same number of items. It wasn't easy because I just did a big closet purge when I finally finished unpacking all the clothes, but it is worth it not to have clutter accumulating. My thinking is that if I didn't have the same number of things to get rid of, I must not really need what I bought.