When Organization Isn’t About Perfection

During painting prep last week, my friend Katie helped move things from my entertainment center to Nathan’s and my bedroom floor.

When my family’s nice things were in our gorgeous entertainment center, it didn’t feel like too much stuff. But the second Katie and I started piling the items into my room, I realized exactly what I had been doing – I’d been storing organized clutter.

I’ve made a commitment to only keep things that my family loves and finds useful. Some of the things on my floor fit that description. Many items didn’t.

So Nathan and I spent an hour one evening making piles – trash, donate, and keep. That hour didn’t make the stuff in our room look perfect. But it’s more manageable. We can see our floor. I’ll be able organize the rest now that I don’t have to guess about what Nathan wants to keep and what we can donate.

He used to be a little bit of a pack rat. But he’s come a long way.

I have too.

Because I’m finally understanding that organization and good homemaking aren’t always about perfection. Sometimes organization is simply about doing our best to keep our homes nice for our families. For me, right now, my best means being okay with imperfect.

And while that’s not an excuse to live sloppily or to stop caring for our things, it is a freedom.

Our kids won’t remember the pictures in the corner, waiting to be hung. They won’t remember the pile of books on the floor. What they will remember is our attitude – how we made them feel.

Likewise, our husbands probably won’t notice the dishes in the sink or the laundry in the hamper. But they’ll remember how we greeted them when they arrived home from work, and they won’t soon forget what kind of attitude we had throughout the evening.

Memories are continually being made in our imperfect houses. We can embrace that as we cheerfully do our best – or we can constantly clean as we base our worth on the condition of our homes. It’s good to be a worker at home. It’s good to take care of our things.

But it’s also lovely to embrace imperfect.

Day 19 of Simple Organization. Read the rest here.