Today I decided not to be brought down!

Yesterday I had a very unmotivated day. I honestly wanted nothing more then to sit on my butt and do nothing all day. However I did not give in to my lack of motivation, instead I overcame it and swept, mopped and dusted all through my house. I also did laundry and dealt with the daily clutter, dishes and maintenance. I even cleaned up the yard some in preparation for winter.

After having a very successful day of cleaning despite not really feeling like cleaning, you can imagine my annoyance when I woke up this morning to find half the table covered in all tools and materials Trevor was using last night to winter proof the windows. There were also several random items left out of their places.

I should probably take a moment to remind everyone that I am not by nature, an organized and tidy person. This is something I have been working very hard on and I have been having great success. Our home has much less clutter and is a lot cleaner now. I am proud of my accomplishments and the progress I have been making, so you can understand how just those few items being left out felt like a huge setback. After all when your trying to keep a home neat and tidy you have to have all members of the family on board.

My first and natural reaction was to get upset, oh heck, to get MAD, and then to shut down. After all if no one else cares about how the house looks then why should I? Why should I invest so much time and effort only to have my fellow housemates, especially my husband, thoughtlessly leave stuff laying all over? Why can't a grown man pick up after himself?

However, I chose to go with another reaction. I instead looked at the things he left out and tried to think about it as he might. The items on the table were probably left out because he did not finish his project and will still need them. He wasn't taking into consideration the fact that we will be busy for the next two nights so those things would be sitting on the table until Thursday, Looking messy and making it impossible for us to use our table.

The empty box that was left on the cupboard was pushed back almost out of sight, so he might have just overlooked it. The empty bread bag, had nothing but the heals, which we feed the chickens, so perhaps he left it there to be taken out to give to them this evening? The letter that needed to be sent and the book that was on the counter...well I haven't come up with a reason why they were left there, but you get the point. I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt instead of letting my red headed temper get the better of me.

I had a quick talk with him in which I told him that I could see the way he was probably looking at it, but then explained why the clutter bothered me so much. After all that I still was feeling a little put out and didn't really want to put too much effort into house work today. Once again I decided to be a bigger person then my pervious self would have and I chose two "extra" tasks to complete today. I cleaned the top of the microwave and cleaned under the bathroom sink.

It turns out to be a good thing that I cleaned under the bathroom sink because I discovered it have a leak! Even more then finding the leak was the benefit of my change in mood. By the end of those tasks I felt refreshed and happy again. Seeing the change I made in the appearance of our home inspired me to even clean up what Trev had left out (Which I of course had previously been planning on leaving for him to do later :P). I have gone on and done my housework for the day and not only do I feel good about having another day of positive routines checked off, but I can feel great about being a better person, about making better choices and having better reactions.