The other day I received a phone call from my husband. He told me that a friend of his from college and his family may be stopping by our house tonight on their way home from vacation.
It was like the scene in an old TV show where the husband lets the wife know he's bringing his boss or important client home in a few minutes and wackiness ensues. Except there was less wackiness and more panic.
Our house is not really fit for visitors, especially ones I don't know. It's messy, cluttered and the kitchen is half painted.
So I spent the afternoon cleaning. Well not really cleaning, just picking up. Getting rid of the stuff that didn't belong where it was. The living room was easy, it is the most used but also the most cleaned. The kitchen was hopeless, just do the dishes and move on. There isn't much to say about a room in the midst of a renewal.
The dining room was harder. Oh the dining room. I guess I can't really call it a dining room anymore because I can't remember the last time it was used for dining. Two years ago maybe? The table has been pushed against the windows and houses the kids' computer, various art supplies, a few legos and random broken toys. Because it's the main (only) passage way from the living room to the rest of the house it makes more sense not to have the dining table taking up all of the room.
The sideboard that houses our unused china occupies the other wall. It has served as a dumping ground for all of the papers and things I may need to use again but don't really want to deal with at the present moment. It also houses bins, files and folders to corral all of the papers and things I may need to use again but don't really want to deal with and now can't find because I put them somewhere. I hate it. Every so often I go through all of the junk and get it down to a manageable size. But it always manages to grow again.
There was no time to do that. I needed to pick up, put away and move on. So I did just that, I moved the stuff to another room, a place where it is more suited to be - the office, to be gone through at a later date.
But what then? The surfaces were clear but so what. It still looked sad and uninviting. So I decided to "stage" the area. I ran around pulling things from different places and arranged them in a nice, inviting way, a flower here, photos there, books laid out like so.
The result was amazing. It was still my house but it was better, almost like someone else lived there. It made me happy to see it. To know that I could if I really tried have a house like the ones on the blogs and TV shows I love. That maybe, just maybe these little changes would make me look at myself and our house differently and it could truly be a place that I love. I'd like to think I can get there.
It was like the scene in an old TV show where the husband lets the wife know he's bringing his boss or important client home in a few minutes and wackiness ensues. Except there was less wackiness and more panic.
Our house is not really fit for visitors, especially ones I don't know. It's messy, cluttered and the kitchen is half painted.
So I spent the afternoon cleaning. Well not really cleaning, just picking up. Getting rid of the stuff that didn't belong where it was. The living room was easy, it is the most used but also the most cleaned. The kitchen was hopeless, just do the dishes and move on. There isn't much to say about a room in the midst of a renewal.
The dining room was harder. Oh the dining room. I guess I can't really call it a dining room anymore because I can't remember the last time it was used for dining. Two years ago maybe? The table has been pushed against the windows and houses the kids' computer, various art supplies, a few legos and random broken toys. Because it's the main (only) passage way from the living room to the rest of the house it makes more sense not to have the dining table taking up all of the room.
The sideboard that houses our unused china occupies the other wall. It has served as a dumping ground for all of the papers and things I may need to use again but don't really want to deal with at the present moment. It also houses bins, files and folders to corral all of the papers and things I may need to use again but don't really want to deal with and now can't find because I put them somewhere. I hate it. Every so often I go through all of the junk and get it down to a manageable size. But it always manages to grow again.
There was no time to do that. I needed to pick up, put away and move on. So I did just that, I moved the stuff to another room, a place where it is more suited to be - the office, to be gone through at a later date.
But what then? The surfaces were clear but so what. It still looked sad and uninviting. So I decided to "stage" the area. I ran around pulling things from different places and arranged them in a nice, inviting way, a flower here, photos there, books laid out like so.
The result was amazing. It was still my house but it was better, almost like someone else lived there. It made me happy to see it. To know that I could if I really tried have a house like the ones on the blogs and TV shows I love. That maybe, just maybe these little changes would make me look at myself and our house differently and it could truly be a place that I love. I'd like to think I can get there.
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