Apartmenttherapy.com issues a January Cure Challenge every year on Facebook for those of us who want to bring order to our homes. There are challenges given throughout the month of January, with one big weekend challenge for each week. A friend and I decided to join the effort for organization. How hard could it be?
I thought that I was pretty organized, we don’t have a lot of “stuff” — in recent years we’d thinned out our antique collection and family furniture to our children, nieces and others. We’d donated literally hundreds of books to Salvation Army (which was harder than giving away my antiques), and a HUGE plus for organization, our town has “Annal Spring Clean-up Day” where you can dump anything unwanted, excluding environmentally unsafe things like paint, in a huge pile on the curb and they will haul it away for free.
It was indeed a challenge after all, though, I had no idea what I truly had till I went through each thing, handled them, remembered why I had them, and decided if the memory was enough, or if I needed to keep it. What a walk down Memory Lane it was, and it made the long, snowy, cold winter (as our Cure lasted well into February and March) very productive.
Hubby, by the way, was having no part in it as I worked my way throughout our house, making “keep” piles, “give away” piles, and “throw away” piles. He is definitely NOT a pack rat, and appropriates very little emotion to inanimate objects, until we started really looking at them. This made from this child, that made from this. This rock from that trip, and this shell from that beach…32 years of life in objects that we did keep and now appreciate even more.
This all led to us forming the Reluctant Renovators — because we simple are not renovators in any stretch of the imagination — and now we have a completely restored kitchen (project photos and stories forthcoming in future blogs), our bathrooms are getting facelifts, and we have become Renovator Renegades! All because of a challenge on Facebook.
One of the sweetest parts of the challenge was on every Friday you were to buy fresh flowers for your home, in addition to the other challenges to be done that weekend. This is something I actually do fairly regularly, but making a point in bringing these flowers into the home, and filling vases that I’d tucked here and there every week, was lovely, and emotionally curative. It just made our home more inviting, even if a “keep” pile was just feet away.
Here’s your challenge, it’s Friday, stop at the grocery or market and pick up some tulips or other favorite flower. I guarantee it’ll make you smile. The tulips in this photo are from last week, and are still bright and beautiful but that’s okay, I have more vases to fill.
harmonyspearls 