Peace at Home

These past few weeks I have been focusing on projects around the house and a couple of weekends ago, I shuffled the contents between two of our bedrooms. I moved our “guest room” (aka Kelsey’s old room) back to the front bedroom where it was originally. And then I moved all of the other stuff to the back bedroom which is adjacent to my current office.

Sidenote #1: If you (like my beloved) are keeping score at home, this is the third time I’ve moved this room around since Kelsey left for college.

Sidenote #2: When I say “I moved it” what I actually mean is Tripp pushed it down the hall on a blanket and complained about his ankle hurting while I swept up cat hair and navigated.

Please, I know….don’t say it.

At any rate, this project accomplished a couple of things. The first, and primary objective, is so that we have a cozy, comfortable place for guests to stay that does not require them to walk past my office and then step over the baby gate which is installed to keep Daisy out of Poppy’s food and litter box. Because nothing says “welcome” and “we are so happy to have you in our home” like hearing Poppy crunching on her kibbles in the middle of the night. Or worse, smelling her taking care of her business if you know what I mean.

Sidenote #3: Discussions of cat hair and the litter box situation were a fairly regular occurrence during the my first few years of blogging, so I have to admit it was actually quite nostalgic to mention it in this post. LOL

Sidenote #4: If you are new here, this is the kind of riveting content you can expect every once in a while, so my apologies in advance if this is not what you signed up for. <<wink>>

Anyway.

The other benefit of this project is that I no longer have to look into the Room of the Misfit Furniture when I get to the top of the stairs. The residents of this dejected and jumbled mess of a space are the remnants of furniture that don’t currently have a spot in our house but that we are saving in hopes of putting them to use in a lake house someday. Which doesn’t sound so bad when it’s typed out like this.

But the problem was that what I actually saw when I looked into this room was a constant visual reminder of a life being lived in limbo for the past three years.

Over the years I have learned that the state of my home is generally an accurate reflection of my state of mind. When my house is my mess, it’s usually a pretty fair indication that my feelings are a mess too. So turning my attention to projects around the house is like a kind of therapy I guess you could say.

I was explaining all this to Tripp, after the fact, over our lunch of lava-hot frozen pizza. Trying to help him to understand why this was so important to me. And finally, what I realized is the therapeutic nature of this project was that it created at a little bit of order in the chaos.

When life feels chaotic. When the future is uncertain. When there are more questions than answers. Sometimes it helps me to be able to control something. And so now when I stand at the top of the stairs, I see a lovely, cozy space that speaks to everything I love about our home and it fills me with a great sense of peace.

And for right now, that is enough.

Love, Kelly