We did it!!!!
For the last 12 weeks, we’ve worked our way through our homes and spaces with the goal of heading into the holiday season with more calm, noticing what works, subtracting what doesn’t, and adding tiny habits that make our lives feel gentler. No perfect-home goals here. Just small steps toward calmer spaces and truer reflections of who we are.
As we move into a season that can feel loud and fast, I hope you are heading into it with a little more space to breathe.
So…how are you doing?
I’ll go first: I was doing okay. I was doing the things. Not all the things, not all the time. But I was doing the things. And then I decided to add one more thing.
Then another.
Then another.
and before I knew it I had like 57 big giant things on my calendar over the next month. Why do I do this???
It’s easy to feel like a failure and let things slip. But last night I had a bit of a revelation.
Yesterday I saw a contractor my husband had scheduled arrive on our security camera and felt a spike of panic. I didn’t know they were coming. I hadn’t “gotten the house ready.”
Then I realized: the house was fine.
They could walk in and get to what they needed. Yes, a few things had to be moved where they were working, but there was space to move them. There wasn’t an avalanche of shoes at the front door.
Even in this very busy season, I can feel the difference. I may be exhausted heading to bed, but my clothes are (usually) set out and tomorrow’s coffee is pre-measured. Less last-minute scramble. Less searching.
Over the last three months we’ve tackled making our beds, setting out our clothes, simplifying mornings, doing the dishes, streamlining pantries, smoothing our entrances and exits, and making space for creativity.
We’re ready for finals.
The Final Exam
For our final exam, we have two images to compare/contrast and two questions to think about. That’s it. Oh, and it’s an open book exam – feel free to look back at any of our notes from this past semester.
Image One:
(Where’s Waldo crowd scene)
Remember these books? “Where’s Waldo” has entertained thousands simply by hiding one striped character in a chaos of distractions.
Before you get too distracted trying to find Waldo, let’s move on to image two:
Image Two:
(Social distancing Waldo cartoon by Clay Bennett for the Chattanooga Times Free Press)
Now for our questions:
Which Waldo was easier to find?
What made it easier?
Here’s what I’m learning:
So often in life we create that first, harder version for ourselves, because we think the solution to not being able to find something is to add more. We want to find “Waldo” but end up burying him in a crowd.
Some examples that may or may not be personal testimonies:
- I can’t find matching socks. So I buy a dozen more pairs of socks so I never lose a matched pair of socks again. Then the next time I need a pair of socks, I have to dig through a sock drawer version of “Where’s Waldo” looking for what I want.
- My kids can’t find a snack they like in the pantry. So I buy 3 kinds of bars, 4 boxes of fruit strips and a Costco variety box of snacks. Now my kids have to swim through a life size Where’s Waldo page to find anything and the fruit expires before they can eat it all.
- “I want more rest, more creativity, more joy.” So I buy the latest gadgets, tools, and systems promising to make my life easier. Instead, they add to the sea of tiny red-and-white imposters crowding out Waldo.
Adding more didn’t help me find anything. It just made more places to lose stuff.
The key to finding Waldo was never in just adding more.
It’s in less.
Like the socially distanced cartoon of Waldo above, when we simplify and remove the excess, what we are looking for is so much easier to find.
Rest and creativity aren’t found by piling on more.
They show up when we remove the distractions and create space for them.
That’s what these last twelve weeks together have been about: bedrooms and pantries, doorways and nightly resets, minimizing and giving tiny gifts to your future self:
Simplify, subtract, create space…and what matters slowly becomes easier to find.
Peace, calm, and joy don’t arrive because we do or buy more.
They show up when we make room.
This is the work – and the gift we’ve been giving ourselves for twelve weeks.
Let’s keep going.
Uncovering Real 