Tag Archives: clutter

Clutter and Illness

I feel like the house and our lives have been in total disarray since we returned home from vacation. The morning after we drove back into town from Christmas I unpacked the car with fervor because I had a feeling that I was going to be sick. I knew that I had a lot to get done before illness completely overtook me. I organized the new toys, took down Christmas decorations, and did laundry while Tom slept and let the kids do whatever they wanted. Now let me say that Tom was not sleeping just because he was tired, but he was sleeping because unbeknownst to us, he was getting the flu. Thankfully, that is not what I came down with – I only had a 12 hour stomach bug. I never thought that I would be thankful to ONLY throw up. No one else has gotten majorly sick, but the boys have both gotten pink eye, Wilson had a 12 hour fever, and Faith had a double ear infection.  Faith never once complained about her ears hurting, but she hasn’t been able to hear for over a week.  I finally took her back to the doctor yesterday so that she could get an antibiotic to clear up the infection that has begun behind her ear.  Yes, we have had quite the infirmary around here over the last two weeks.

We are still in the middle of remodeling the master bath so my bedroom has been covered in tools and dust for almost a month now.  There should be great progress in the project this weekend and I am excited to see what it will look like after it is complete.  It will be beautiful, I am sure.  We are also scraping the ceiling in the hall downstairs since the popcorn was coming off anyway.  The house is going to look great (other than the kitchen) when we try to sell it this spring. I am going to do everything that I want done in the next house BEFORE I move into it so that I can enjoy while I live there.

Of course, everyone knows that I love a project and typically have three of them going on at the same time, so this is pretty standard fare for our house.  :)  So while I should be painting the bathrooms, I am instead working on a photo collage, cleaning out closets and putting together bookshelves. There is a big difference in “wanting” to do a project and “having” to do a project.  So far, I have been working on the wants, not the haves.

Despite the clutter, dirt and illness, we have been doing well as a family and I feel blessed to even have these problems of privilege.  We have a beautiful house, money to remodel, and doctors available to us for medicine.  I seriously can’t complain.