Messy

I grew up in a messy house, at least my memory of my teenage years is such.  My parents have had a empty nest for around eighteen years and moved into a brand new house recently and still their house is far from tidy so I feel I am safe to assume that my childhood home was messy.  I am not a fan of constant mess and clutter.

We used to spend time, every week, at a friends house which was untidy, no I am going to be honest, it was more than untidy it was cluttered, messy and dirty.  That is of course my opinion I would never judge anyone on the state of their house if I had I wouldn't have stayed friends or visited the house so often.  There were times, particularly in the winter when it was too cold to sit outside that I wondered what on earth I was doing there it was with mixed emotions that we stopped visiting a few months ago.  I felt relieved and slightly guilty.

In my own house everything has to have a home, a place it could be put away.  There is a finite amount of places that things can be put away in our house so usually, around birthdays and Christmas time we have to give something away when we receive something.  I was discussing this with some friends recently and the FlyLady came into the conversation, perhaps my friend and my parents need to heed her advice.

I have perfected worked hard at the art of decluttering my house but other parts of my life, well they are messy, not in a my life is a mess sense, but more in a disorganised, flitting from one thing to another sense.  I am easily sidetracked and very fond of displacement activities when I need to do something that I would rather not be doing.  I have come to realise I am hopeless at planning ahead and saying no, so I end up with too many things in the diary and not enough time to prepare for each of them, for different reasons I was in the exact same position last year.  Hmm perhaps I could do with learning from my experience.

Everything we do outside the house involves some form of preparation be it a few bits and pieces of clothing, a picnic or a fully packed car.  When I am planning what we will do I forget about this bit.  Over the winter we tend to do less outside or that involves lots of packing, but that doesn't mean we spend the whole time at home!  But come the spring and warmer weather and suddenly we are like caged animals and I go mad putting so many things in the diary that I forget the bit about preparation.   So in a need to do better kind of effort I have once again reached that time of the year when I feel like I am going mad and have backed off organising much for the rest of the summer to keep myself sane.  What I could with doing is remembering that in the Spring, keep the bigger picture in mind, and to remind myself constantly it is ok to say no.  I am not sure how I am going to remember this so if you have tips you can share.........