Life Can Always Get Better Than This

We just set up a room for our baby girl last week. So far she slept with us in the big bed, but this got challenging when I stopped breastfeeding her. Our apartment is small, so we had to dismantle our home office so that she has her own space. It’s totally worth it however, she just loves sleeping there, and I can finally get a good night’s rest after all these years.

Our daughter’s room is still in the MVP phase. It’s still full of my stuff rather than hers. Only today I had a chance to bring her clothes there, and I’m still not sure what to do with all my art supplies. One day these will be her supplies too, but it’s too early for her to play with glitter or oil paint.

The more I tidy and organize my daughter’s room, the more I see how much room for improvement there still is. Organizing one drawer makes the messy ones stand out more. Bringing order to one shelf makes me upset about the state of the other 6. And even when my whole house is in a beautiful shape, going on a walk around it becomes a challenge because of all the dog poop and empty vodka bottles everywhere.

In the past I saw tidying up as a binary thing. You either complete it successfully or fail. Now I can see there are layers and layers to this, and the further you go the more ideas for improvement you’ll have. Maybe you’ll take care of flat surfaces, or just one surface at a time. Maybe all the things will go in proper drawers, maybe you’ll get tiny boxes in these drawers to organize them all further. Maybe you’ll put a nice plant here and a beautiful candle there. Maybe you’ll have the gym bag always packed and ready so that going to the gym becomes effortless.

Making things more beautiful is always the easy part. It’s much harder to also make them less gross. I’ve been trying to clean up our couch for 3 days after an unfortunate accident, and I’m still not happy with how it smells. I need to constantly remind myself that my imperfect attempts are still much better than not trying at all. Especially when I’m picking up trash in our neighborhood and seeing all the trash and poop that remains.

I am very fortunate that I can see things getting better through my effort. Until very recently the best I could do was prevent them from getting worse. Now making our lives better and writing about it is literally my full-time job. I spend my days making sure everyone has everything they need to live happy and fulfilling lives. And maybe if I figure it out for my family and share how I’m doing it, it will help some other families live happier lives too.