Day 6: Embrace Change
Happy Sunday! Can you believe the first weekend of October is almost over? Craziness. Where did the time go? I have a holiday weekend to get ready for, and I haven’t even pulled out my autumn decorations yet! But I digress. After the craziness of yesterday I decided to keep today’s post simple. If you’re just joining us for this series, you can find links to all the previous posts on the 31 Days page. Today I thought I would take a little time to address one of the biggest organizational challenges I’ve faced, so welcome to….
When I first moved out on my own, I set my kitchen up similar to how my Mom had hers set up. I figured that was just the way it was done. Even though my kitchen was tiny and galley style, and her’s was u-shaped and had more room, I still put items away according to how she always did. That worked ok, but as I’ve moved over the years, and our family has grown I never changed how I set things up. Until one day I had an ah ha moment. I moved a few things around and suddenly found that my kitchen made more sense to me. Ever since I’ve slowly been embracing changing how I think about our spaces. I’m not as stuck on “this must be kept here”. Or so I thought. Sadly, when Travis did his reorganization of the kitchen I discovered that in some areas I’m still stuck in the same old same old.
When we first moved into this house, one of the first things I thought when I saw the kitchen was how there was a cupboard that would be perfect for storing Liam’s colouring and craft supplies.
Now, in theory this was ideal. All his stuff was in one spot, in the kitchen with easy access to the breakfast nook, and best of all, away from the carpet so that I didn’t have to worry about cleaning paint or glue out of it. Truth is, Liam isn’t much into colouring or crafts. Once in a while he’ll go through a phase and happily craft away for hours and hours, but usually that cupboard gets ignored. It’s also a very deep cupboard and stuff would get pushed to the back and he couldn’t find it when he wanted it, and it ended up being a mess. I was really resistant to moving the craft supplies, I mean, that was a great spot for them, and I liked the idea of that, and the list could go on, but reality is, my reasons for not wanting to change it out were all selfish. It was all about me, and not about Liam at all. So that’s what I did today.
Liam’s craft cupboard is now home to our small, non-daily but still used often, appliances. We have our beaters, the stand part that they can fit onto, and then at the bottom the coffee grinder, french press and a few odds and ends for the espresso machine. (that was too tall to fit in this cabinet) Down the road this is where we will store our blender too, but we don’t have one of those yet. It’s quite tragic! It’s nothing fancy, but it doesn’t really need to be does it?
What about those craft supplies? Well, they’re waiting for a new home, I have a few ideas for where to put them. I did organizing the colouring supplies into a little caddy I picked up at the Dollar Tree. Red is Liam’s favoruite colour and since this is for him I thought I would honour that.
For now, this caddy has found its home in our breakfast nook. I tucked a large doodle pad underneath and I’m hoping having easy access to them will encourage Liam to colour. It’s not something he likes to do, but it is a necessary skill for elementary school. Now we can have fun drawing and colouring while we have breakfast.
I think I’m going to just enjoy this view for a little while. Make a cup of tea, maybe colour a bit. Some times, change is can be a really good thing, so don’t be afraid to embrace it! Don’t let yourself get stuck in the rut of keeping things the same just because that’s how they have always been. Open yourself up to the possibilities, you never know where it might take you!
Do you resist change or do you embrace it? Do you have a certain way you’ve always done things? Is it hard for you to imagine changing it?
