"We tell ourselves that nothing has changed. That we have achieved very little and our goals are as far off in the yonder as they ever where. Because we  are haunted by the sentiment  that life must move on, we suffer a shiver of disappointment when we look back and see that despite monumental daily
effort, life today is just what is was then and life tomorrow will be exactly the same because we do not have the will, the money, or the wherewithal to make it different.

But we do ourselves an injustice when we fail to stand back and look at the minutiae of our lives from a different perspective. When we do not recognise that every teeny weeny teeny step towards our domestic goals are steps in the right direction." –Brocante Home Chronicles 

She is right, you know. It is all too easy to convince ourselves that nothing is really changing despite herculean efforts to improve our lot.  I believe much of that is due to our season in life.  Dorcas Smucker wrote about her love of fall harvest time in her book Ordinary Days. (love it! love it! You must read it and tell me what you think!) She speculates that part of the draw is the fact that while gardening, unlike the rest of her life while in the throes of childrearing, she is able to actually see her work reach completion.  Completion does, in fact, elude most of us mothers on many days. Our children and our homes are works in progress at this stage. This can be demoralizing for homemakers and mothers, both of whom thrive on seeing a job well-done.

The secret is to look critically, to find areas of progress. We may not have every drawer of the kitchen sorted right at this moment but the appliances, backsplash and floors are scrubbed – at least until the next rain – and we finally hung our crochet valances.  The hall closet sports tidy stacks of sheets as I type.  The living room book shelves are in order. The laundry room has been emptied, dusted, mopped and reorganized. The girls have nice new comforters and sheet sets since we retired the old sets. I won’t describe my bedroom closet nor the teens’ room, nor the new school room, not just because they inspire far less contented thoughts but because my goal here is identify progress. Every day we make some. To modify the full/empty glass cliche – the house is halfway perfect or halfway messed at any given time. I am choosing to focus on the areas of near perfection while acknowledging, one area at a time, those that are next on the to-do list. I will not be discouraged into inertia by the impossibility of completion in this season.  Instead I will heed these additional words from the Brocante Home Vintage Homemaker:

"Inspiration doesn’t come from that which through utter boredom our mind’s eye chooses to ignore. In every aspect of our life we need to  keeping moving, rearranging, seeing things anew and drawing from that, reason to KEEP seeing things anew…"   

Challenge:

Move something around this weekend. Surely there is something that might work better in a new place. Set at least one goal that can be completed each day, whether that is filing your mail or filing your nails.