Hey Friend, I don’t know about you, but a messy house for too long can really weigh me down.  In this episode I share how I got my kids to help me bring order back to our home, which is one of my core values. 

Transcript:

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in about 2 minutes a day,  through my signature method of Intentional Margins® (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life. 

I'm your host Katie Jefcoat and this past weekend was so busy, I went to sleep Sunday night and I asked myself, where did I create Intentional Margins® this weekend.  Typically, weekends are busy running children to and from activities and such.  But this weekend I was on a mission to get my house cleaned.  I have an 11-year-old little boy that loves to pick up trinkets and fidget items and set them down anywhere and everywhere.  

I was just feeling like we needed to put all the things away that were out of order.  Do you ever have that feeling where the house feels out of sorts.  I was at my breaking point. And frankly, I was feeling like I had way too much stuff.

My husband has been in Covid isolation in our basement to try to keep our children from getting bit by the Covid bug.  It’s been 7 days and they are Covid-Free.  So this past weekend was just me and the kids.  

I had been warning them for days that Saturday was going to be a full day of cleaning.  I’m talking floors, toilets, all the bed sheets, and all the laundry.   And, that included some detailed work tidying up their study space, putting away all the things that were out of place, and helping my daughter re-organize her closet, since I swear she lives out of laundry baskets of clean clothes.   

Having things in order is such a high value for me, that it felt great, even on hour 10.  But the children are perfectly happy to live in disarray.  And my husband was blissfully ignorant, (and I am sure thankful he didn’t have to do the work), in his Covid isolation space in our basement, behind a HEPA filter and a solid door.  

I even managed to get my teenage daughter to help me clean my car before I took her to Target.  The stars had aligned.  

Sunday was spent doing more laundry.  Washing all of the things.  Every single towel, all the sheets we took off the beds the day before. And running a ton of errands.  I don’t know about you, but I had a few online purchases that I wanted to return.  That meant I needed to get on the computer to make the returns online and print the return label, and then bring them to the UPS store or the Post Office and those things take time and effort.  

I still have some things that I didn’t accomplish, but I felt pretty good about my productive weekend when I went to sleep on Sunday night and I realized that having the time and space to fix the things in my house that were causing me stress (the long list of tidying up and laundry to the heavens) was a sort of Intentional Margin® because I woke up Monday morning feeling so refreshed and calm.  Because order is such a high personal value for me.  When things are in order, I feel calm and having the house, where I also work, in order is like a breath of fresh air. 

So today, I invite you to look around your surroundings and see if there is anything you can do to enhance them that is in alignment with your core values.  Episodes 36 & 37 also talk about core values a bit. 

Oh, and as a side-note, my daughter and I did watch the original Top Gun this past weekend, so I was able to also reflect on that Intentional Margin® which also aligns with my core values of family and connection.  Sometimes we forget how good it was if we are not intentional about counting our blessings. 

Until next time, grab those Kindness Cards over in the shop at www.katiejefcoat.com and remember, kindness is contagious.  

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