A Home for the Holidays

The clutter in my house has been slowly reaching its hands out to me--not in a plea for help, but in an effort to wrap around my neck to suffocate me. That's what it feels like.

As I was cheerfully thanking the pharmacist for a prescription last week, it dawned on me that I felt extremely peaceful, charitable and kind there in the grocery store--but never at my house. In fact, I feel fairly chipper and peaceful anywhere else--hotel rooms, friends' houses, department stores. But when I step into my house, I become a stressed out, mean, anxious *****.

This is wrong and deeply troubling. I realized that I always feel more peaceful when I am not at my house. Why? I love my family and I love being with them. I have a beautiful house with lots of space to stretch out.

A house, however, is not a home and I am craving a home. A few years ago, I spent New Year's Eve at my friend Craig's parents' house and felt more at home than I have ever felt in a house of my own. When I saw that house go on the market a few years later, I wistfully thought about buying it until I realized that without the people who lived there, it would just be a house. It's better to make my own house into a home.

When I contemplated having another child this summer, I asked my husband out to dinner and we sat on the grass next to Chili's while we waited for our table. I told him how much I wanted to have another child but worried that I couldn't handle the stress unless I got my house organized and decluttered. I don't know why this has to happen before I have another baby, but I feel it stronger than almost anything I've felt in my life.

Then I got pregnant and fatigued and nauseous and knew it wouldn't happen right away. The stress grew and grew and grew. That all changed when my friend Kathy posted a challenge to some of her friends. She said, "Would you like to have a beautifully clean and organized home during the holiday season? Let's start now!"


In my mind, I envisioned the HOME I've been craving with red and green garlands on the staircase, the scent of pine and cinnamon wafting through the air and the sound of relaxed laughter ringing through the halls. I wanted that more than anything I've wanted in a long time. I need it. I crave it. I must have it!

So I am taking Kathy's challenge and running with it. My goal is to declutter the main problem areas before Thanksgiving, in addition to making some major organizational changes that have needed to happen for years. I made a list of all my goals yesterday and decided which days I'll tackle which rooms. I called for help--asked the in-laws to help with some projects, asked my Mom to keep me company while I deep clean my entire kitchen and asked my husband to help me with some of the weekend projects like putting together new bookshelves, installing shelves in a toy closet and ... well, I can't say more because he reads my blog and I haven't sprung the other ideas on him quite yet. Ahem. (Don't worry, dear. It'll be easy.... or at least it'll be worth it.)

As I started in to my piles of gunk, I kept finding things that elicited this reaction: "Ugh.. Stress.. I don't know where to put that or what to do with it. Can't I just put it in a junk pile somewhere else until I get around to cleaning THAT pile up...? I don't want to deal with it."

That's when I realized where this anxiety I'm feeling comes from: little pieces of ignored stress that I've allowed to literally pile up around me in my house. There are little things in every room that haven't been dealt with because there is stress and anxiety attached to them. When I let those things hang out and stare me in the face, they mock me! They reach in to my chest and twist my heart around until I feel like I can't breathe. (Which may seem like a strange illusion since the lungs have more to do with breathing, but.... that's how I feel, whether it is logical or not.)

After 24 hours into my challenge, I've accomplished a lot and wanted to throw in the towel several times per hour. It is painful to confront the stress that is piled up around me--Where can I store that beautiful paper that I bought in Berlin? Will the kids hate me if they find out I threw this away? I don't have a box big enough to store this so I guess I'll just pile it somewhere else?--but with each small accomplishment, I am triumphing over the anxiety in my life.

I am such an anxious, depressed mess during my first 18 months postpartum that I have to do this for survival. We'll worry about "thriving" again in about four years when the baby is older. For now, I need a plan to just survive the chaos that comes when I get no sleep and have to deal with baby poop and spit-up and screaming and temper tantrums. Nobody in my family is built for the years of young motherhood--that's just the way it is when you're raised by a working Mom who was raised by a working Mom (in the '50s!) We may feel lost with the challenges of motherhood at times, but we're strong and we're smart ... so it's time that I start acting like it. Time to make my house a HOME for the holidays.

Thanks, Kathy, for the inspiration!