For the most part, I keep my house in good order. Very rarely do you find things in chaos. I attribute that to my organizing skills. But at the same time I have also strived to make it livable.
I was just at a birthday party recently where I met up with an old co-worker. Before I quit that job to become a full-time freelance writer, one of our other co-workers had been building a brand new house.
So I asked my co-worker how the new house looked and if she had been there to see it. She said she had but that it was like a museum. All the furniture was new and you couldn’t touch anything. She said that although our co-worker had spent a few years saving up for that house, including working sometimes three jobs at a time to pay for it, she didn’t even get to enjoy it.
Why? She didn’t want to lose the “newness” of it. Some of the rooms they rarely even used, they were just decorative touches.
I really can’t understand this. A home is supposed to be lived in and comfortable. It should be a place where you can kick back and relax, laugh, cry and everything in between.
What is the point of having a house if you can’t even enjoy it? All of those new things don’t matter as much as creating memories does.
But then on the other hand, you don’t want your house to be so lived in that you can’t find the front door. Chaos and clutter can be so overwhelming that just like the pristine house where it feels like a museum and you can’t enjoy it, the same is said for a house that is completely out of order.
What we need is balance, a middle ground. That may mean different things for different people. But it most certainly doesn’t mean you can never touch things or that you afraid to touch things (because it’s so dirty).
How do you strike a balance in your home, keeping it in order but still making it livable?
Related Articles:
Thinking Positive Thoughts about Housekeeping
When Everything Is In Disarray
Photo by reiner.kraft in Flickr