My House Is A Mess-Renovations #1

On Monday the updates I have been planning for my kitchen for the past few months started.  To prepare I moved all the kitchen items from my counter tops, emptied all the lower cabinets, pulled out all the drawers, and moved out all the furniture except for my table.  I also moved the refrigerator to the garage (with help of course) and unhooked the ice maker being careful to make sure the water was turned off at the pipe under the sink.  I did most of the prep the week before and left Friday morning for a weekend in Illinois  with my friend Leann.  Returned Sunday night to a house that smelled really bad, but I was too tired to think much about the cause.  Soon after the crew arrived Monday to tear out my tiles and carpet, I made a trip downstairs and discovered water in my drop ceiling again (yes this has happened before).  Turns out my ice maker line slowly dripped water onto the kitchen floor all weekend.  Wet floors, walls, drop ceiling, and carpets.  We have had loud fans going all week to dry things out and I long for quiet again (the kids and I can hardly hear each other talk).

Every time I walk past my newly decorated guest room I try to look the other way because it is full of kitchen items.  This can be tricky as I step over my dinning room rug and avoid running into the leaves for my table that are in the hallway outside the guest room door.

Guest Room

On Wednesday the crew showed up to tear out the counter tops, tile back splash, oven, stove top, and two cabinets.  They installed part of the new counter top and unpacked my new cabinets.  The crew wasn't able to come back Thursday or Friday, so I have been without a kitchen sink and am actually looking forward to washing dishes.  They kids and I have been eating leftovers heated in the microwave which is currently sitting on my desk.  Excited that tomorrow they are coming back to install the new cabinets and that the new floors should be installed Tuesday and Wednesday.  Not sure when everything will be done, but hoping to be able to start refilling my lower cabinets tomorrow evening so my house isn't so messy.

Kitchen-in progress

On Friday I picked up a new decorating book started reading it today.  Really enjoying it so far because it isn't about creating a perfect house it is about making wherever you live a "home."  I just finished reading this section and thought is was worth sharing with my female friends who like me may be constantly trying to figure out how to "improve"  or "perfect" various areas of your lives.

"Giving up is the first step to creating the home you love.  The goal of perfection does nothing but hold you back.  Giving up on trying to have the perfect house is a form of rest.  In her book Choosing Rest, Sally Breedlove says, "We find rest in the incompleteness of the present moment as we learn to recognize the goodness of what is and we trust that what is needed for the future will be added at the proper time."

Allowing things in our homes and in our lives to be incomplete, imperfect, and undone in some ways is a form of trust.  Can you give up and allow some imperfections in your life?

We get stuck in this way of thinking: 
I want to like my house, therefore I shall change it until I like it.
I want to like my body, therefore I shall change it until I like it.
I want to like my life, therefore I shall change it until I like it.

Instead of focusing on this way of thinking, what if you changed what you like?"

From: The Nesting Place by Myquillyn Smith p. 50