Just a BlinkProof Time Flies

I am so blessed to have a warm place to call home during these cold winter months. I am safe, sound, and generally welcomed in my home (Lord help us! Mama is throwing frying Pans Made with Steel again!).

But, what happens when home doesn’t feel warm? What if home feels like the fangs of  used books, junk piles and spoiled paint cans are ‘closing in’ for a bite?  Or what if it curiously smells like old coffee and sharpie marker ink in the laundry room, on a good day?

It can stay that way.

OR

I can do something.

What a unique place, our homes, where we can define, design, and dally in a space without reason or with a million reasons.  To me “doing something” simply means, taking a chance to make an impact while harnessing my behavior, teaching it to value what it is I am doing.

Here to Hoping…

Here is a photo taken in the middle of my “doing something” to the laundry room. I have been taking a chance, all day, amping up this room in time for The Masked Mommy’s first ever Laundry Room Pow-Wow that is on February 1st!

I am so excited to share at the Pow-Wow about my room, my hopes, and my first ever fabric mistreatments, with a bunch of other bloggers, that needed to “do something” with their own life direction (or maybe just a new decor ).

TSP is well under way like dreams in my head. Dreams are the fertilizer for my idea seeds. My first idea seed was was to remove everything from the living room, including selling the TV, for a month. We have a beyond well-worn and stained carpet to rip out in that room and a new laminate floor to install (waiting the garage). Why not empty the space, update the floor and let our minds feel free to imagine what we need and desire from that room? Not having a secondary living space cramps that plan for now. I suppose it was too radical.

The actual definition of simplicity from Wikipedia is the following:

Simplicity is the property, condition, or quality of being simple or uncombined. It often denotes beauty, purity or clarity. Simple things are usually easier to explain and understand than complicated ones. Simplicity can mean freedom from hardship, effort or confusion. It may also refer to a simple living lifestyle.

I am not simple. My roles, relationships and re…(darn what’s a good r word here?) are all very combined. I respect the way God made my heart, soul and mind in a web of connections, complexities and creativity. So what am I doing with The Simplicity Project? Do I want to go live in a bubble free from challenge, growth opportunity or noise?

Q: Can I incorporate my suburban part-time stay-at-home Mom world-living God-fearing self into Simplicity?

A: The simplicity I long for is not a destination as much as a condition I can develop to see a bit more clarity and beauty along my dusty trail here on Earth until the moment I come face to face with the ultimate Beauty and all the confusion is washed away.

3 Idea Seed Fertilizers

1. Define goals. What will our house and family run like, look like, sound like, smell like (seriously I have such a stinky laundry washer right now!), celebrate like and feel like?
2. Pray and Discuss. A friend of ours says, “You need some serious knee-mail!”. I want to be united with the my “Are you serious?”-darling-husband-Peter. What will I have to compromise on? How can we infuse our faith into our plans?
3. Spend time with your dreams. My best ideas come to me right before I fall into a sleepy nap. I like to stay half awake playing around my new imagined place of graceful space. I need to be inspired without becoming jealous which isn’t easy to do. I will stay away from the stores for a long time! That’s like phase 100 and I am still in phase 1/2.

I love a good before and after. I love them in life stories, design ads and make overs. It revitalizes me to believe things, people and styles can and do become reinvented.

There is actually some sort of sadness that occurs in me when someone remodels their kitchen and they forget to take a before photo. There is a minor importance about the before that I can’t quite place.

Befores set the stage for the wow factor in the after. As if the after alone wouldn’t be amazing enough? Would the effort to get to the after somehow be lost on all who viewed it? Maybe the issue lies more in the history of the before than anything else. Does the world need to know a fragment of what went on in the life of a chair, kitchen cupboard or set of clothes or a person? Perhaps it does.

View some designer before and afters at bhg.com or at design sponge.

In the meantime here is a before photo of my bathroom. I am attempting to push myself to get an after photo by the end of the summer. After all I’ve living in the before photo for over 3 years. It is time. Any ideas for me? Please post some comments about reinventing this space (remember we have to think resale though so nothing too outlandish) Thanks!