Lifestyle, Musings From An Active Mind

Distracted Organization

by Bedlam & Daisies

 

Do you have a variety of collections?

Do you need to organize them?

Are you easily distracted?

If you answered yes to any or all of these, then we have something in common! 🙂

Our house has been a continual work in progress.  I don’t like to buy new pieces of furniture very often because we don’t tend to stay in a house for a long time.  And the next house typically has a very different layout with different furniture needs.

This is why I make sure that I can’t repurpose a piece of furniture before committing to get rid of it.  I have multiple folding bookshelves that I bought at Lowe’s 4 houses ago (that sound so much more dramatic than 6 years ago).  They have served many purposes besides just holding books.  One was being used by a child as a “dresser” in their closet.  Said child finally got a bedroom set that included a real dresser.  The bookshelf moved to the storage room to await its new found life as an actual bookshelf.

We have pared down our library throughout the numerous moves and the beginning implementation of decluttering and minimizing our belongings. The teens still have some books in their room and I keep some in my nightstand, but we have an alcove in the basement where most of the books, along with photo albums are stored.  Since I had no free bookshelves, I was using a shelving unit that had a prior life in our garage.

I’m not a fan of household chores.  But, I decided to finally tackle this small project.  Another will be changing the mocha color that was on the walls when we moved in. It’s a nice color, but a little dark for our basement.

Due to the openness of my house, I will be continuing with the color throughout the main part of the house.  Sea Salt by Sherwin Williams.

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You can see how much brighter of a color that is.   This is another project in the works.  My entry.  I’m planning to create a gallery wall.

But back to the basement.  I’m easily distracted.

My husband says I tend to go down rabbit holes.

In our collection of books are a few that are collections of poetry.  Since one had a ribbon marking a page, I was curious if I had placed it on a specific poem.

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And I had.

This poem transported me back to when I was pregnant with my first child.  The child who will turn 17 in less than a week.  It seems you have so much time to plan with that first child.  I would be raising a toddler with the second pregnancy, and have two under the age of 4 with the third pregnancy.  I did not have time to sit and relax as I did with the first pregnancy.

With my first pregnancy, I would take time to soak my aching body in a tub and listen to classical music.  I would play Mozart and Beethoven.  When this child was a toddler and we would begin our evening drive home from our weekly trip to my parents, he would ask for “night-night” music.  This was a request for the classical station to be put on so he could go to sleep.

I found this poem and read it each day to the little baby growing inside.  I memorized this poem so that I could recite it to him on the day that he was born.  So he would recognize the cadence of my voice.  I recited it to him late at night as I rocked him and fed him.

The Sugar-Plum Tree

Have you ever heard of the Sugar-Plum Tree?

‘Tis a marvel of great renown!

It blooms on the shore of the Lollipop sea

In the garden of Shut_eye Town;

The fruit that it bears is so wondrously sweet

(As those who have tasted it say)

That good little children have only to eat

Of that fruit to be happy next day.

When you’ve got to the tree, you would have a hard time

To capture the fruit which I sing

The tree is so tall that no person could climb

To the boughs where the sugar-plums swing!

But up in that tree sits a chocolate cat,

And a gingerbread dog prowls below_

And this is the way you contrive to get at

Those sugar-plums tempting you so:

You say but the word to that gingerbread dog

And he barks with such a terrible zest

That the chocolate cat is at once all agog,

As her swelling proportions attest.

And the chocolate cat goes cavorting around

From this leafy limb unto that,

And the sugar-plums tumble, of course, to the ground-

Hurrah for that chocolate cat!

There are marshmallows, gumdrops, and peppermint canes,

With stripings of scarlet or gold,

And you carry away of the treasure that rains

As much as your apron can hold!

So come, little child, cuddle closer to me,

In your dainty white nightcap and gown,

And I’ll rock you away to that Sugar-Plum Tree

In the garden of Shut-Eye Town. -Eugene Field

Sometimes, it’s in those distractions that you find peace.

You remember that even though parenting is hard and exhausting, you have an immeasurable amount of love for your children.  That you always have and always will want what is best for them.  That you hope that each one of them knows that you are just a person who has failings as well, but you keep trying.  Because that’s what we do.

We grow and we learn and we evolve.

Against the odds, I did get the project finished!

But I’m happy that I took the time to be distracted.

How about you?

Any projects in the works?

Any distractions that you are grateful for?

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Let your light shine!

Amy

24 thoughts on “Distracted Organization”

  2. If I started to catalogue the collections of stuff within our house, the book (yes, book) would probably need a sack trolley to move from room to room. I’m just glad we’re not the only ones who have so much stuff secreted away about the place…

    Reply

  4. I was already a full-time mommy when I got pregnant, but they did go to school all day in August and September, so I had two pretty quiet months of baby belly, and you’re right, that’d be the end of it. Lil chapters we remember.
    Excellent choice in poetry for bebe.
    Sea salt is a winner all-around, because it’s there, and you don’t mind it, but if you stop to look at it, it’s got quite a bit of depth — it’s blue and green and gray 🙂
    I have a lil notebook of projects. My (since I went back to work) thing is to choose what can be done with x amount of time. Quite a bit of the smaller things get done, and as you know, smaller things are the bulk of it. One small thing after another, into the rabbit hole 😉

    Reply

    1. Well I hope since you were already a full-time mommy that you were lucky enough to avoid morning sickness! Those first three months, the hubby never saw me. I got off work before him and was in bed for the rest of the day! I could never figure out if I wasn’t as sick with the next two or it just wasn’t an option. lol
      I do love sea salt’s depth. I was very nervous when a friend recommended it because she kept saying it was gray. I know that gray is in fashion for wall colors right now, but I needed cheeriness… because…no sunshine in winter. I checked it out in her house first and fell in love with it. I get the gray when I hold it up to other swatches, but in my house I mostly see the blue and green… reminding me of the seashore 🙂
      I need to write all my projects down. I feel really accomplished when I mark something off a list! Does replacing the burned out light bulbs count? 😉

      Reply

      1. Replacing bulbs absolutely counts!
        I did have morning sickness, but it was brief. I’d wait to throw up and then go on with my day. Selective vomiting was a real thing with my first one though. There were a variety of foods she did not let me keep down. I gave up cheesecake for 10 years, I’d tossed it so much!
        I’m sorry you had it so rough. I wonder if we’ll ever know why every pregnancy is so different?

      2. Oh no…not cheesecake! I have a distinctive memory of telling my husband that he could not cook another frozen pizza (poor man…with no home-cooked meals) because its smell was so offensive!

  5. Your collections look very similar to my own. I have several books of poetry, I have collected rocks forever, and I save coins, tins, bottles, teacups and saucers, and books.

    I’ve pared down my books to special series, classics, poetry, and reference books. There’s just not enough room for all the books I’d love to have.

    I do have one book of collected famous poems that has 3 of Eugene Field’s poems but, not this one! It’s beautiful. I hadn’t read it before. Thanks for sharing!

    Reply

    1. We have done quite a bit of gem mining in some of our travels. Plus, I used to fish them out of the creeks at my in-laws and bring them back to Florida!
      We have pared down quite a few of our collections because it becomes so cumbersome when we move. My daughter is the queen of collections. When she was about 7 she had a huge collection of can tabs, now it’s mostly rocks and soccer paraphernalia 🙂
      I’m not sure I ever read any of Eugene Field’s other poems. I’ll have to look for them. I loved this one because of the imagery and cadence, plus the part of rocking a child to sleep.

      Reply
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  7. Those ‘moments’ in first pregnancy I can definitely relate to. I savored it so much! My poor mother was afraid I was in danger of surrounding myself in too much fluff. ha But I was working on my feet all day up til delivery date so she was worried over nothing. Great memories 🙂

    Reply

    1. I definitely had a little more downtime with the first pregnancy, even though I worked full time until a few weeks before he was born. I think every girl deserves some “fluff” when they are carrying another human inside them. 🙂

      Reply
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