The other day, I was reading something by Mark Silver of Heart of Business. He’s brilliant, and has a ton of wisdom available on his site.

The thing that hit me like a ton of bricks was the idea of trying to “be less”.

As someone whose baby formula was probably infused with some sort of protestant-ethic-and-the-spirit-of-capitalism ingredients, this turns my life on its head.

Be less?

I’ve always been told to be more.

Hmmm.

I started thinking about it, and thought about how to apply this. It’s a little scary, so perhaps there’s some sort of “secret” way I could test it — very gently and quietly — and see whether it is something I could do.

So I thought of one of my big issues. My house.

Four years ago, my husband and I realized we needed to find a house. We have three girls, and the idea of continuing to live on the second floor of an old house was, um, exhausting. Doing the laundry and getting the groceries inside were like aerobics training. It was a hard decision, because our landlord and his wife were the nicest people ever, like grandparents to our kids. It was like leaving part of our family.

But it was time.

We found a little tiny house in a nice neighborhood. The reason we could get it:  The whole house smelled like Vegas. Seriously, that’s what one of our friends said when he walked in for the first time. It was owned by two retired people who smoked multiple packs a day. Even today, after four years of no smoking, the walls in the bathroom still bleed nicotine and need to be washed down every so often.

We got it for a good price, and started decontaminating. But the problem was — is — that we never really had time to do the rennovations we originally planned. Sure, I put up a few shelves in places that desperately needed them. We took out carpets and did our best with rugs here and there.

But that’s about as far as it got.

Life, and things like working and getting kids to school, always got in the way.

Everything we want to do seems like such a big thing. Painting everything. Dealing with floors. Redoing the kitchen. That mysterious thing on the kitchen ceiling. Making the basement usable.

All together there are just too many things.

It stops me dead in my tracks when I start thinking of the time and money involved.

Resulting in:  nothing. No forward motion.

Overwhelm leading to complete shut-down.

So I’ve decided to follow Mark’s advice and see if I can do less. Take one little, tiny thing that I can change, cut it in half a couple of times (I tend to be a bit too overachieve-y), and do it. Followed by another little tiny thing.

Baby steps.

Before I go:  Let’s have a word of the day.

Todays word:  ”Poppener”. As in “bottle poppener”. Opener of the cans and bottles, as created by my 4-year-old this morning.

Have a great day.

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If you enjoyed this, you might also like:

Rules and problems, which talks about my many issues with housekeeping!

The beauty of kindergarten, about having a problem and moving on