When later becomes a lifestyle 🫣
Here's why you actually do have time.
After 382 days of telling myself “I don’t have time for this.”
And using my favorite go-to strategy of “I’ll get to it later.”
I finally couldn’t take it anymore and I seized the first sunshine-y day in a month of named storms to clean the half an inch of brown gunk that had accumulated on my kitchen terrace off my terrace.
This gunk has been gurgling up the drainpipe and piling up in my life for … an embarrassingly long time. And I’ve been putting off dealing with it for an equally shameful number of … well ...
Gunk is what happens when later becomes a lifestyle.
But.
Last Saturday, I was like: Nope. I’m done looking at this. Enough is enough. Today is the day. I am taking back my terrace!
So in case you were wondering?
You’re not the only one looking around your house thinking “I’ve got to get this stuff sorted out, once and for all.” While also telling yourself “I’ll do it later. When I have time.”
The closet you won’t open? The papers you keep moving? The room that was supposed to be an office?
I get it. “I don’t have time to deal with this right now” is everyone’s favorite home organizing strategy.
Because there are 2 ways to get your home together.
You can go slow: A little here. A little there. The cubby today. A closet next month. Random bursts of optimism until 2029.
Or you can go fast: Drop everything, go all in, and knock it out start to finish. Handled.
Most people? They opt for slow.
Because fast sounds ... intense. And impractical.
And also because slow feels steady. And doable.
Until you’re like:
I don’t have time to pull everything out, create a scene of squalor, and then live with it for three weeks like it’s an immersive art installation called “Woman Who Tried.”
I don’t have time to keep moving the same pile from the counter to the table to the chair like it’s on a speaking tour.
I don’t have time to spend weeks in the messy middle where everything is worse before it gets better.
How many more times do I have to come home and make another 400 decisions about this stuff after a full day of being a competent adult? I have no more competence to donate to this cause.
(sigh)
You think lack of time is the problem.
But the problem with time is that you’re spending what you’ve got on the part that doesn’t change anything long-term.
The starting.
The dabbling.
The making of the piles. And the rearranging of the piles.
The slow and steady “working on it.”
You don’t have a time problem. You have a finish-line problem.
You’ve been spending your time making progress.
Instead of making it done.
Remember last week when I told you that “maybe” is one of my favorite words?
Well “done” is another one.
Listen, I understand that true happiness is to be found in the journey. But I have always been the kind of woman who would rather stand at the top of the mountain and breathe in the glory of having DONE THE THING.
And getting the thing “done-done” in your home? That is the dream.
Because while progress feels productive. Done changes your life.
The truth about a whole-house reset is that it doesn’t happen in a series of starts. It happens in a series of finishes.
And when doing it the slow way feels like you took on a side hustle that never pays you and never ends?
Your other option is to do it the fast way.
I’m not talking about frantic-fast. Or messy-fast. Or the kind of fast that feels like chaos. I’m talking about a contained-fast.
I’m talking about a chunk of time big enough for you to create a real before-and-after.
Not a “I moved some stuff around” after.
A done-done after.
One full day? Is a chunk of time.
So.
What if instead of trying to find pieces of time to work on some area of your house, you scheduled yourself one day to finish one thing in your home that’s had you on the verge of sweaty rage and salty tears every time you try to engage with it.
What if you pick one area or one space or one category of things in your home—a closet, your bedroom, your office, all the random papers you’ve got shoved in boxes and bags and stacked on surfaces—something that will make your daily life easier immediately.
And you pick one day to start it and to finish it. One full day. Where you go all in and all out and get it all done.
And you repeat.
One day. One thing finished. One space done.
Then another.
You could reset your whole home like this.
A stack of done-done days.
Because starting and “working on it” and making progress is cool and all.
But finishing is the point.
Being done is the point.
Coming home and not having to do anything but just be home … is the point.
Because when one part of your home is truly done, it’s not just “a tidy room.”
It’s momentum. It’s hope. It’s relief you can feel in your body.
You stop avoiding that room and start using it for what you wanted all along.
You stop finding things that have migrated all over the house because they had nowhere else to be.
You stop carrying the background anxiety of loose threads. And “I really should deal with that.” And all the unfinished projects swirling in your head.
You can actually focus when you’re working in your home office.
You can actually do yoga without moving three piles first.
You can walk into a room and feel your jaw relax.
You can actually breathe again.
You stop living in the messy middle and start living in a space that makes your daily life easy and the life you want to be living possible.
This is why I love doing One-Day Sprints with my clients. A focused, start-to-finish day where we choose one contained space, make the decisions, set up simple systems, and end with it done-done.
I bring the structure so we’re not exploding your whole house. And I keep the process moving forward (so our lunch break doesn’t turn into binge-watching the new America’s Next Top Model expose on Netflix). And you go to bed with it actually done.
Because when it’s really overwhelming, the one thing you can really use is a win. As soon as possible.
If you can’t stand staring down that cubby or wrestling with that closet or avoiding the junk room that your home office has become…
So you can stop working on your home and start living in it.
Your friend with the formerly gunky terrace,
Vivian
PS. You can Sprint with me virtually (over Zoom) anytime, from anywhere. Because having someone standing with you is more important than having someone standing next to you.
But, for anyone in the NYC Metro area or Chicagoland who’s like…but can you come and stand next to me for a day or two (or five) and let’s really get this done? I have awesome news for you because …
I’m going to be in the States from April 16 through May 10 and we should talk about making this happen. Hit reply or send me a message if this is you.
Love this! And needed it!