This is what my counters have looked like for many days. It reiterated what you hear all the time-the kitchen is the heart of the home. My home has generally felt chaotic for weeks. Dishes drying on the counter all day and night. You want to get your home whipped into shape? Make your bed and clean off your kitchen counters!
Ain't she a beaut? This is my long awaited new helper.
She even has a new car smell. New car smell? you say. Yes she does. What do you mean? you ask. I'll put it like this. One time Shane ordered a wedding cake flavored sno-cone. What does it taste like? I asked. It tastes like wedding cake, he said. I took a bite and sure enough. It tasted exactly like wedding cake. Now, I am not sure why my beautiful new dishwasher has a new car smell but she does and I love it.
Handwashing dishes for two months taught me something. It taught me that new habits are easily established. It taught me that I can try to have a decent attitude about my new habit and that will make it even that much better. The first few tries of a new habit are the most difficult. Catching myself with a pooey attitude and trying to re-route my thoughts toward something more positive make it ten times easier to keep going in a better direction.
Monday at my house always means laundry day. It means I make my bed and loads of clean laundry get dumped and folded on my bed all day long. Monday means home for me. We stay put on Mondays. I almost never blow dry my hair or put on make-up on Mondays. The sound of laundry washing and spinning, the flicker of candles, lessons up and running, hands clinking through the Lego bins-all the sounds of Monday. It is our habit.
How cute is this candle? I have a habit of lighting candles all the time. This is the cutest little candle I've ever laid eyes on. Talk about Happy Happy Happy.
Over the holiday I also realized I have some bad habits that need to be kicked to the curb. It is hard to kick a bad habit to the curb. I realized that I have gotten into the bad habit of checking email and FB first thing in the morning. Talk about a worthless way to start the day. It is not my desire to be filling my morning first thing with that kind of unproductive emptiness. So, I'm starting a new habit of not checking anything until I have said Hi to Jesus and spent time with him. Then, I say Hi to the rest of the crew that like to be fed and watered. I've been keeping paper with me because a million things I want to Google or look up come to mind first thing. I jot them down and take my handy list to my computer when it is time.
I've toyed around with the idea of quitting the habit of morning coffee. Today I made it until 11am and then kicked the idea of that crazy habit to the curb. The brew just finished and now I am happily back on track and things are feeling as they should.
