One of the things I love about January is that without yard work, I can turn some attention to projects inside.
One of the “Areas of Balance” in The Success Choice Planner is “Organize/Beautify.” Working on projects in the home to create order and beauty is a great stress reliever for me.
Two years ago, I lost both of my parents unexpectedly 7 weeks apart. It was an emotional, stressful time. Needing an outlet for this stress I decided to update my kitchen table chairs. We had gotten a new, larger kitchen table; and the old chairs were too small, and didn’t fit with the new table. I found some used chairs on a local “classifieds.” I particularly love to fix up and re-purpose things, whether a house or a piece of furniture.
During this time, I needed to write a eulogy for my mom’s funeral and help plan the funeral. My husband walked in as I was painting chairs and asked if I had time to do that. I remember replying that I needed to do it. That’s when I realized during many stressful times in my life, that’s when I had painted a room, my kitchen cupboards, or some other home or yard improvement, and it was a great method of coping with stress in my life.
It’s important to have a healthy outlet for managing stress. Working on improvement projects can be this outlet. However, you don’t have to be experiencing stress to improve your surroundings. I often work on an improvement project just for the sheer joy of improvement.
How can you you make your current surroundings more beautiful?
