Pinterest Faker

When my life is out of control I organize for therapy. It's cheaper than therapy (though I'm meeting with professional therapist also and she's worth every penny).

I've been wanting to organize the kids games and crafts for a long, long, time, like since my kids were born. I finally took the plunge, bought $150 in organizers and got to work. Each small box cost $6.00 from Amazon and though it's expensive upfront, it's cheaper than throwing out broken games. Then I cut the sides of the box off and used them as labels.

This was my happy result. I hope that it'll extend the life of these games exponentially, as well as help us play them more since we can actually see what we own. So far it's worked, we're playing games more and watching TV less.

This is the finished photo.

I felt super fantastic about myself. not only did I have a very functional and well thought out space, I was going to add it to Pinterest. It was a new all-time high. Then I decided to be honest, because my life isn't what the first photo shows. And so I zoomed out with my camera and I took this photo.

 And this one. 

And another.

And this one too. It's a 360 degree, panoramic view of my office.

What in God's good mercy happened? Well, I've been working for six months to unpack my office where I keep the kid's games. And I haven't finished. I have a nice organized snapshot of my office, one nice enough to be on Pinterest. But I decided to be honest. I'm a mom with two small kids. I may have an awesomely organized game center, but the rest of my life is a mix of beauty and chaos, mostly chaos.

I know when I've gone on Pinterest I've found inspiration for perfecting every aspect of my life. And I mean every aspect.  But I don't want to have to be perfect to be happy. My life is pretty messy right now and it still has corners bulging with messiness...but also with happiness.

I'm totally capable of having cleaned this office six months ago. But I've chosen to go very slowly. Because when my kids ask to play, I'm going to play instead of OCD organize every aspect of my life so that it can match what I see on Pinterest.

To be honest, I'd often rather organize. I'm an "A" type personality and I love results. You don't get results from building block towers and playing cars and braiding Barbie's hair all day, at least not in the form of something tangible or even chart-able. But I do have very close relationships to my kids. I can't really photograph that and pin it.

All I have to show is an organized bookshelf and a really messy room and two very loved children. And I'm ok with that.