We adopted two kittens this summer.
And within the first hour of bringing them home, we lost them!
We made a comfortable place for them in our bathroom, and after making sure they were okay, we closed the door and left.
30 minutes later, we went to check on them, and they were gone!!!
They were nowhere to be found!
I was completely baffled. How in the world could we lose kittens in a small closed room with no furniture?!
It was then that I spotted the gap under the door. Years ago, when we built our new home, I had installed some old reclaimed doors to add some charm to a new-build house. The old door was shorter than today’s standard measurements, and so there was a gap of around 2-3 inches. I was baffled. Is it possible they could squeeze under that gap?
Thus began a massive search party of every nook and cranny of my house. We searched everywhere. Under all the furniture. In every small hiding place we could think of.
Five hours went by, and we still couldn’t find them.
At this point I was not only anxious and worried, I was also mad. Mad at all the clutter in my house. The more stuff we have, the more places there are for kittens to hide. I was ready to literally throw out all our stuff. (More on this later).
When my husband came home from work that night, he put on a headlamp and started searching. Soon after, we heard a victory cry.
“I found them!!!!”
And guess where they were, dear reader?
In the bathroom.
They had never left.
I know. It’s the most pathetic tale ever.
Our bathroom vanity has an upside-down drawer you can pull out for little kids to use as a stepstool to reach the sink. My kids outgrew it years ago, but when we first brought the kittens in and were playing with them, my daughter pulled it out as a little perch for them to jump up on and play. After we left them in the bathroom, they had managed to climb underneath and up into a tiny space in the cabinet. Later, when we didn’t see them in the room, my son unknowingly closed the drawer, effectively locking them inside for the next five hours.
On a whim, my husband pulled the drawer out and looked underneath, and two little furballs plopped onto the floor and stared into the light of his headlamp.
There was much rejoicing!!!
Even though we got off to a rocky start, kittens have added so much unexpected delight and joy to our lives.
And…
I’m still mad about the clutter.
I’ve spent the next few weeks on a house purge. I’ve been decluttering and organizing and borderline ready to become a minimalist. (I’d actually totally be a minimalist if it wasn’t for the other three people who live here who weirdly want to keep their stuff 😉
Nonetheless, I’ve been reading and watching content on minimalism to keep me focused and inspired.
Consumerism is something that I’m just as guilty of as any other American. It’s actually kind of hilarious how much my algorithm on social media has changed in only a few weeks.
It went from trying to get me to buy stuff to suddenly showing how I can sell all my stuff on Facebook Marketplace, live with less, and how overconsuming affects our health and happiness.
It’s really made me pause and ask myself,
How is clutter symbolically showing up in my life in more ways than just physical items?
One of the biggest areas for me is the clutter of other people’s expectations.
How much have I taken on other people’s expectations of who I should be and how I should live my life?
Those expectations come from society, culture, media, religion, family, friends, and beyond. And it can pile up and take up space just as much as the physical items we have in our home.
And… I can get lost in all of it.
One of the biggest pieces of expectation clutter I have carried my whole life is the expectation to be perfect.
PERFECT EXPECTATIONS
Imagine my delight when watching this interview with Minimalist Joshua Fields Millburn, when he spoke to this exact issue. I literally gasped out loud when he gave this completely fresh take on perfection. He says,
“We were all born perfect. You see a baby, and you’re like, ‘What a perfect human!’ You’re not thinking, ‘Oh, we really need to perfect this baby.’
But somewhere along the way we have imperfected ourselves.
The word perfect comes from the Latin root ‘perfacere,’ which just means ‘completely done.’ That baby is completely done. But what we do is we imperfect ourselves through all the additions we have – all the expectations, all the grinding and the craving and the hustle culture and more, more, more, more, more. No wonder we feel imperfect.
We confuse the word perfect with flawless. No one’s flawless, obviously. We’re all born perfect. The question is, what did we add to imperfect ourselves?”
This was such a fresh take on perfectionism. I’ve never heard it worded this way, that we imperfect ourselves through all our additions.
So often I’ve found myself striving for more in order to reach perfection, instead of viewing this as ways I actually imperfect myself.
I’m already “completely done”.
This doesn’t mean I can’t still grow. I’m completely done in the same way that an acorn is completely done. The acorn doesn’t have to do anything to be the Oak tree. It doesn’t need popularity, status, image, achievements, new skills, approval, etc. At no point is it not an oak. It’s always an oak regardless of its stage of development. Of course it will evolve and change shape through the process of growth, but it really is completely done right from the beginning.
What a delightful paradox.
So here’s my gentle reminder that you are already completely done.
And if that feels a little unbelievable, a great contemplation may be, “What have I added on top that is imperfecting who I am?”
You are loved.
Namaste,
brooke
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