If you are a normal human, it is quite likely there are a number of tiny projects around your house you are avoiding. As you ignore or defer them, they get bigger and bigger and–well you know. May I share my own hard-won wisdom in this tiny area of life? Clean it up now! The weight of your indecision will be more painful tomorrow than the idea of completeting the project is today.
David Allen and other time management gurus say if it takes less than two minutes to do the thing, don't put it off. When I was a new mom with the diaper bag, for example, I was religious about cleaning it out and restocking it before I did anything else. Once you get home from an outing with a tiny human, you might not feel like emptying it and refilling it with fresh diapers, a change of baby clothes and your usual fifth of vodka. (Just me?) But, you never know when you have to dash back out the door and you don't want to have not restocked the diaper bag cuz the s– poop will definitely hit the fan.
As time passed, I lost this wisdom and recently enjoyed relearning it the hard way. My daughter and I enjoyed a beach picnic to watch the sunset. In order to make the impromptu adventure work with a packed schedule, we divided and conquered life tasks. I finished painting our purple front porch, and she made a beautiful picnic dinner for us. It was a delightful meal and nicer than I would have created. There was a fruit salad, salmon and cream cheese bagel sandwiches, and little snacks in reusable Ziploc bags.
We had a lovely time and perfectly warm weather. The skyline of Chicago was set against a deep, red, sunset that was transcendent. The only unfortunate part of any beach trip is we head home covered in sand. We stopped to get ice cream from Wendy's, (the orange dreamsicle frosty was fabulous) and we were tired. We snapped and crabbed at each other, trying to struggle to unload the car and transport our debris into the house.
We just left the rest of our stuff in the back of the car. There was some concern that the milk from the melted frosty would smell, or that the sand from the beach would never actually leave the automotive carpet. We were too tired to care. We only grabbed the essentials. My teenage daughter even neglected to grab her cell phone in her fatigue. (Dear friends, please know she did go back out and get the cell phone, but the beach blanket and the chairs and the cooler with the picnic lunch were left behind for me to deal with another day.)
The next day, the porch painting project was ongoing, and then there was some social activity with my dungeons & dragons game, and then the phone call came. It was actually a text, and it's the kind you don't want to get: My dad was on his way to the ER. I returned home in a rush, packed a bag and drove an hour to sit with him in the emergency room for hours and hours. He was feeling good so it was almost fun. We ordered sandwiches and chips and had a little picnic. He told me the story of our friend Michael telling the story of his mother telling the story of folded potato chips as a symbol of love and remembering.
We did all that waiting only to find out that he's perfectly healthy and maybe just a little old. It was almost midnight when he got released. I drove Dad home in my minivan with all of the beach paraphernalia, my overnight bag and something in the air that smelled faintly like an old dreamsicle.
The next morning, the chaos of my dirty car continued to stress me out as I drove to meet my dear friend Jenny. She asked for a copy of my new book, which I knew I had in the car in a bag somewhere. I had to pull it out from under the folded up car seats. It was dented, but she was happy to have it. I continued to feel weighed down and drowning in my mess on wheels minivan as I arrived back in town with plans to head directly into work.
If I had just taken the five minutes to empty the car, that first night of the beach trip, it would not have felt like the chaos mobile that it was. I thought about life and what really matters as I rushed back to Valpo to spend a work day loving people and playing games and brightening their day. I shouldn't be trying to figure out how to clean the car in between work and dinner and my daughter's honors ceremony. If I had taken five minutes any number of times during the weekend to put the car to rights, it would be a tidy, pleasant vehicle for my life.
I could stand it no longer, and instead of driving to work, I headed to my garage. I quickly emptied the way back, threw out the trash, put the seats back up and headed to work a tiny bit late, but with a greater peace of mind. So, friend, what is your smelly car situation? What five minute effort would you like to take today so that you don't end up driving a sour milk mobile into the adventure of this day?
