Redecorating, Remodeling, Recreating.......

After settling with the fact that our home belongs to our kiddos, at least for now. The hubby and I decided to go ahead and give a little TLC to our bedroom. I have been looking at the same blue walls for 9 years and I don't even like the color blue. I'm not quite sure how the walls came to be that color in the first place and I've been wanting to repaint them for quite awhile but just haven't had the time.


As we've spent the last two weeks painting, redecorating, reorganizing, and creating our bedroom into the peaceful retreat that I want it to be; I've come to realize that's exactly what I've been doing with my life these last few months.  Redecorating and remodeling.....my life.


Take Everything Out: Clear the Clutter
When  you redecorate a room, the first thing you  do is take everything out. You take things off the walls, maybe clean out the drawers, move furniture around so you can get to the walls in order to paint. Behind the furniture you find dust, dirt, and things you forgot you had and no longer use. Exactly what needs to be done when you need to clean up or "remodel" your life. When your life is so  full of clutter, so much so that you can't see what's important when it's right in front of you, when life is too crazy and busy for you to even enjoy it, it's time for a remodel.   A few months ago, this is exactly where I was. And so I began the process of "remodeling" my life. My life was  full of color coded calendars, conference calls, various meetings, constant phone calls, too much computer time, overcommitment and it was time to declutter. For every person, I think the process of decluttering is different. For me, it truly did consist of  removing almost everything that was "normal" to me  within my daily schedule. I won't go into all the details but there was some self discovery from all the "dirt" that was left behind from my decluttering. There were things that hadn't been tended to due to my busy schedule and when I say things I don't just mean tangible things.  When our lives become so overfilled with clutter we tend to neglect relationships, values, our homes, and often times our health.


Keep it or Junk It?
One of the most important steps when restructuring a room is  deciding what to keep. Usually after you clear everything out and take everything off the walls, you're actually just left with a bigger mess. It's at this point that you have to choose what's going and what's staying. I think this is the most difficult part because I think it's in our nature to want to keep things that are familiar to us. You have old things that you are accustomed to, things that you have invested in and don't want to get rid of, or maybe items that you want to keep but there's just no room or they don't go with your new decor.


A remodel or change in our lives can simulate this as well.  I wanted to keep everything, well almost everything.... I didn't want to keep the life sucking job. But more often than not we want to keep what is familiar.  It is difficult for people, especially women, to cut things out of their life. This is true even if there is not enough time in our lives to fit everything in. It is as if we have to fit in all the "mommy activities" whether it be helping in a classroom, schooling our own child, or helping with school projects as well as our friendships, our hobbies or "interests" so that we still have something "for ourselves", keeping the husband happy, jobs, house maintenance, church activities and the list goes on.

So how do you decide what to keep? For me, I realized I needed very little. You keep what's most important. You keep things that will be useful in your new "remodel".  It's so simple.....  you keep only what you LOVE. 


Modify What You Have and Make It Beautiful
You've decluttered and decided what to keep but some of the things you're deciding to keep will most likely need to be changed in order to fit into your "new design". Our room looks COMPLETELY different but do you know there are very few things in our room that are new.  We used the same pictures frames but painted them and used them in other ways. We painted all of our furniture and added little touches to things we already had in our bedroom or around our home. We turned a closet door into a headboard and sheets into curtains. Simply put, when you modify your life many times it consists of using what is already there and putting it to better use.


The Vision
Whenever we redecorate a room, I usually have a vision of what I want it to look like at the end. I think it's good to have some sort of idea of where you're going to end up. What do you want it to look like after you've made all these changes? And all throughout redecorating, it is essential to keep the end result in mind.  I believe in having a "vision" of what you want your life to look like, pray on that vision often, and as you make decisions make sure they align with your "end result".  For me, this is ongoing. I am being cautious not to over involve myself or my children. I say no to things if they will overcommit my time or my family's time. It is a careful balance of trying to create a new life that doesn't end up looking just like the old one.


Maintaining the New Look
The most difficult part for me is getting rid of stuff but maintaining the new decor is next in line. You work hard and get the room looking all nice and within two weeks it's a mess. There's laundry on the floor, things in the room that don't belong, dust and mess from lack of time and attention. Isn't this so typical when we try to make big changes in our lives?  We say we're going to do things different, we start the clean up and live that way for awhile and then within a short amount of time we're back to where we started. I don't know maybe it's because we didn't remove everything we should have or maybe we added things during our "remodel" that were unnecessary or our "vision" wasn't clear enough. Whatever the reason, often times we end up with a different looking room but we're in the same messy situation.

I'm still in the process of adding things back in and rechecking decisions against my "vision" and so I don't really know how to maintain the "remodel". My schedule will most likely overfill and at some point in time I will overcommit. However, there is one thing I know for certain and it is that I never want my life to look like it did before "the remodel".  It seems quite appropriate that at this point I am now looking at yellow walls instead of blue.....