Taming the Neurotic Beast Within

Lately my nesting instincts have been kicking in... I want to clean, I want to organize, I want to build things.... but I barely have the energy to roll my pregnant butt out of bed. Toys littler the floor and my back and knees are too sore to pick them up.

Here are the projects I have been lusting over:

I want to make a Laundry basket dresser for organizing our laundry in the garage: http://ana-white.com/2010/11/laundry-basket-dresser

I also want to build a closet insert for Apollo's closet to house all of his ( and the pending baby's) toys/clothes:
http://ana-white.com/2011/03/closet-organized

My mind likes to plan all kinds of projects, but my body just can't accomplish them. It doesn't help that I have two kids who need my constant attention and love. Usually, at the end of the day, I am lucky if I've managed to make dinner and do the dishes. Sometimes, I just have to accept that I won't have a very organized, nice house or well-maintained yard until the kids are a little older. But the impatient part of me WANTS IT NOW.

Cam and I recently decided to map out our projects on a spreadsheet in excel. We stopped at 44 realizing that we were feeling overwhelmed. I don't have the spreadsheet on my laptop, but here is part of the email I sent him with my project suggestions:

-          Paint baby’s dresser and Lamps (halfway finished with this project)

-          Finish Zander’s theater before we see Tammy and Tyler in a few weeks

-          Aerate lawn and plant grass seed

-          Clean moss off of roof

-          Have trees trimmed (this is kind of money dependent, but Rachel gave me a good referral for a cheap guy)

-          Paint dresser for our room and organize our clothes into it

-          Wash and organize baby clothes into red painted dresser before I give birth so we are ready

-          Empty garage out completely and put everything back in an organized manner- make Keep, sell and donate piles.

- Get rid of broken fridge

- Get bike hooks for all of the bikes/trikes and install them

-          Have a garage sale

-          Build closet insert in Apollo’s room to help organize his toys and make space for baby brother’s stuff

-          Build closet insert into our room

-          Build closet insert into Sunshine’s room

-          Paint the doors and hang them in the house (FINALLY!). Also paint the dining table and that sideboard that the microwave is on while we have the sprayer out.

- recover dining chairs with vinyl so they can be wiped clean

-          Hang up our new front door and get new door hardware for it

-          Paint the bathroom ceiling and trim so it doesn’t look like crap

- Finish hemming and hanging all of the curtains

-          Stain and varnish my desk in the living room

-          Build mini barn where tool shed is

-          Plant some seeds/do some weeding, edging and pruning in our yard (especially those rhododendron trees)

-          Build a compost bin (and get rid of the ones that just sit and rot by the chicken coop

-          seal that seam between the floor and the cabinets in the kitchen under the cabinets with something so water doesn’t damage the laminate.

-          Caulk that crappy looking seam between the drop-ceiling and the kitchen cabinets.

-          Paint and caulk baseboards

-          Put that insulation that needs to go under the house back in

-          Unclog our heater vent

-          Have chimney sweeped and floo repaired (call Larry from our old ward at Andy’s suggestion)

- replace our electrical panel

-          Paint mural for Apollo’s  room

-          Paint an accent wall in the living room so it isn’t so brown

-          Build a tufted headboard for our bedroom

-          Build and paint a bed for Sunshine from our old door that we’ll have when we replace the front door with the new one

-          Get new sand for the sand box and build a rain cover for it

-          Build the kids a playground (this is kind of money dependent too, but it would be awesome)

-          Replace rotten fencing in our yard

-          Build raised beds for vegetables and plant fruit trees where we take out our old overgrown rhododendron bushes.

-          Put a green house in so we can grow year round produce

-          Remodel the kitchen (you build the cabinets and we can make concrete countertops- I read about how to build molds for the countertops)        

- Rent concrete truck  and pour new concrete for our walkways and driveway

Yikes- at this pace we might have of these things done before my 90th birthday. Sometimes, both Cameron and I are so focused on trying to create a home that works for our family that we forget to just live and enjoy our time together. I actually asked him if he could build the closet insert for me during the two weeks he has off of work after I have the baby. Yep. I'm nuts. What's wrong with me? We should just have to worry about sniffing sweet baby's breath and playing with the kids, not building things. But I just can't seem to tame the beast that wants to use every free moment to accomplish something- to organize and simplify so I don't feel so overwhelmed by all of the kids and their stuff.


 I sometimes have to remind myself just how far we have come. Here is a video of our house before we moved in. Holy Barf it was ugly!!! It's amazing what a difference new paint, new floors, and removing the popcorn ceilings made, along with a million little things we replaced. We did almost everything ourselves and I was pregnant/had newborn Sunshine during this whole process. (I apologize for the obnoxious gum smacking I do in this video)

Part of me feels like its a form of ingratitude to be so focused on what else we need to do or want rather than living in the moment and remembering to smell the roses and play with the kids and take a day off and actually use a vacation day for vacation. 

Am I just neurotic or does anyone else have this same problem?  How do you remind yourself to live in the moment and appreciate what you have right now instead of fixating on what you want to accomplish?