Beautiful Motivation

I walked into Trader Joe’s the other day, and this bouquet of gerbera daisies looked up at me and begged me to buy them. I love fresh flowers. LOVE them. My favorites are tulips and gerbera daisies. They’re so simple, but gorgeous at the same time. Unfortunately, I’m way too frugal to spend money on them, usually. I had a colleague once tell me that she always left room in her budget for fresh flowers. I wanted to be like her. But I ended up like me. Frugal and flowerless.

But not this week. This week I plopped down the $5 for these gorgeous red daisies, and I don’t regret it one bit. We’ve been so busy the past few weeks (months, actually) that the house has gotten deeper and deeper into disarray. Organizing my desk in the office was one of the last “to do’s” from the move, so my office stuff had spilled over into the dining room, which resulted in lots of things being displaced and shuffled and generally disorganized. And then there were the kids’ neverending piles of artwork and half-written stories. The kitchen/dining area, which is the busiest area in the house, had gotten totally out of hand.

Then this vase of bright, cheerful flowers entered the room. And you can’t have such a lovely centerpiece in the middle of a cluttered table. So the table got cleared. Then the drawer I’d been stuffing papers and receipts into for the past three months got cleared. Then the office got tackled, my desk got organized, the kitchen counters decluttered, and (this is the big one) I even dusted.

I hate dusting.

But I didn’t hate it when I looked at these flowers. How can you hate anything when you’re looking at something so beautiful? And it didn’t really take me that long. Normally, the clutter and chaos would bother me, but I’d tell myself I had x, y, and z to do that were more important. But really, x, y, and z get done a lot quicker and with more of my sanity in tact when I do x, y, z in a clean, organized area. But for some reason, that knowledge isn’t enough of an incentive to actually do the cleaning and organizing first.

But then came these flowers. I was surprised at how thoroughly and happily I cleaned, and it’s all because I wanted to have a perfect backdrop for my perfect flowers. Such a small inspiration, but such a big payoff. Apparently, I’m motivated by beauty. (Mental note made.)

Perhaps I should buy flowers every week. It’s a heck of a lot cheaper than hiring a housekeeper. 🙂

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Annie writes about life, motherhood, world issues, beautiful places, and anything else that tickles her brain. On good days, she enjoys juggling life with her husband and homeschooling her children. On bad days, she binges on chocolate chips and dreams of traveling the world alone.

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