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A 7 Month, 4 Minute and 36 Second Project

November 7, 2012 By Dana White | 11 Comments

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Why do I do these things?

Or not do them.

Last spring (y’know, TWO seasons ago), I had the great idea to spiff up my daughter’s room for her sixth birthday.  I bought some cute stuff I knew she would love.  Stuff that matched her funky-colors doll house she got last Christmas.

Yep.  I’m a mom with fabulous ideas.

But . . . her birthday was in April.  The same weekend as Easter.  And she specifically requested to go to a restaurant that’s three hours away from our house.

We’re not usually the satisfy-a-child’s-every-whim kind of parents, but since it was a long weekend anyway and the restaurant is on the way to my parents’ lakehouse . . . we decided to oblige her crazy request and go.

And our church did an Easter production that I directed.

Which meant I was working on that, running around like crazy woman, right up until the moment we left for the lake.

So that was my excuse for why I bought her another present and didn’t even try to redo the room as a big surprise that weekend. 

Not sure what my excuses were for the other more-than-200 days. 

Probably something about how the stuff was in Hubby’s trunk and how I so rarely look in there.  And how even though I felt intense guilt every time I looked in there, those times never seemed to coincide with a time when her room was actually clean.

So I couldn’t see the point.

Anyway, we worked in her room last weekend and I went out and grabbed her “new” comforter.  She loved it.  Then I showed her the cutesy-as-can-be curtains, and even took one out of its package.

Only to realize that there was no curtain rod in her room anymore.

Which caused me to fear this project was now going to take another seven months to complete. 

But what do you know? I happened upon the curtain rod aisle at Target yesterday.  Imagine my surprise when I saw that the kind we needed only cost a whole $2.47. Even I couldn’t come up with an excuse to not buy it right then and there.

And then today, I actually put it up.

7 months of mommy guilt and 4 minutes and 36 seconds of total effort.

Ugh.

Related Posts:

Read Newer Post Before and After Pictures: Three Minutes Later
Read Older Post Permission to Throw it Away

Filed Under: honesty | 11 Comments

Comments

  1. Erin says

    November 7, 2012 at 11:57 am

    I just LOVE those curtains! We bought my son a Cars (the movie) poster probably eight months ago and it is still rolled up in its original package. How do good intentions and ideas turn into a burden so easily??

    Reply
  2. Jane says

    November 7, 2012 at 12:01 pm

    What is the clothesline looking thing? And what is it used for? And how is it attached? I think that’s all my questions. lol. We had to take all the friends off my daughter’s bed and she’s been making it since they haven’t been replaced (gosh, this story sounds familar….). I mentioned getting a hammock/shelf/etc. for them & she seemed excited about that idea.

    Reply
    • Nony says

      November 7, 2012 at 12:39 pm

      That was the decor LONG ago. It was cute when I had doll clothes hanging from it going all around the room. But . . . she has found ways to climb on various things and get (almost) all the dollclothes down, so it’s really time to remove the whole thing. Maybe in another seven months . . .

      Reply
  3. Kelley G. says

    November 7, 2012 at 3:12 pm

    Yeah, at the end of summer so probably 2 months ago I decided to spiff up the girls room also. My older daughter was five in June and she is more into butterflies and flowers than Tinkerbell. So I found some neat things on clearance and even had a 13 year old girl from Church stay over to help. Did not go as planned ……..so basically I have the stuff and just need to finish!!

    Reply
  4. Victoria says

    November 8, 2012 at 5:07 am

    So been there and done that. I have a lot of those types of projects sitting around the house.

    Reply
  5. Kristin says

    November 8, 2012 at 5:47 am

    So cute! I need to follow suit. My boys share a room and it is need of new blinds and paint, which I promised them would happen before August of 2011.

    Reply
  6. Stacy says

    November 10, 2012 at 10:16 am

    Thanks for reminding me, I bought my daughter curtains that same weekend. Do YOU remember where I put them until I had “time” to actually hang them up?

    Reply
    • Nony says

      November 10, 2012 at 10:17 am

      Hmmmm. Have you looked in your husband’s trunk?

      Reply
  7. Tam says

    April 16, 2014 at 2:54 pm

    Nony, love this! I’m still backreading blog posts, but this reminds me how far we’ve come in our lives (we moms struggle sometimes). I purchased new sheer panels for my livingroom window and almost let them sit and sit. I asked my son to move them after I got home then as he went to grab them, I stopped. Now, I did have an excuse, per se, seeing as how I’d had a stroke just a week before and was resting. But I had been on a reading binge with your blog a day or two before and I said, you know what? Yeah, it’s ten oclock at night and yeah, I”m not supposed to be doing much, but you’re young, tall and able, together we can do this. Let’s put them up now. It took less than five minutes and we tossed the junk that came with them, etc. No guilt, instant joy to have it done!

    Reply
    • Dana White says

      April 17, 2014 at 8:16 am

      Go you! It feels so good to get things like that done! Hope you’re feeling better!

      Reply
  8. Joni Gonzales says

    February 18, 2017 at 11:29 am

    It’s a lazy-for-once Saturday here and I’m not feeling well, and I don’t feel motivated to do even the basics. My house looks pretty good which is actually bad because it means that I feel like I can put off the basic stuff, which I shouldn’t, because then the house goes to you-know-where. But I’m posting this to let you know that I am using your blog as motivation. I just told myself if I go unload the dishwasher and do a five-minute pick up that doesn’t feel like it needs to be done but I know that it does, I can read your blog for another 5 minutes. I’ve been reading backwards and have read three years’ worth over the past 6 weeks. It’s addictive! Sometime, even when you know what to do, it really helps to have motivation that’s not in the form of someone coming over lol

    Reply

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