Perfectionism vs. Happiness

Sometimes I get impatient with how much we need to wait for what in my mind are “very much needed” restorations in our home. As a self-recognized perfectionist and hard-worker who seeks immediate results and gratification, Old Beekman has been, other than my marriage and raising my children, my biggest teacher in patience and mindfulness. I gently remind myself to breathe in, breathe out and be grateful and thankful for all that we have accomplished these past years (vs longing for what is still “left to do”).

Today is a particularly impatient day, so my mindfulness is looking back to my 20-year-old self, and recalling I never allowed myself to just be happy. I was always one perfection away from being happy in the moment (my weight, that A I didn’t get in Physics, …). And, however small or petty those reasons not to be happy were, they were there. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s, had my children, stopped working (thus halving our household income), and took a breath in the middle of a regular chaotic Tuesday with one toddler and a newborn, that I recalled something my parents have always said: “enjoy every moment. It goes by too quickly”. For me, that meant letting go of my perfectionism so I could enjoy life each day.

One of the most challenging aspects of this exercise for me, was letting go of the idea my house had to be white-glove-inspection-visitor-ready at all times. I could choose to be happy at each moment, even though not all things were perfect at all times.

That is when it clicked that what I had been teaching and executing at huge companies during my professional career, principles of Process Improvement, had a real value at the home front too. To start, I applied a principle called Kaizen. Instead of stunting myself with the overwhelming idea of “all of it”, I implemented a series of small improvements in my home, one at a time. And for that, I definitely had to let go of doing things “the way they were always done”.

I knew I had too much on my plate, so I came  up with organization systems and structures in our home and each person that lived there (with their input of what would make that system sustainable), instead of being the person in charge of organizing every thing. My kids became in charge of their toys, with the power to play, make a mess, and put things away their own way under the system we had come up with. We had a system for laundry. We had a system for garage maintenance, kitchen maintenance, etc. The more systemic self-sustaining small improvements I made, the more I started  having “down” time. And I was quick to prioritize what this new-found time would be for – the reason why I became a stay-at-home mom: my kids. Playing with my kids, sitting down and reading a book with them, having a full singing and band show with them. We did everything! The more time I had with them, the more I craved that time.

There was still one major time-consuming area left: cleaning the house. Through the years, I had already optimized this as much as I could. My kids have been helping me with home chores, organizing and cleaning since they were babies. That was just something we always did together as we taught them the importance of caring for the things we worked hard to own. Together, we did surface cleaning, vacuuming a space, or doing a “power pick up” of a space. However, the deep cleaning of our home was something that was still taking me away from our family life way too often and for way too many hours a week.

A clean house has always been a priority for me. Not only because Matt suffers from allergies, or because we had babies scooting through our floors. It’s something mine, and that I have always prioritized. Even when I lived alone, or even in my college dorm room (I was voted “cleanest room” in my freshman year dorm.  Seriously.) It was time to let go of yet another one of my ideas of perfectionism: hiring a cleaning service that would alleviate me of having to do the deep cleaning of our home. Until then, I had always insisted in doing all of our home cleaning myself. I understand a cleaning service is not accessible to everyone — and I don’t take that for granted. It wasn’t accessible to us for several years of our lives either. As a matter of fact, when we decided to commit to hiring this service, we had to re-shuffle our tight budget to accommodate a bi-weekly cleaning service.  Was the cleaning exactly how I would have done it? No, it wasn’t. But whenever I thought of something I would have done differently, I also reminded myself to express my gratefulness to  have those extra 8-10 man-hours to spend with my children and my husband.

Today, I am grateful that I can look back and breathe through a difficult day, where I am having to mindfully choose to be happy, even though our to do list is far from finished. I am so happy I CAN be happy today.