We had a date day yesterday. Breakfast in bed. Walk with Beaumont and then…We were on a mission (or I guess I should say, I was on a mission and C.C. decided he’d better join in if he wanted marital harmony to prevail!).

Since moving into our new home in March of this year, our bedroom has waited for us to focus on making it more livable and aesthetically pleasing. There were wicker baskets with books, a desk piled with papers and other knickknacks sitting in a box in the corner.

It was not a pleasing space. And I like pleasing spaces.

C.C. and I are challenged sometimes on what we think makes sense in a space. We go back and forth until I finally get to a place where “I can’t take it anymore. We’ve got to do something.”

Yesterday, that ‘do something’ included a trip to Ikea. An hour later, three boxes of wood and parts loaded into the back of my vehicle and we were set to tackle getting books and ‘stuff’ out of boxes and off the floor.

I have long thought that putting Ikea furniture together is also a relationship building test. Can you or can’t you get all the pieces in the right places and not have an argument? What happens when one person doesn’t intuitively know right from left and puts the left piece on the right? Will the other partner lose their cool? Will one person say not so nice things when the other drops a shelf on their foot or will they realize it was an accident and forgive easily?

Fortunately, C.C. and I passed the test with nary an awkward moment or unfortunate word!

After a few missteps with the first of three bookcases we bought, the other two went together lickety-split.

In total, the whole building process took 2.5 hours.

The decluttering and organizing and putting away… many more.

But by 8pm, I was done.

And now, I feel much better.

I think that’s the thing about getting a job done that’s been staring you in the face for awhile. Once it’s over you wonder why you didn’t do it sooner. Because in the aftermath of completion, the satisfaction of having done something that has been causing fissures of unease for awhile, is significant. And with ‘a job well done’, there’s more peace of mind. Or as C.C. likes to say, “More time for Louise to think up other chores for us to do!”  🙂

Not really… but… we do have to do something with the TV room downstairs. And then… there’s my studio. We’re still waiting for our contractor to have time to come back and begin the build-out process.

Oh, and there’s the garage.

We got a job done this weekend that was waiting for us to complete.

It’s one of several jobs that needed doing around our home, but at least this one’s off the list. We also got the eaves-troughs cleaned out of all the autumn leaves – we didn’t do that one ourselves but C.C. did organize for Darwin, our handyman, to come and get it done!  Another task checked off the list.

Now to figure out a way to convince C.C. it’s time to tackle the rest of the list.

Wish me luck.

While working together on getting tasks done doesn’t test our relationship, my desire to ‘get it done now’ sometimes collides with C.C.’s desire to take his time getting things done. For some reason my suggestion he’s procrastinating and putting it off until tomorrow doesn’t create harmony in our relationship. Go figure!