Being Patient

A few weeks ago when I was home in Virginia, I had a grandiose plan to help my mom organize her basement.

A week before Thanksgiving I called and was chatting about our plan for the weekend.  She said that she really didn't want to do that...they had company coming for the football game later in the day and it would just  make a mess.   I reminded her the visitors would not be perusing the basement (that is, unless they needed 17 dining room chairs, which they could find down there!).  She still pushed back that she really didn't want to tackle it at this time.

I tweeted about my dilemma and Deb Lee, one of our professional organizer friends ( @dallisonlee ) wrote back to me.  Her advice really resonated with me:

So, over Thanksgiving, I let mom know that I would help when she wanted it and I wanted her to know I was available to assist her with this monstrous task when she was ready.

This was a very big lesson for me on patience and I also learned that organization is more of a personal process than a one-size-fits-all solution.

Although, someday, I hope to update you guys on a clean and chair-free basement :)