Good Enough

 I was getting my dose of daily news while reading The Skim the other morning and I stumbled upon a link towards the end, which promised really cool organization items. Seeing as how my heart has been aching over the state of affairs our world is in, this simplicity girl couldn’t wait to dive in and see what new doo-dads might be able to give me a bit of a lift. Though I often cite the pitfalls of retail therapy, I cannot deny that some online Covid shopping has given me a bit of a pep here and there. So of course, I clicked on the link and had to check out these new gadgets.

    One of the things that caught my attention was this nifty lid organizer. Oh yay! Look how nice and neat all the lids look, stacked together by size, color, and shape. I got super excited. Then I saw the price tag, $12.99, which isn’t an exorbitant amount, but when you throw in shipping and tax, that’s a 20 dollar bill. I went upstairs to my container/lid drawer, which looks like this.

     Not too shabby if you ask me, though that’s probably because I put the lids away and not the kids or the hubby. But needless to say, most days my lids are neat and organized by size, color, and shape. Do I really need to spend $20 for this contraption? It seems like I’m doing fine without it. My green, re-purposed Dollar Store bin I’m currently using is good enough. 

     In my first post ever, I spoke about using what you have on hand, and that not everything needs to be Pottery Barn or Container Store-grade organization. It certainly is nice to have things be aesthetically pleasing, but most of the time, what we have is just fine. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty damn good.

     Which leads me to life in general and of course, “inside organization.” Most of the time, we are pretty damn good people doing pretty damn good things. Yet we hold ourselves and/or the people we love to such high standards, and often aim for perfection. We want to look perfectly, act perfectly, post perfectly, and we want to have perfect kids with perfect grades who participate in perfect extra curricular activities. I’ll admit that I am guilty of this at times, but I am really learning to have compassion for myself and for others. When we let go, breathe a little and say, “Hey, this is good enough,” life is much calmer, pleasant, and fluid. Stress takes a back seat to joy, and not only do we like ourselves better, but those around us like us better too.

     While I’m not advocating a life of complete mediocrity here, I just think we need to be aware of the ways we can let loose and let go of the things that aren’t super important, and save the perfectionism for the things that really matter. Accepting that some things can simply be good enough frees up more time and energy than you’d think.

     So when the kids and hubby put away the lids and they aren’t in size, color, and shape order, can I let go of that? Grrrr, I’m working on it. But you know what? It means they’ve emptied the dishwasher and dish rack and I didn’t have to. More time for me! And you know what? That’s good enough.