Perfection and Strep Throat: Both Highly Overrated

I came down with Strep Throat last week, caught from my daughter who must have rubbed shoulders at school with another coughing, oozing three year old. They've had as many illness outbreaks at her Pre-k as their are weeks so far into this school year. And all the parents said "Amen!" and then doused their screens in holy water.

The forced slowing down brought on by illness is dreadful, but it's also the only time I ever do slow down these days; take a break from all the striving. Why does the striving feel so compulsory? I think it's that I'm after the "p" word again, or at least getting as near to it as I can (which, my therapist tells me, is the exact definition in fact of perfectionism).

open concept kitchen with natural wood barstools, interesting open shelf styling, and beautiful blue cabinet color

Do you ever find yourself feeling depressed about your home after scrolling Pinterest-perfect rooms or coming back from a vacation?

Me too. All the freaking time.

Those images and memories are novel, exciting, and curated. They’re beautiful. Perfection is beautiful, but perfection is also fragile… one screaming kid or messy kitchen or broken expensive bowl or napped on snacked on sofa ruins it…but beauty is resilient. And unlike perfection that requires constant scurrying, beauty comes up through the cracks we didn't have time to repair.

Perfection is something you scan to double check. Beauty catches you off guard.

Perfection is the decorating police coming to tell you all the ways your home is “wrong.” Beauty is all the ways your home is uniquely you, and like no other home that’s ever existed in time and space.

Perfection is setting the bar at Studio McGee or Joanna Gaines. Beauty is using the resources at your disposal to start your own trend.

One of the first questions I ask people about the room they want to work on is what they love about it. Sometimes they’ll laugh and say “nothing,” but after a second to think, they’ll say “I like that it’s quiet and away from my kids,” or “I love the view out the window,” or “I really love this piece of art my grandmother painted for me.” There is already beauty lurking everywhere in your home. You know how I know that? Because you live there…

You are divine energy wrapped in a skin suit, and cultivating the world around you is part of what you were made to do. You don’t have to change a single thing about your home, and it’s still magic because you live, and play with your dog, and offer to make dinner for sick friends there…you are what makes your home magic.

My goal for my home is beauty, not perfection. I am an imperfectionist. And I’m proud to be one. What’s your goal for your home? I can’t wait to hear your thoughts in the comments!