fighting discontentment

by Amy | Jul 2, 2019 | Mom on the Fringe, struggle

Am I the only one who struggles to feel peace and contentment in my own home?

Please tell me I am, because I don’t want anyone else to go through this struggle — at least not alone.

I wish I could say that this feeling of restlessness and discontentment began when we returned from our 6-week vacation in Europe. After all, it’s normal to feel slightly edgy and uncomfortable after being away from our space for a while, but then, once you’ve settled in, you feel happy to be back, right? Or not?

One could also chalk up this feeling to having to be responsible again. After all, when you’re living in an Airbnb, it’s not YOUR house that needs to be cleaned and cared for, so it’s different than being in your own home where things have to be done. If the chores don’t get done in a vacation home, it’s not the end of the world, because, well, it’s vacation! Who cares?! But when you’re home, the chores have to be done and things have to eventually feel good so you can be at your best and be able to relax in your environment. At least that’s my take.

But I believe there’s more to it than that.

To be honest, I’ve felt this way off and on since my second son was born in 2012. With my first child, I felt like I had a pretty good handle on the house and all the things that needed to be done around it. I wasn’t necessarily “on top of things,” but I was keeping it under control and felt pretty happy about the state of things around me. But quite literally, as soon as I had a second child, it was as if I had absolutely NO control over how the house looked or felt anymore. I had no time to keep it up and nothing ever seemed to get done.

As of 2019, we now have 3 children who are 10, 8 and 5. We are no longer in the baby phase of putting things up high and random swings and jumpers in the living room. We no longer need to have boxes of toys throughout the house or childproofed cabinets (actually, we never did the childproofing thing except for our outlets). But, somehow, my house still feels chaotic and unsettling to me, and I need to figure out why.

One major challenge we’ve had is that we’ve basically been living off of one income over the past 10 years, which has meant that we haven’t had the money to update the flooring or the kitchen counters or hire a landscaper to help us with our huge backyard. All the responsibility and DIY-ability has fallen on my husband and me, and we have underestimated, in many ways, our lack of time and resources to do those projects alone. While we’ve accomplished a lot, there’s still a huge to-do list that always looms in the back of our minds and feels like it weighs us down and keeps us from being able to be as mobile and free to do things as we would like to be.

While we were in Europe, however, the kids and I were staying in a one bedroom apartment a little outside the city center of Vienna. We had only our suitcases with clothes and backpacks with other necessities to get us by for the few weeks we were there. Other than those necessities, we didn’t have much space to store anything other than what we absolutely needed. Our space was so tight and limited that as soon as the kids forgot to put their shoes inside the shoe cabinet or I didn’t put away the dishes right after breakfast, the house started to feel unlivable and untidy, and it was obvious that we couldn’t move on to things we needed to do until that was taken care of. The good thing was, taking care of it was an easy and quick fix!

What I loved most about this was that those simple things like putting the shoes away or straightening up the towels in the bathroom or getting the dishes cleared away made all the difference in the way we felt in our surroundings and how I felt about the day ahead. I wasn’t bogged down with the feeling of, “I need to clean this place up before we can go anywhere,” because there wasn’t much to clean up.

At one point during our trip, I asked the kids if they missed any of our items we had left back home, and do you know what their answer was? Each and every one of my kids said they couldn’t think of anything they had left behind that they really missed — except for our dog! That’s right, Folks! They couldn’t think of ANYTHING! Not one thing!

Do you know what that means to me? All those years of me spending entire days going through their things and organizing their toys and books and memorabilia was just a big fat waste of time! You know why? Because none of it matters. You know what would have mattered MORE than me spending my time doing that? Yep, you guessed it…spending time WITH them! Or at the very least, spending time writing or singing or making art.

So, here I am…back home in the States in our spacious home in the suburbs of Austin, Texas. And do you know what I feel with all this stuff? Not only do I feel completely discontent, but I also feel completely overwhelmed. It plagues my mind…that idea of where it all should go and how I should organize it. I have this fantasy about someone coming in and just taking it all away so I don’t have to deal with it all, which may sound extreme, but I feel a little extreme right now. I’ve read Marie Kondo as well as other books and blogs on the topic of home organization and have worked long and hard both alone and with a good friend on trying to incorporate organizational strategies and ideas into my home. I’ve also seen my parents literally become buried alive in stuff that they are too overwhelmed to actually deal with, and have participated in a handful of rescue missions to try and absolve them of the task of dealing with it alone — all to little or no avail, might I add.

So you could say that this concept of living minimally runs deep. I absolutely LOVE stuff. Who doesn’t? And no, I’m not a big shopper who goes out to buy something every chance I get, but I do love walking into a room that is carefully and tastefully decorated to suit the people who live there. I love finding fun things to hang or display. I love it when my children bring home artwork and we try to find a nice place for it. I love having space to work and space to cook and space for my kids to roam freely. But do you know what I love more? I love freedom. I love the concept of never having to go through another drawer or closet or entire bedroom or garage again, because I don’t accumulate enough to have to do that. I love the idea of not being tied down to a home with a huge backyard to maintain so that I can travel and see the world and spend the time I want to spend with my family instead of lamenting about how chaotic my home feels.

I guess my question I asked at the beginning of this blog is still this: Am I the only one who struggles to feel peace and contentment in my own home? I used to think it was just my lack of organizational ability or I came by this defective gene of not being able to adequately organize my things or create *gemütlichkeit in my own home naturally. But now I whole-heartedly believe that it’s lifestyle related. I think I’m the type of person who just doesn’t do well with large spaces to organize, and no matter how much I might try to refute that and make lifestyle choices that suggest otherwise, I am happier with fewer things and more experiences.

What about you? Do you feel comfortable in your own space? What ideas or concepts have you discovered that make you feel this way? What areas in your life do you think you need to change in order for the space around you to feel comfortable and peaceful?

I’d love to hear from you!

*Gemütlichkeit (German pronunciation: [ɡəˈmyːtlɪçkaɪt] is a German word used to convey the idea of a state or feeling of warmth, friendliness, and good cheer. Other qualities encompassed by the term include coziness, peace of mind, and a sense of belonging and well-being.