Organizing Scraps.
I am currently a full time student, husband and newly-minted father. This means that my garage tends to be forgotten about and cluttered during the semester, which is perfect for future “school-break-me” to clean on what is supposed to be fun time. Woohoo!
It’s not as bad as I make it seem though. We are a young couple living in our first home, we don’t have that much crap. It consists of outdoor recreation equipment, miscellaneous home repair parts & paints, one box for holiday decorations, a few cleaning supplies, our hoard of toilet paper, miscellaneous car parts, tools and of course scrap materials.
Being just a hobby builder of many random things, my tools are limited to mainly wood and some mild steel. With that said, I was finishing my van build and coffee table as the school semester started which means the scrap pile got out of control and I didn’t have time to clean up. Until summer that is. As daunting as it was at first, after I put on something to listen to and lifted our very tiny garage door it was in an odd way meditative.
MINDFULNESS🧐
A very trendy word, but the best way to describe my cleaning party. I’ve listened to several mindfulness apps and follow alongs, none consistently, and listened to the “let your thoughts move through from one ear to the other” hoopla to try being more mindful. Still testing what works for me. But anyways, organizing and creating space for my large scrap pile seemed to me to be the physical form of mindfulness. And the garage was my brain.
I moved big, small, round and square pieces around not looking to do anything with them; only to move them. Only to let them land where they most naturally, and most space efficiently, belong. I picked up odd pieces and reflected the process that made it an off-cut in that shape, if I did a good job that time, and if there was room for improvement I took a mental note. I wasn’t over analyzing my past work, just appreciating what I’ve done.
Often times I feel that I don’t do enough creating, though when I was cleaning up that scrap pile I realized that I do. I do create with the time and resources I currently have. The problem is I sometimes compare my work to others. I see posts on Instagram of people who are constantly making cool stuff and videos of YouTubers documenting entire build processes almost weekly. The difference is everything though; they might be done with school and have much more time to spend on projects outside of work. They may only be part time students, taking 2-3 classes per semester at a leisurely pace. They might actually be making a living off of their documenting their awesome projects, which means creating and getting others inspired to create (like myself) is where their time HAS TO go to earn a living.
A breakthrough! Finally allowing myself to be happy with work I’ve done! Recognizing that my creative efforts aren’t any less than other’s, I’m just on a different schedule that works for my life. This mindfulness experience was a gift from organizing the scraps in my garage.
Which was oddly enough, the perfect analogy for the mental clutter.
