Dealing With Chaos

            Currently, I am marooned in the family room of my parents’ house writing this post, because my mom is re-grouting the kitchen tile and the house is deconstructed. The large black wooden island blocks the hallway to the kitchen from the front door and the kitchen table, chairs, and bench are renting space in the family room. Likewise the hallway cabinet, secretary, and rugs are clogging the living room. For the past two days, the saw* for the grout incessantly buzzed and could be heard standing just outside the house. Today the new grout was started meaning that if I wanted to leave the family room, I would have exit by the door to the deck and walk outside the house and come in the front door to go upstairs. Despite the apparently chaotic state of the house, the project has gone rather well. Admittedly, I say this as an observer to the project and not as my mom who has had to deal with strained muscles and residual vibrating fingers. She has worked non-stop for three days, while still planning to do more tonight and work all day tomorrow.  Withstanding numerous setbacks, my mom has done remarkable, even though she has never re-grouted floor before.

            I don’t know how she keeps her resolve, but I can speak to how I, personally, have managed trying to navigate and live despite undeniable disorder. Sometimes disorder is a necessary part in our lives. Whether its re-grouting the central connecting room of the downstairs, in this case the kitchen, transitioning from home living to college life and back again, to finally being independent,** we need to be able to handle chaos healthily. Previously, my strategy was to pretend that it wasn’t there. I knew it was, but I thought that if I didn’t acknowledge it, like an annoying Youtube ad it would go away after a certain amount of time, and I could move on. However, many, many people can testify to the fact that that particular method doesn’t work. It definitely doesn’t with big ones, which I generally understood if not always practiced, and not with small ones either.

            This temporary undesirable arrangement of my parents’ house is indeed temporary, but nevertheless it does make it more difficult to navigate. Any transition period, like summer living back to college, can be difficult whether you are looking forward to it with compounded anticipation or dreading it entirely. There are 3 steps to dealing with chaos and stress. Frist recognize that this is stress, secondly, breathe, and thirdly attempt to distract the mind from stress. It is important to note that just one of these will not work, just deep breathing won’t accomplish anything if without acknowledging the stress and vice versa.

            So with the downstairs, I acknowledged that the downstairs felt out of place took a deep breath and then moved on to writing my paper. With more stressful things, it takes me more time to calm down, but the essential steps are the same. Hopefully, these simple tips will work for you, potential readers. Let me know how it goes.

*tool removing scraping thing

**Am still working on that one