Chaos

While working on our new basement and changing offices into bedrooms, we are living in a daily state of chaos.  At first, only a couple of living spaces were impacted.  Now ALL areas are involved.  There is no place to go as a refuge from the chaos.  This has started me thinking about chaos, what it really means, and how to survive it.

If you look up the meaning of chaos, you will see that it means "any state of confusion or disorder".  It definitely feels like disorder.  As a way to deal with this, we have created a Move In Project Plan on an Excel spreadsheet that is 6 pages long and covers the work that needs to be completed by the end of April's move-in date.  This has been a life saver, because I was  not sleeping well before I developed the Project Plan.  All of the tasks were floating around in my head, and I constantly worried that I would forget something or that we would miss a deadline.  I have found that getting details down on paper is an effective strategy to help me manage chaos.


I have been a good organizer my whole life.  While many people see a chaotic mess and are overwhelmed by the complexity of creating order, I have always enjoyed the challenge and have been able to develop an organizational system that restores order.  It has always been my experience that when tackling the mess, you have to make a bigger mess before you can make progress in organizing.  Therefore, it was no surprise that the chaos had spread into every space in the house due to the enormity of the project.  It just took me awhile to realize that I do well in controlled chaos, and I needed to find a way to create that state.  Now that we have the Move In Project Plan, I keep it updated.  As a result, communication to all participants is working well.  Our state of chaos has changed to controlled chaos.  I can live with that!  Now I can find joy in the steps I see each day as we move to completion.  

Have you found your joy today?