" I'll do it tomorrow..."

There is 1,440 minutes, 96 quarters of an hour, 48 half an hours and 24 hours in every day, plenty of time to get things done? If you're like me, I still say..."I'll do it tomorrow."

The kids and I took down the Christmas decorations right after New Year's. We didn't decorate to the extreme we usually do-trying to incorporate the word simplify into reality-but there were several boxes, and the tree needing to be put away.

We have a good-sized storage room in our basement.It has shelves, hooks to hang things on and an attached room with a door to keep canned and bottled foods cool.
It was disorganized after the holidays. Scattered boxes of craft and sewing items,clothes to give away, more Christmas decorations,ribbons, bows and wrapping paper. There were boxes of cereal, canned food and paper products still inside grocery bags.

It took a full afternoon to discard, reorganize, pack, and clean, until every decoration was put in a box and the main rooms in the house were returned to normal.

After finishing the upstairs, I was too tired to face cleaning the floor in the storage room or make a pathway to be able to put things away. When my children brought the boxes downstairs, I told them to leave them in the hallway, stacked. I told myself I would finish the next day.

Yesterday was January 20th, and last night I finally cleaned up the mess on the storage room floor—which had grown—and put the boxes piled up in the hall inside, where they needed to go.

For eighteen days straight, cleaning that storage room mess, nagged at me. Several times I said "today" is the day I'll clean it up. I kept making excuses.

Last night I decided I wasn't going to put it off one minute longer. I was finished in less than an hour. The job wasn't nearly as bad as I had built, up in my mind. In reality it took far less time, than all the energy, worry, dread, and procrastination I dealt with for more than two weeks.

When I finished, I felt elated—the stress over it disappeared, the room was clean, and I was done. I asked myself, why in the world did I wait so long?

How many things are you avoiding or putting off in your life?

That phone call you've been meaning to make?
That apology you know you should give?
That borrowed item you haven't returned?
That date with your spouse you're avoiding?
That forgiveness you need to accept?
That letter you were supposed to write?
That outing you promised your child?