One of the dirty little secrets of home decor blogging is that the spaces not being talked aboutcan beabout completely neglected.
For me, this is especially true during bigger projects. The biggest casualty at our house this year was the front landscaping. We were working on the garage during the time we’d normally weed and re-mulch the front flower bed.
Then it started raining and didn’t stop for weeks. Then it was HOT AND we started work on the office makeover.
Flash forward and we were three days from September and not only had failed to ever add spring color, but we had ignored the landscaping so long it was completely overgrown with grass and weeds. Yikes.
I had no intention of bloggingabout this whenwe set out to clean up the mess. Here is the overly embarrassing before photo.
We got to work pulling everything out that didn’t belong, uncovering our hidden evergreens, and trimming everything back to order.
As I watched the transformation, I had time to think. Which is when I decided there was something to learn from the landscaping mess we let happen.
I hope someone could benefit from the things I realized WITHOUT having an embarrassing front yard followed by a couple of hours of manual labor.
1. Procrastination can mean more work
We could have carved out an hour earlier in the summer and not only had less work, but fewer days driving up to the house beating ourselves up that it looked so bad. Duh, right?
But think about it, this applies to SO many other things. The longer I wait to adopt a healthier lifestyle, the harder it will be.
The longer you wait to leave a job you hate to pursue your dreams, the harder it can be.
You get raises, it becomes harder to replace the income you’ve become used to. Now, I’m not at all saying jump without a plan, just that the longer you wait to implement the plan, the harder it will be.
The longer you wait to start saving for retirement, the harder it will be to meet your goals.
I’m pretty good at procrastination. I never miss deadlines, but I carefully calculate how long I can wait to complete projects and still make the deadline.
This was a bit of an eye-opening example of the work and stress it adds.
2. No matter how long you procrastinate, it’s not too late
We could have continued letting the weeds and grass cover all that was good in the landscaping.
Again, it’s so symbolic for what can happen in life. We get complacent in our health,homes, finances or even relationships. And once we gain some weight,let clutter take over our homes, or start spending more than we are making, it’s SO much easier to ignore the problem.
But you know what? Sometimes the fixdoesn’t take as long as you expect.
Once you acknowledge the problem and that YOU want to change it, solutions are available.
It will probably take some work, but a year from now, you have two options.
You can regret that you never put in the work, or you can be SO happy you put in the work and made the change you wanted.
I had to use that attitude when I was deciding if I should go back to school to finish my Bachelor’s degree. Yes, it was going to take a few years. But the years were going to pass no matter what. And it wasn’t too late!
When I stood back to look at the finished landscaping, I just kept thinking about what a huge mess it was before. Yet, it wasn’t too late.
So much beauty was hidden under the chaos.
3. Have a maintenance plan
In yet another symbolic example, think about the flower bed again.
Weeds WILL pop up. We put safeguards in place to increase our chances of success (hello, mulch), but we have to check our progress and make adjustments to keep the flower bed looking great year round…hmm…just like anything else we are trying to improve.
This applies to everything from our budget (updating it regularly) to my blog posts (scheduling social media and pins).
And that’s what I learned from my flower bed this year.
Nothing earth-shattering, but at the same time, clearly lessons I needed to remember.
Getting back to the ACTUAL house project…
We still have two months until the average first freeze date, so I picked up a few pretty flowers to plant when we went to buy mulch. Not too many since it’s so late, but I couldn’t resist adding some color!
Clearly you shouldn’t be looking to me for landscaping advice, BUT, in case any inquiring minds are wondering about the flowers, here’s the run down.
The taller purple ones are Intenz Celosia, the shorter pink ones are Pentas, and the white are Vincas. Other than those and 5 new bags of Cedar mulch, everything else was existing.
And here’s one more look at the transformation.
What in your life needs a before and after?
