I find it bizarre what we put up with sometimes.
An example of this is: I have two bookcases. One of them was bought in the last five years, but the other I’ve owned since primary school.
The one that I’ve had since primary school – and I don’t even have a justification for this – has pen on it. That I purposefully put there as a little person. For some reason, as a child, I thought it perfectly normal to write “my name is Sarah” and “hello world” on the bookshelves. An ode to The Saddle Club? A definite possibility.
One shelf also held my sticker collection. A Cinderella sticker here, a “I Sat Still for my X-Ray!” sticker there. (For some reason the X-Ray sticker had a picture of a frog in the background. Not sure how frogs and X-rays go together, but there you go.) The shelf was covered in stickers, which was pretty impressive, I have to say. It obviously brought my young heart joy to show off my collection.
A few months ago, and I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of this before, I got a spray bottle and a cleaning cloth and I scrubbed those stickers off. Most of them were half-ripped off, papery remnants anyway, so it didn’t take much to get them off with the spray.
My bookcase looks so much nicer! Sure, the “hello world” still remains, but attacking the stickers has made a (hello) world of difference.
So why hadn’t I taken fifteen minutes of my time three years ago to clean my bookcase? Why did I put up with the gross sticker-remnants even though I didn’t want them there?
I’m thinking about this because my current quilt cover was made by my mum. The clasps holding the quilt together at the bottom have all fallen off (because I used to like playing with them. Whoops.) and now I wake up and half the blanket has fallen out, leaving me curled up in a thin piece of fabric.
Today I am going to sew on some clasps to prevent this from happening.
Do you want to know how long my quilt has been like this for?
Three years!
Why have I never bothered to spend twenty minutes sewing on some clasps? It just feels so difficult. The thought is so off-putting, even though it won’t even take half an hour. Because it’s not the norm of my every day life it feels ridiculously time consuming and painful to complete.
But how good when you get something like that done?
I should go and actually sew on those clasps. Writing about it hasn’t made me feel any more motivated, but after three years I think it’s time to face it.
Sarah xx
the softest words 