Letting go of that perfectionism

How was your weekend? 

The cousins playdate we had over the weekend turned out great. We had 20 plus people to our house for an evening of pizza and lots of toys and playtime for the kids. We also celebrated my husband Steve's and his cousin Teresa's early birthday with a cake. We had a house full of people and it was a lot of fun. 

We set up two card tables with folding chairs in the empty living room to create an extra dining and seating area. We placed a train table set and a little gym for the little ones to play in the same room. The toddlers played there while the parents sat by the table and relaxed with coffee. We even turned our three-season porch into a playroom for the older kids, where they played hockey and basketball. Don't worry, we didn't have any furniture in the porch.

There are two things I learned this weekend that I wanted to share with you: 

1) I enjoy having people over even when our house looks a bit like a contraction zone.  
I'd rather bring people into our unfinished mess than not bringing anyone at all just because we're embarrassed about the mess. This is something new to me. I'm slowly learning to embrace our real life messes, because our house will never be perfect!

Our real life mess: a tower of lego boxes and walls with a torn drywall tape as a backdrop

This also corresponds to the attitude I'm taking with life these days: Embrace my imperfect life as is and roll with it. I have tried way too hard to make things perfect in the past, and it was an exhausting pursuit as you can imagine. I'm finally learning to blossom where I am today instead of pursuing some unrealistic expecataions. I'm learning to dance in the rain, and it is liberating. 

2) Our house is meant to support our dreams and help us live our life to its fullest. Not the other way around.  
We've always wanted to entertain people in our house. However, because of my perfectionism and the life with babies and all, it never happened. This was only the second time we've ever had a gathering at our house in the six years of living here. The first time was when I hosted my sister-in-law's bachelorlette party. Unfortunately, I was too pregnant to remember anything from that event. 

I was often annoyed at our house because it's big and takes a long time to clean up the entire place. Sometimes it felt as if I was the servant to the house, cleaning, maintaining, and fluffing it every day. Our house finally served its purpose this weekend and it feels great. All I had to do is letting go of that perfectionism I had and let the house do its job. The house wasn't keeping me from achieving my dream. I was keeping myself from doing it. 

I don't feel shy about bringing people in our unfinished and imperfect house anymore.

Did you try anything new lately that helps you see things in a different way?