It sounds like I’m talking about a war story, doesn’t it? Nah. I thought I’d tell you about the time that I decided to remodel my kitchen. Seriously. That’s what’s I’m going to tell you about. But I think you’ll be surprised at the outcome. Strap in, kids...you know what this means, right? Time to jump back into the DeLorean and zip back to March, 2010. The moldy, wet air was saturating my nostrils throwing my allergies into high gear. My kids were sick of school and driving me crazy, and we just got a big wad of cash back from the IRS from our tax refund. What better thing to do than to spend a bunch of money on a home improvement project that might just lead to World War III?
We took our chunk of dough, handed it over to the friendly clerk at IKEA, and purchased our entire kitchen in about fifteen minutes. (Of course, my kitchen is only slightly bigger than a shoe box, so that might have had something to do with it…) IKEA has this awesome tool on their website that lets you design your kitchen on your PC and prices everything down to the last screw, complete with a list of every item you need. When you go to their most-awesome store, you simply hand over the itemized list and the very pleasant employee rings it up. Then, Poof! Handy, strong, cute boys wheel out your stuff in the package pickup area in another part of the store.
It’s like magic.
I love the Swedish people. (And, their meatballs aren’t bad either.)
After we hauled our beautiful, sparkly, new, boxed-up kitchen home and haphazardly stacked all the boxes in our tiny dining room, my husband began the process of knocking out the old wood cabinets. We convinced our friend to help by promising him that he would get to smash stuff with a sledgehammer. Frankly, I don’t see the draw. But, boys seems to love destroying things with large swinging objects. (Think Thor. The Incredible Hulk. Etc.)
Suddenly, my kitchen wasn’t really a kitchen anymore. It was a mangled, tiny 8x9 room with damaged walls, messed up paint, exposed plumbing and a lonely stove and fridge shoved against the wall. In the adjacent dining room, the table was hidden under mounds of crap and the chairs were relocated to the basement for the time-being. There were boxes and boxes piled eight feet high.
Once the kitchen had been cleared of the debris, it was time to begin the process of assembling the hundreds of blasted, magic Swedish cabinets. (Uh. I mean, my beautiful, new sparkly cabinets.) And since you know my kitchen is really small, I’m obviously exaggerating about the fact that there were hundreds of them. (Slight use of hyperbole.) When the kids were at school, we began the seemingly never-ending task. We looked at the instructions and tried to decipher the illustrations that showed us how to build the cabinets. The Swedes are genius. They use pictures instead of words to show you how to put stuff together. (Unlike our technologically savvy, politically correct, American society that includes written instructions in six different languages to put together anything requiring "some" assembly.) But, we ran into some slight problems. Why? Because we do the typical adult thing: we over think it.
We cursed and yelled and tried to jam every piece into place with way too much effort. Exasperated, red-faced and foul-mouthed, we decided to take a step back and look at the directions again. After looking at the pictures that even a first grader could understand, we realized the ease of the project and the simplicity of the assembly. At some point or another, we all declared the same statement: “Damn those Swedes!”
WHAT?!?! Why were we damning the genius Swedes?
Because we were jealous. And, we were in awe of their engineering prowess. It was so simple! And yet, there we were, trying to make it difficult. The Swedes should be in charge of all engineering projects, everywhere. (It’s yet another reason to love Alexander Skarsgard – the hunky Swedish Viking-like actor from HBO’s True Blood series. Maybe you don’t know him. That’s okay. More ogling for me.)
Eventually, we finished. The boys installed my magic Swedish cabinets and they looked beautiful. They were white with stainless steel handles and drawers all over the place. The walls were painted a toffee color and a beautiful, slate tile back splash and earthy-gray counter top were installed. I even got a wine rack! (I love wine. It’s one of my three vices. Coffee. Chocolate. Wine. Okay...maybe I have more than three, but those are the three I’m telling you about.) Anyhow, as I was saying, just like that, Poof! I had a gorgeous new kitchen. It was spring. A time for new beginnings...a time for new kitchens.
What I became aware of during this time, was that even though I took apart my kitchen and destroyed it, it was rebuilt and transformed into a beautiful, magical new place. I realized that we can all do that with ourselves. Sometimes, things have to get pretty demolished and ugly to get transformed. Have you ever heard the saying, “It’s going to get worse before it gets better?” That’s what happened to my kitchen. It was a mess. Destroyed. In pieces. And then, we tried to put it all back again, struggled a bit and then realized (thanks to the genius, magic Swedes), that it wasn’t so hard after all.
We have the tendency to make things more difficult than they need to be. Stop making everything so hard. It doesn’t have to be. Even though you might feel like parts of your life is in pieces, remember this: you can put it back together and you can create something new... something better...something beautiful and more wonderful than you could have ever imagined. It’s not as hard as you think it might be. Do it one piece at a time…change can be good. That’s what the season of spring is all about, isn’t it?
It’s time to begin anew.