Week 4 – The Ugly Brown Couch

This week we made some changes to our Cue Cards, one minor change was that we changed the name of one of our cards from our Chore card to our Service card. Now this does not seem like a lot or a big difference BUT when you are trying to change your Blueprint of how your mind works this is a HUGE change.

My view on our Chore/Service Card is to help ‘train’ our mind to connect tasks, no matter how big and small they are, with daily promises to create GOOD Habits. I am to read my Service card out EVERY day, twice a day I think, (I’ve been reading it twice, let’s hope that’s right) to remind our self to complete our task/service. The actual task is irrelevant, right now it is about building Good Habits around completing your ‘promises’ made to yourself.

My task this week was to tidy up our Rumpus Room upstairs. Let me paint you a picture, upstairs we only have our bedrooms and the rumpus room, so it does not get used very often and when people visit us, we always stay downstairs in the living area. So, the rumpus room becomes a dumping ground for things that need to be put away, but I never have the time ‘right now’ to do it. It’s also where all our clean laundry goes ‘to be folded.’ I call this our Python of Clothes.

Before moving into our home, we lived in a very small unit, we didn’t have a lot of furniture and when we moved here, we brought all new furniture because it was our first special family home. We went from a small 2-bedroom home to a HUGE 4+ bedroom home, not ever room had furniture and we were ok with that because we knew it was a process. Any way I am getting to the point just bear with me for a little longer. In our unit we had a dodgy UGLY brown fold out

couch which worked fine and was ok BUT I did NOT want this couch to come with us, but Brendan did. His thinking was ‘we need to have a couch in the rumpus room so let’s put it there until we get one’ For some reason I agreed to this and have regretted it ever since.

I watched the removalists maneuver this heavy, brown ugly couch up or brand-new wooden staircase and was thinking ‘how are we going to get this down!’  Fast forward a month or 2 and we found the PERFECT couch for a good price for our rumpus room!! So now we have the ugly brown couch and our new beautiful couch there, both just being used as a dumping ground for things that we need to put away but are too lazy to put away right at that moment.

Fast forward another 3 years and we get to this week’s tasks of tiding the Rumpus Room! Well I got started with the Python of Clothes that needed to be folded and put away. All while looking at the ugly brown couch and it got the better of me! I called for reinforcements, my dad came over with a sledgehammer, crowbar and saw and we dismantled that couch!!! And by

dismantle, I mean DISTROYED it!! We broke it into pieces so we could get it downstairs and out of my house!! And boy did it feel good!!! The small task of tiding up the rumpus room has made something SO much bigger happen. I have been walking past the ugly brown couch for OVER 3 YEARS saying, ‘we need to do something about THAT couch’ and this week I made it happen! And within an hour of making that decision, the ugly brown couch was out of my house!!!

Now when I read my service card and see this weeks task of ‘Tidy Rumpus Room’ I have the immense feeling of satisfaction of knowing that I have not only completed that task but I have removed the Ugly Brown Couch from our house and lives forever!! It just makes me smile even thinking about it. We have so much more space and it is a joy to walk through now and I’m sure will be used more often as well.

If you have an “Ugly Brown Couch” in your life, get rid of it! Make it happen and remove it from your house and life because it feels good to have it gone and it’s freeing. For the past 3+ years I have been wanting to do it but just never done now and now that it’s gone, I feel at peace and can move on to the next task. So, look out world I’m coming!!