Happiness is a Freshly Made Bed

photo from decorpad.com via Pinterest

I once read a list of things that all "happy" people have in common - it might have been one of those annoying "Top 10 Things Happy People Do" or "How to Be Happy" articles in Cosmo or Better Homes and Gardens - and one of the items has stayed with me every day since.  It was so easy, it was comical. I think I even snorted in derision as I read it:

Make your bed.

"Make your bed," I imagine myself saying at the time.  I probably even put the magazine down and took a good gander at my bedroom, strewn with with children's toys and dirty clothes and likely a few spit-up stains on the comforter and pillow cases.  I might have even kicked the magazine aside and thought, "Right.  Like that will change my life."


But you know what?  I took a leap of faith - maybe not that day or the next or even the next week - and when I thought of that idea again, I simply pulled the top comforter up the the headboard and fluffed the pillows a little.  "Done," I said to myself.  Satisfied, I walked out of the room. 


And then I did it again, the next day.  Then the next. And so on.  Only, it made me start clearing a path from the bed to the closet, from the closet to the bathroom, to the staircase, down the stairs, through the living room, and into my life. 


I cleared shit out.  We moved.  I didn't take that old baggage with us.


And every day, I begin again, with a freshly made bed.