Present in the Pantry

“When you are fully present and engaged with what you are doing, whatever you are doing becomes a source of enjoyment and celebration. You have only to allow it to be so.” - HS

I set the timer on my phone for thirty minutes, shoved it into the back pocket of my jeans, and surveyed the task before me. The basement safe room/pantry was filled with five tall sets of shelves packed with boxes, bags, cans, bottles, plastic utensils, paper cups and plates, out of use kitchen equipment, children’s chairs (What are those doing in here?) stacks of cardboard boxes that I was hesitant to look in, plastic bins of baking pans and cake decorating supplies, toilet paper, paper towels, tissues and more.  Unfortunately, I was pretty sure that the more included various forms of leggy insects, creeping about underneath. 
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OK, I thought, nevermind the bugs, thirty minutes. That’s all I have to do. Focus Holly. 

I narrowed my visual field and chose one set of shelves, telling myself that was all I needed to tackle today. I could organize one set of shelves in that time, right?

Thirty minutes later my phone played a happy, if somewhat muffled jingle from the back pocket of my jeans and I looked up to realize I had accomplished more than I set out to do. One whole wall of the pantry was neatly organized. I had a pile of recycling outside the door and a bag of trash. The children’s chairs sat in the next room awaiting their new home. Paper goods sat primly in their own corner of the space. Plastic containers, out of season kitchen equipment, disinfectants and cleaners occupied another set of shelves. Serving dishes and items for entertaining took up still another, ready for the next party. The time had whisked by and I was pleased with how much more open the pantry felt. I almost didn’t want to stop there, but I knew that if I left the job feeling that way, it would be much easier for me to pick it up again the next day. 

Within a few days, the pantry was reorganized and I'd enjoyed the whole process, celebrating the product of my efforts. And that’s the secret, enjoying the process as well as the product.

But what could possibly have been enjoyable about organizing the basement pantry? I mean really, it’s the basement. The concrete floor and walls are cold. There might be spiders, or worse, those thousand-legged crawly things that jump out at you when you move stuff off the basement floor. Shiver. How is that a good time?

Well, let’s take another look at what actually happened.

First, I set a timer. I limited the amount of time I would have to spend on that particular job, on that particular day. This allowed me to quiet the voice in my head that whined about what a big job this was and kept asking me if I wouldn’t rather be reading that good book I started last night.

Limiting the time also encouraged me to focus my attention. I had to narrow my field of vision. No falling down the rabbit hole of figuring out where those children’s chairs or anything else that didn't belong were going to end up. Just pick them up and move them out of the pantry so I could reach the set of shelves I was working on.

As I focused my attention, I got fully present with what I was doing, and that is the key to enjoyment. I had all my attention centered in the process. I knew I wouldn’t finish the pantry that day.  I wasn’t rushing or thinking about the future product of my efforts. I was attending to what I was doing in each present moment, flowing from one into the next, and that was really enjoyable. In fact, I’m looking forward to my next reorganization project. 

Also, not a spider in sight, and the crawlees kept to themselves. 😉

Photo by Ehud Neuhaus on Unsplash