Thoughts From The Cake Scraps

I am the type of person who loves to do projects. For whatever reason it brings me a lot of joy to have small tasks that I can complete. Sometimes that is something as simple as finally getting around to folding laundry and sometimes it is a bit more involved.

Over the last few weekends I’ve had a chance to do two of those types of projects. Neither of them took more than an hour or so, but they were projects out of the ordinary. That’s the part that made it special; it is the fact that it was something new and different. The first was fairly straightforward. It was washing down the windows from the outside. It was one of those things that was bugging me for a bit. Every time I looked outside there was a thing layer of dirt to see through first. Sometimes it’s easy to look through, and other times the sun catches it just right and it looks terrible.

Well, I went to battle. My weapon of choice was a hose with a nifty window washing attachment. I had never used it before, but it worked wonders. First I hosed down the major chunks of dirt (and there were some pretty gross ones) and then you flick a switch and the suds hits the window. A quick rinse, and you have a beautiful, clean, window.

The second project I took on was a bit more involved. I replaced the deteriorating brick flowerbed edgers with brand new ones! To do that, I had to dig up all the old edgers, or what was left of them, trench out a new path that was actually a semi-circle, and then lay down the new pavers. With a little bit of adjusting and leveling, they went in without a problem. The flower bed looks a lot better and I had fun doing it.

Now, neither of these things are all that exciting. I wasn’t saving the earth, and I wasn’t dropping some interesting new knowledge. What compelled me to write about it was that it was very fulfilling. I think that the fun part for me was doing something with my hands. Creating something. Having a physical product to show for my work (other than a bunch of printouts).

My advice is to not lose sight of these sort of things. Especially in a big city, with little land around, it’s easy to get in a routine where everything is just taken care of for you. Some days, that’s exactly what I want. Yet, there are other times where it feels good to connect with something physical.

So, take a step back from what you’re doing. Go find a project in the physical world. You just might be surprised at how much you enjoy it.

This has been a Thought from the Cake Scraps.