I have come to a level of acceptance

I have accepted that my kids are not going to daycare/camp this summer, I am sure that I could get them in somewhere but honestly it is too much of a hassle and since we stopped contributing to our child care account and can roll over that money it seems to make sense to just let this go.

My school district has announced that they will re-open in the fall, woohoo!  Then they sent home a survey about how comfortable we are with this plan.  I sort of expected this and knew that school wouldn't be a sure thing.  I could decide how I would react to this, I could spend the next month and a half with thoughts of dread, anger, and frustration or I could look for ways to make the best of it while I had time on my side.

The way we have set up the home office and had the kids doing school work for the last 1/3 of the year will not work.  Mr. Padawan has expressed frustration at the clutter in the office (and elsewhere) and it is driving him nuts.  Honestly it is driving me nuts too but not nearly as much as him. However, I am back from helping my parents deal with my Aunts' house and it has given me a sense of renewed de-clutter energy, which is kind of weird since I brought back a lot of stuff with me.

After searching around online I found that for a modest to us investment I can purchase 4 storage cubes (each with 3 slots) that will serve as legs to our low table that the kids use for art and LEGOs. 

Please pardon our mess we need some extra organizational bins!

Raising up this table will increase our storage from one cube as a leg to three cubes per leg.  And we can use the previous legs on top to create some shelf like storage.  This will help contain some clutter and a better surface for extended learning.  This solution will certainly help short term and quite frankly I hope to not need it for at home learning, but if we do at least we will be prepared and I won't need to scramble.

As I have been going through this process I did remember that yes clearing clutter is a happiness boost and guess what we found things we didn't realize we had.  I found two large picture frames that were empty!  They were cluttering up the office, so I ordered two photo collages (Shutterfly always has a sale just wait for them) and I will put them up.  This is a double win, (1) it clears out clutter (2) I get to see some awesome memories hanging on our walls.  We also found two picture frames with pictures in them that were never hung, so I hung them, they were adorable pictures of the little Padawans when we went to Storyland.

While there is so much uncertainty out there I am still working on letting go of control but also looking for things that I can control and will make our lives better because of that control.  This means that yes I am pondering a lot of what if scenarios and some worst-case as well as just not-great-case scenarios.  Rather than dwelling on them I am determining what makes sense for me and the family at large.  What can I do to prepare?  Should I try to prepare?  What is too much and how far ahead should I be thinking?

Based on what I learned over the past few months, I know that I need control and I know that planning too far in advance can be a negative for me.  I so while we are in a relatively calm time it is the ideal time for me to figure some of this stuff out and tackle what I can, focusing on what I can and am able to do vrs what I cannot do.