Notes from the Trail

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Sunday night was the last night of freedom for the kids before school started. We had a dual-purpose family meeting in the living room. One of the purposes was to spend time in prayer with the kids, commissioning them, so to speak, to be representatives of their Lord, our church and our family at school this year. It was a powerful and special moment for us.

The other purpose of the meeting, admittedly, was created by me without knowledge of wifey. It was the announcement of the Clutter-Free Campaign. It was met by three pairs of pupils that could have won a gold medal in synchonized eye-rolling. I was not discouraged or deterred.

As our kids have grown, an unfortunate genetic trait has been passed down to them from wifey. It’s the Clutter Gene. Additionally, it seems to be contagious, for I too am guily of clutter. The Noble household is a hectic, non-stop adventure with few established routines and many interruptions, guests, and spontaneous happenings. You just never know what happens around here from day to day. And we thrive in it. A few of our friends seem be a little overwhelmed by our busy-ness and joyful embrace of life’s chaos. Others get sucked up into it.

However, the problem is that our family life produces clutter. I defined clutter Sunday night for them as “piles of crap lying around in wrong places.” Pretty ignominous. But an effective definition.

What happens around here is that in our comings-and-goings, whatever is in our hands as we walk around the house inevitably is put down in certain hot spots and left there. It’s like the unfortunate back round dumping ground. Once someone throws out an old sofa, everyone else assumes, “Hey, we can use that place to dump our junk!” And clutter-piling begins. So it is for the Nobles.

After the CFC announcement, I took the family on a tour of the house to point out clutter zones so they would understand what I was talking about. Adelyn made sarcastic remarks the whole way. Sam just kept shaking his head with a bemused look. Wifey had this look of “you’re-a-complete-idiot” the whole tour but kept a good attitude.

After pointing out dozens of clutter spots, I said, “OK, here’s the goal: Clutter-Free in 30 Days. If we all deal with a clutter spot every day or so, we’ll be a CFZ (clutter-free zone) before we know it.”

I then documented our clutter spots (some of them - the bathroom cabinet is off-limits) in photos as an everlasting reminder of how things were at the beginning of the CFC.

I think part of the campaign’s genesis was a thought-remnant from reading David Allen’s Getting Things Done (reviewed here). In it, he advocates limiting your “collection buckets.” For us, any horizontal surface has become not just a collection bucket but a clutter pile. All in all, it was a pretty good beginning, I thought. Caro cleaned off her desk Monday, and I de-cluttered my dresser also.

While I doubt the variety and speed of life will change much, perhaps the piles of accumulation will. If you’d like to join the CFC, leave a comment, and maybe someone will make us some t-shirts…

What a full day we had yesterday! The Noble family rose at the crack of dawn to head to Little Rock in different directions. Carolyn and Adelyn rode with some friends to LR so that Adelyn could try out for the Nutcracker - her second year. Much to the Monticello’s crew delight, all the girls that tried out from Monticello made it!

Sam and I left early as well - after cleaning up the kitchen from having friends over to dinner Friday night. We went to mom and dad’s house for a fantastic brunch with my visiting uncle from Minnesota. We spent the day with family, laughing, playing chickenfoot, and enjoying the weather. Anything sub-90 in Arkansas during the summer is like early winter.

After Carolyn and Adelyn returned from the tryouts, we went out into mom and dad’s backyard. While it’s beautifully landscaped, it can pretty much fit into a thimble. It’s small. But that didn’t stop us from finding a baby toad and a box turtle. We felt like regular Dr. Doolittles.

While Sam was intrigued, Adelyn was positively radiant. Animals share a special place in her heart. Of course, that didn’t stop her from racing inside to wash her hands in disgust after the toad peed on her.

We loaded back into the Sequoia (still with For Sale window chalk all over it), and raced back to Monticello for Journey’s Back to School Pool Bash and Birthday Party. David and Tammy English graciously allowed our church to use it as an outreach event. Sam (it was his birthday) didn’t mind at all. There were a ton of kids there, and it was a joy to visit, laugh, and watch our own Michael Phelps win gold in an informal relay against some kids and an anonymous state trooper.

There was a full house at Journey today, and it was exciting and humbling to see how many educators and teachers the Lord has brought into our fellowship. We prayed for them as a group, in addition to praying for our students. Ryan taught on the Great Commission in our Harvest Series, and it was interesting how he emphasized Matthew 28.19 where Jesus said that making a disciple is about teaching others to obey all that Jesus has taught us.

A fun video about the history of Apple…