Your relatives are your change agents

Have you ever realized that your friends and relatives are powerful change agents? They could be the catalysts that speed up the progress that you were hoping for. Let me give an example.

I usually do not have too many people visiting my home. We are in a city where we have no relatives. I have few friends who I meet mostly outside rather than at home. There is no incentive for me to keep my home neat and clean as they show in Youtube videos. I do the bare minimum that is required to ensure that it doesn’t look like a hoarder’s house.

I do get impulsive spurts of motivation when I come across a decluttering video. I identify the things that need to be discarded and donated, sort them and then push them under to bed so that I can dispose of them over the weekend. Out of sight is out of mind. When the weekend comes, it would have already been out of my mind. Now and then when I do realize that the items are still sitting here, a pang of sudden guilt will appear and disappear. But, the status quo will still remain the same.

Last week, one of my wife’s uncles said their family is coming over to stay at our place for a week. That was the kick in the back that we needed. In 8 hours we

• Dropped the old clothes that were organized (read as stuffed) under the bed for 6 months at the donation place
• Dropped the 200 of my daughter’s books stuffed below the sofa at the donation place
• Cleaned up my daughter’s academic books of the last 3 years.
• Sorted, organized and donated all unwanted toys except three board games
• Got the three ceiling fans fixed/replaced that were hanging on the lifeline for the past year.
• Got the legs of the dining table fixed after enduring it for 6 to 7 months
• Got 3 of our balconies deep cleaned.

And other nitty-gritty stuffs that were on the backlog for a long time. In 8 hours our home went from looking like the ruins of Hampi to the Louvre museum. We put Urban Company services to shame. The only thing that we couldn’t fix was our son’s artwork on the walls – innumerable and infinite circles of crayons.

We realized that the work, health, kids non-stop mischiefs, our imaginary needs in the future where the items can be useful, our busy lives all seemed to be mere excuses. All it took us was one phone call from the visiting guests. They, in fact, are the change agents.

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