There are other ways to reach your goal and get the results you desire!

A single-wide mobile home was the first major purchase Earl, and I made as a married couple.

We had gotten married in late December and by early March, become the proud owners of a brand new unfurnished two-bedroom 14 x 70 trailer. Earl and I were living mobile and tiny before tiny was cool.

We didn’t have any furniture of our own. Our honeymoon home was a real tiny house that came fully furnished for $275/month.

My parents gave us a bed and bought us a tiny four-person dining table brand new. I loved that so much I polished it with pledge almost daily. It’s still sitting in our break room in our office now. Maybe pledge does seal and protect. Earl’s family had given us an extra sofa and a chair. So we had all we needed.

But, I was then, as I still am today, a dreamer. I had always made-believe and played house growing up. I always wanted to decorate and create my own home.

Earl worked nights and left every afternoon around 2:00 and wouldn’t be home until midnight or later if overtime was available.

I usually didn’t start playing house until he went to work. We had stacks and stacks of boxes from our move. Some still full, a few empty, and most of them half unpacked.  

I ran out of steam as the must-haves and exciting things were in their places. It’s been over 27 years, and I still clearly remember my lack of energy for completing the task of unpacking and homemaking.

One night after Earl got home and we had just laid down, I started to think about the extra bedroom. It didn’t have a bed or any furniture.

I was having some friends and family over the next week. Here we had a two-bedroom home and no furniture for the 2nd bedroom.

I started thinking about that dilemma. How could I make our home look like a magazine without furniture?  

I should have been worried about how I was going to finish that unpacking. But I wasn’t. I had lost interest in that. I was suddenly into furniture for that 2nd bedroom.

Now, I knew I couldn’t buy any furniture. I knew we had all we needed.  

But I lay there awake thinking about a bed. Suddenly it hit me. Those boxes! I thought of the size of the boxes we had used for packing. They were all the same shape and size. If I stacked them, we would have a bed. I thought through what I believed I would need as I imagined the boxes in the room with no bed.

Two stacks of 3 rows of 3 with 18 boxes in total. I did not get out of bed. I really wanted to bounce up and go and see if my plan would work. But Earl was then as he is now, no-nonsense. If I had woke him and said I wanted to see if I could make a bed out of boxes, he would have told me I was silly or made fun of me; I would’ve lost my enthusiasm. 

The next morning I wanted to go and start scooting the boxes to the back room. But I didn’t. I waited until Earl left for work, and I started straight to work on my scheme. 

I stacked the bottom nine boxes. That’s all I needed to measure. I left the rest of the place a mess and headed straight to the car. I knew I needed stylish bedding, but couldn’t afford anything from the department store. Even Walmart was out of my budget. But, there was a place that carried overstocks, seconds, and mismatched items.

I drove there, knowing I had minimum money to spend on what was frivolous. It was unimportant to anyone but me.  

I went into the store with the energy of what would rival a marathon runner. I could hardly sit still on the way there. Bypassing the front room with clothing and made a beeline to the back room. There was a small room with stacks of comforters, blankets, bed skirts, sheets, and pillow shams. Some things were odd. There were things like Fuzzy blankets with animals and odd colors. I wanted this to look good, to give my home style!

Searching with vigor, I had been in that tiny room for what felt like forever. First, I found an odd pillow sham but overlooked it for something else that was a dead end. Then I found a floral bed skirt. It was like a memory game. Where did I turn that pillow sham over? Finally, I found two pillow shams, a bed skirt, and a comforter.  

I had been laying my stuff aside. When I had what I thought would work, I had to add up my total. The things were all in clear bags, and the prices were marked with the black magic marker in big letters on the outside. The pillow sham -3 each, the comforter -15, and the bed skirt -5 all for a total of about $26.

The $26 I could manage. I finished my purchase and was pleased as punch and on my way home. I got in the car and felt relief to hit the seat as the sweat ran down my back. It hadn’t been easy, but I had found what I wanted. 

I went home and spread the dust ruffle over the first layer of boxes. It fit perfectly and met the floor. I was so excited I found new energy to finish unpacking the boxes and using the boxes that made up the bed to store things I didn’t know what to do with it.

Arranging the boxes catty-corner in the room to make the bed a showpiece as soon as you entered the room. The next day I went to my mom’s and borrowed a floor lamp to put in the hole behind the bed. One more stop, a junk store, where I bought an old green electric coffee pot with a missing power cord and two matching cups. 

Now time to stage, I started by assembling my box bed, placing the floor lamp at the head of the bed in the corner left empty by the catty-corner placement of the bed. Next, I spray-painted my coffee pot and matching cups gold and placed them in a tray on the bed.

When my guest arrived the next week, guess which room I wanted them to see first? Yes, my room made out of boxes. The lamp was lit and shed a pretty glow over the mauve bedding. The coffee pot strategically turned to hide a missing plug. I eagerly explained how I had solved my problem with my guest. Because to me, that was the best part of the story. I had spent just a little to get something that made me so happy.

Just because it wasn’t easy that didn’t mean I couldn’t accomplish it.

It didn’t matter how others would have accomplished the goal. It didn’t matter that Earl would have told me I was silly. 

I didn’t let the lack of money or what others may have thought interfere with my plan. I let the excitement of reaching the goal drive me to finish my bed and unpack the boxes that had become boring. 

That’s what a well-defined goal can do. It can bring you energy to complete monotonous tasks and bring you pure joy when you reach the goal.

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