Did you ever have parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, or some other family member who’s house was always spotless?  I know I did.  I always thought it was funny too.  I even knew some people that had one of those “plastic” rooms where all the furniture was covered in plastic to prevent stains.  You were never allowed in those rooms as a kid, because rooms like that were reserved for grown folks.

I’m not writing this to talk about elder folks and their furniture, but I did get to thinking about this today.  I was sitting in my home, snow bound, with our power flickering in and out because of the fierce wind when I started to think more about the situation.  Of course, it is Sunday and there is football on, I could watch a movie, etc.  However, with a flickering power connection, my television wasn’t worth watching for parts of this afternoon.  The internet?  Same deal, flickering power makes sustaining an internet connection a little problematic.  So, what did I do to pass the time?  I cleaned both bathrooms in our house!

Now, this isn’t exactly earth shattering or anything, but it does bring me back around to my original point and the title of this post….distractions.  Think about it, why did I decide to clean today?  Sure, I had it as one of my things to get done this weekend, and it gets done on some sort of interval year round; regardless of the situation.  But, the key factor today? I had no distractions to keep me from completing the task.  I didn’t have tv or the internet to occupy my time.  I can almost assure you that if I had either of those two today, that my cleaning endeavors would have been put off for another day.

Okay, so think back to the beginning of this post.  Why do you think all those elder folks have such spotless homes?  Yes, some of has to do with a different era or upbringing, but a lot of it has to do with distractions.  People who lived 10, 20, 30 years ago, etc, didn’t have the immense amount of distractions that we have today.  So what did they do? They read books, played cards, board games, cleaned, spent more time with loved ones, and the list goes on and on.

Maybe I’m just making more out of this little episode today, but I know one thing, it sure made me think about all the distractions around us at any given time.