A Spoonful of Sugar
I might’ve seen “Mary Poppins “ a hundred times before I was 7 years old. There were only a small handful of Disney princesses then and they were old school royals- Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.
My generation fell hard for the nanny Mary Poppins.
Having seen Mary Poppins a hundred times before turning age 7, I mastered all the lyrics to all the songs including this one:
“In every job that must be done
There is an element of fun
You find the fun and snap!
The job’s a game…”
I tried singing it to my preschoolers when I was teaching but the kids today weren’t buying it. Putting stuff away manually instead of pointing at stuff and making stuff magically fly into place is not fun. Fifty something (bad at math) years since memorizing nearly every word of the film, I have not yet been able to find any element of fun in the labor of putting stuff away. I only de cluttered part of my work table as I was distracted by a packet of charms that were part of the clutter. So, again I need to finish putting the stuff away . It’s an odd cycle, I get inspired, push whatever is on the table to the side, then grab yarns or paper or whatever from all around to put on the table to go thru, when I find what I need, I can’t wait to get going and nothing gets put away until there’s no space left on the table. Putting the stuff away is my most challenging chore because I never finish putting stuff away – there’s always something found that leads to inspiration for the next art project, which must be initiated immediately as the brainstorming gets blooming. If there’s a spoonful of sugar in this job, I would say that it’s rediscovering possibilities for the stuff waiting to be put away.
