Change is not simple.

The end of last week was a bit discouraging for me. I ran into simultaneous setbacks with THREE of my homemade endeavors. Combined with a particularly crazy week of trying to balance work and family (and a child who took all her naps at the sitter’s, giving Mommy no personal time whatsoever), I was feeling rather hopeless about everything. It reminded me that while a lot of this stuff seems and sounds like it should be so easy, it’s just really freaking hard, in the middle of everything else life requires, to change habits and replace systems that have been working for you just fine for years.

And I know, you’re all dying to hear what went wrong for me this time (and bask in the schadenfreude!). Here’s my list of complaints:

1. My dishwasher detergent is not nearly as effective as I’d like it to be–and it’s going to need to work really well if I want to stop my bad habit of pre-washing dishes.
2. I don’t know what happened, but after over a month of uneventful, generally successful use, my baking soda shampoo just started SUCKING. Seriously, we’re talking hair coated with I-don’t-know-what and just greasy and dirty-feeling immediately after every shower.
3. And to top it all off, under my baking soda toothpaste regime, my gums started bleeding. Awesome.

Now, I am pretty certain each of these things has a pretty easy fix–or at least a clear next step. For instance, I know I need to get washing soda for the dishwasher to replace the baking soda. As for the shampoo, I think I just need to tinker with my baking soda amounts and washing frequency–as well as add in some weekly deep conditioning treatments or alternative washes. And regarding my teeth, I KNOW my problem is that I was brushing way too hard–I’ve always struggled with that anyway, and somehow between my excitement at making my teeth feel REALLY clean and my desire to compensate for the lack of suds with more elbow grease, I totally stressed out my poor little gums.

But really, who can manage all this tinkering at once while also keeping the house running and showing up for work in a semi-timely fashion? My plan of attack is to go back and take them one by one again. I’ll start with the dishwasher, then the teeth, and save the shampoo for last since that’s clearly going to be the most difficult (and cause the most stress because if it’s 8:30 and you should have left the house 15 minutes ago and your husband is now also late to work and your hair is still a greasy mess, you’re basically screwed).

My point here is not to discourage you from trying these things yourself, but just to remind us that it’s not always completely forward progress and not every change works for everyone. But that doesn’t mean I should feel discouraged about the overall project. Some changes turn out to be as simple as they look! Other changes will have to wait until I have the time and energy to make them really work for me. But that’s okay! I’m still headed (slowly) in the right direction, and that’s really enough! (Really!)