We’ve been trying to corral the chaos that is our house lately, trying to find a place for everything and a strategy for getting everything into its place.

We’re, like, maybe 30% of the way there.

That’s probably an optimistic estimate.

Decorations from Sadie’s birthday (four weeks ago) still hang from the ceiling. The kids’ memory verses from October are still taped to the wall. Today I realized that Thanksgiving will be here in nine days, and we haven’t even pulled our Autumn books and things out yet. We haven’t read Over the River and Through the Woods even once. Not Sarah Morton’s Day or Tapenum’s Day, either, or any of a dozen others.

This whole living-my-life business is kind of exhausting, and I’m not all that good at it.

This afternoon I sent the kids to gather those books and put them in the living room, where we can find them to read over and over for the next week.

I didn’t take down any of the birthday stuff, and I didn’t go looking for fall-ish candles to set out or anything.

But I did notice this: we still have the pinecones we gathered last fall. They’re sitting in a basket by the window. I never tossed them out, never refilled that basket with anything else any other season all year long. And now it’s sort of seasonally appropriate again.

And I think that’s the lesson I’m taking away from today: Procrastination, if it lasts long enough, is almost as good as planning ahead.