Sounds great, but it's not as easy as you might think.
We decided to start by working to pay off our minivan early. That would give us a lot more monthly margin with our finances. Toward that end, we decided to have a garage sale this weekend. We've turned the house upside down, we've gone through boxes and boxes of stuff. We even put off some school projects for a few days while we tore through the house. As a result, our house is a wreck, we can't find anything, and the garage sale is tomorrow and we're nowhere near ready. Margin?
PLUS, we had a family picture scheduled for today. Again not wanting to spend money, we didn't buy new outfits for the kids, we decided to put something together from what we already had. Try getting 2 adults and 4 kids to match — talk about square pegs and round holes! Now our living room is strewn with clothes that we considered but rejected. Some were too small, others too faded, some weren't washed, some we washed at the last minute and they only got semi-dry by the time we went for the picture — 5 minutes late. Margin?
PLUS PLUS, we've got company coming and a history fair project due; we're involved in two different singing groups at church, a small group Bible study, and a homeschool co-op. And all that is AFTER we decided to cut back and reduced our commitments!
The problem with margin is that everything is interconnected. Money margin is connected to time margin and organizational margin and on and on. It seems impossible to work on one area without negatively affecting the others.
We continue trying, however. I'm confident that one day we will realize we have achieved margin. On that wonderful day, we will stop and consider how blessed we are. We will relax, we will revel in our unrestricted time.
Until we realize that all that relaxing and revelling has made us 10 minutes late for church.
