Make your bed -- it matters!

I was so fortunate to have been given a profound statement to read yesterday, a statement that has renewed my parental philosophy.

"If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter." -- Admiral McRaven

Way to go, Admiral McRaven! Way to make the things everyone says are useless, useful. For years, I've nagged my kids to make their beds in the morning and shoot, most days, they're making it right before they go to bed but it's always been important to me as a mom that they make their beds. Obviously a made bed is NOT important to my kids but a lot of times I ask them how it makes them feel when they walk in their room and the beds made and they admit that they feel better.

Like the good Admiral said, it gives them a "small sense of pride."

The last few years though, I've really slacked off of that rule. Thinking to myself, "don't sweat the small stuff."

Life's too short to worry about made beds, blah, blah, blah, but I gotta tell ya, when I walk upstairs and see their room with their beds all torn about, it sorta irritates me and plus it makes their whole room seem messy when sometimes it's just the beds that are messy. Who knew a made bed would make a room seem tidier?

Me! I tell ya. I'M the one who knew a made bed makes a whole room seem cleaner. I'M the one that has told them for years how much more comfortable it is to go to bed at night in a bed that has been made. Me and Admiral McRaven, we got this figured out!

Of course, the Admiral looked at it in a whole different level, but he's right!

The little things in life DO matter and it was proven last Friday morning, right after I dropped my baby girls off for their first day of school. That dreaded first day for sappy moms like me. I was struggling off and on the whole week beforehand, reminiscing about their childhoods and tearing up every time I passed a baby picture on the wall. However, I tried my best and held it together fairly well with only a few lumps to swallow while no one was looking and even the first day, after every one of my sweet girls were dropped off at their school buildings, I still kept up the tough front and no tears were shed.

But, darn tootin,' guess what got me when I got back to my silent and empty house, all alone to reflect on the monumental day? I walked downstairs to put something away and glanced into my 14 year olds bedroom and there it was ... a nicely made bed. She'd made her bed!!

Probably the first time all summer, after months of nagging and speeches about laziness and time management, there on her hurried first day of school, she made her bed. And not only did she make it, she made it "nice." With that, I mean it wasn't just the comforter thrown up over all the wadded sheets and pillows.

Everything looked like JCPenney catalog picture, not a pillow out of place. It was just a little gesture and totally not important in the grand scheme of things, but that little task broke my tough exterior and I cried like a baby. I stood at her doorway and said to the empty room with my eyes full of tears, "She made her bed." I grabbed her baby blanket, which by now is a shredded mess, and curled up on that beautifully made bed and then cried some more.

I made sure to let her know as soon as school was over how thankful I was for the made bed and she's made it ever since that day. Just goes to show ya how important a made bed can really be. (Now if I can just get her sisters on board with the Admiral's theory.)