Leave Your Troubles At The Door

At the end of a long, stressful day of duties and responsibilities and hard work it can be really hard to disconnect from the office and the stress so that we don’t take it into our homes with us at night. The last thing our families want to deal with is our stress from the day – they are excited to spend time with us having fun and enjoying one another.

So how do we suddenly switch modes and leave it all behind when work is over? Our families deserve a happy “us” and that means we have to train ourselves to leave a hard day behind us and allow ourselves to focus on our families when we get home. I recently heard a story called “The Trouble Tree” that shared a great example of how we can make that happen:

The Trouble Tree Story

The carpenter who was hired to help a man restore an old farmhouse had just finished his first day on the job and everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong. First of all, on his way to work he had a flat tire that cost him an hour’s worth of pay, then his electric saw broke, and after work his old pickup truck refused to start. His new boss volunteered to give him a lift home and the whole way to his house the carpenter sat in stone silence as he stared out his window. Yet on arriving, he invited his boss in for a few minutes to meet his family.

As they walked toward the front door, he paused briefly at a small tree, touching the tips of the branches with both hands. When he opened the door, he underwent an amazing transformation. His tanned face was one big smile as he hugged his two small children and kissed his wife. Afterwards, the man walked his boss to his car to say thank you.

Now on their way out of the house, the boss’ curiosity got the best of him so he had to ask the man about the tree on the front porch. He said, “I noticed when you came up on the porch before going into your house you stopped and touched the tree, why?”

“Oh, that’s my trouble tree,” he replied. “I know I can’t stop from having troubles out on the job, but one thing’s for sure – my troubles don’t belong in the house with my wife and children. So I just hang them up on the tree every night when I come home. Then in the morning I pick them up again.”

“Funny thing is,” he smiled, “when I come out in the morning to pick ‘em up, they aren’t nearly as many as I remember hanging up the night before.”

Trouble Tree Ideas

What a great idea! We should all come up with our own symbolic “Trouble Tree” to drop our problems off at night before we enter our homes. I especially like the option to pick them all up again when you leave home the next day. So I did some thinking, and I came up with several ideas that I think might work for me, and a few more that might be useful to someone else.

A Basket or a Bag:

Hang a basket next to the door, and then just drop your troubles in. This is a super cool idea to combine lights and a wire basket for a nifty entry light that could double as a place to leave your troubles at the door!

Doorknob baskets are also a fun idea, you wouldn’t have to hang it on the actual doorknob, you could hang it next to the door. Or maybe take a trip to the thrift store to find a basket or bag that would look super cool at your front door. Maybe even find a cool antique decorative doorknob that you could attach to the wall at your front door.

Here are a few more ideas:

It might be fun to put shells, or stones in the bottom of a wire basket, make it decorative as well as useful. So many different ways to do this one! How fun!

A dream catcher

Maybe a dream catcher could double as a bad energy filter!

Hang a dream catcher on or next to your door. Let it catch your troubles as you pass. The one in the picture was made from a bicycle wheel, a doily and some ribbon. Dream catchers made from doilies are amazingly easy to put together!

Here’s a short visual tutorial:

Basically, you use the inside hoop of an embroidery hoop for the frame, and then you tie the doily on in four places to keep it stabilized. Then, using embroidery thread, you attach the doily to the frame. When that’s complete, add the ribbon and voila! Read the complete tutorial at: Bumble Bee Linens

This is the finished product:

A Bottle of Water

Here’s an idea. Keep a bottle of water next to the front door and wash your hands before you go in. As you wash your hands, imagine that you are rinsing away the bad juju of the day…. super easy!

These are etched, but I don’t see why we couldn’t use our new found DIY skills and use sharpies to decorate them. Nail polish will also work really well.

Story from: Amy Rees Anderson’s Blog