Knowing When You’ve Done Enough

There is always something else we could be doing.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.

Over the past few months, I’ve spent an enormous amount of time working behind the scenes on this little corner of the internet. I started preparing our Christmas content back in June and July, which felt ridiculously early at the time. While most of us were still hoping for a few warm evenings and eating dinner outside whenever the Irish weather allowed, I was thinking about Christmas planners, traditions, winter evenings and December.

There was a reason for starting so early. I’ve learned a lot over the past year about how online content actually works. Things need time. Writing something in the middle of a season and expecting people to find it immediately doesn’t always work. Often, the things I wrote and created twelve or eighteen months ago are only really beginning to find their audience now.

So this year I had a plan.

I did the work early.

And then October arrived.

Suddenly Christmas started appearing everywhere. Shops changed. Social media changed. Pinterest changed. That familiar seasonal energy began to build.

And despite having spent months preparing for exactly this moment, I caught myself thinking:

Maybe I need to make more.

More Christmas content. More ideas. More printables. More things to share.

Until eventually I stopped and thought:

Hang on. Haven’t I already done this?

So instead of immediately making something new, I went back and looked properly at what I already had.

And there was loads.

Some things needed updating, so I updated them. Some older pieces deserved a little more attention, so I gave it to them.

But plenty of it was absolutely fine.

It didn’t need rewriting.

It didn’t need replacing.

It certainly didn’t need me to create another version of exactly the same thing just because everyone else seemed to be talking about Christmas.

The work was already done.

I just needed to let it do its job.

And that got me thinking about how difficult it can be to recognise when we have done enough.

There Is Always Another Thing We Could Add

I think one of the problems with being someone who cares about doing things well is that there is no natural end point.

There is always another improvement available.

The house could be cleaner.

The garden could be tidier.

The meal could be more elaborate.

The plan could be more detailed.

The celebration could have another lovely little touch.

We could research a little more, prepare a little more, organise something else, make another list.

There is almost always something we could do.

But could and should are not the same thing.

That has taken me a surprisingly long time to learn.

I would probably describe myself these days as a recovering perfectionist. I’m much better than I used to be, although those tendencies certainly haven’t disappeared.

There was a time when I felt everything had to be done properly — and by properly, I usually meant exceptionally well.

My work.

My home.

Parenting.

Family life.

Celebrations.

Plans.

Everything.

Somewhere along the way, I had convinced myself that all of it mattered enormously.

And it was exhausting.

When Everything Feels Important

Looking back, I can see that I placed an enormous amount of pressure on myself.

Nobody else was doing it.

I was.

I thought that by giving everything my absolute all, everyone around me was getting the best of me.

But they weren’t.

Because I was constantly tired. Constantly overwhelmed. Constantly thinking about the next thing that needed doing.

And, perhaps most importantly, I wasn’t enjoying very much of it.

I wasn’t enjoying my work.

I wasn’t enjoying my home.

I wasn’t enjoying motherhood in the way I wanted to.

Eventually, when my children were still very small, I took a break from working outside the home.

I’ve written about that period before, so I won’t tell the whole story again here. But something important happened during those years.

I began enjoying my life again.

Life itself hadn’t suddenly become quiet.

I had two very small children. My husband was working in a very different role and was away quite a bit. There was a home to run and all the usual things that come with family life. It was during that time that I originally started this blog too.

Life was still full.

But it felt different.

And slowly, I began to understand that perhaps the problem had never simply been how much I had to do.

Some of it was the pressure I had placed on myself about how all of it had to be done.

Most Things Are Not Emergencies

This is something I understand far better in my forties than I did in my twenties or thirties:

Most things are not as urgent as they feel.

Of course some things matter.

Bills need to be paid. Deadlines sometimes really are deadlines. Children need looking after. Work has responsibilities attached to it. There are things in life that simply have to be done.

I am not advocating ignoring the electricity bill in the name of slow living.

But an awful lot of other things?

They can wait.

Sometimes they don’t need doing at all.

I used to have an underlying feeling that if I didn’t stay on top of everything, something would go wrong.

Someone might be disappointed.

I’d forget something important.

I’d fall behind.

I’d somehow be failing.

And what I have discovered through the enormously scientific process of occasionally not getting everything done is that, more often than not…

nothing happens.

The day carries on.

The world doesn’t collapse.

Sometimes nobody else even notices.

And the thing that felt terribly important on Tuesday has disappeared entirely from my mind by Friday.

Good Enough Is Often More Than Good Enough

I still have high standards.

I like my home a certain way. I like being organised. If something genuinely needs doing, I would much rather get on with it than have it hanging over me.

That part of me hasn’t changed.

What has changed is my ability to say:

That’s enough for today.

There are evenings when I had intended to cook something lovely and then reach five o’clock absolutely exhausted.

Once upon a time, I might have pushed through because that was what I had planned.

These days?

Sausages. Chips. A couple of poached eggs.

Dinner.

And quite a nice dinner at that.

Everyone is fed. Everyone is happy. Nobody is sitting at the kitchen table lamenting the casserole that might have been.

Some weeks the house gets properly cleaned.

Other weeks the floors are clean, the laundry is done, the place is reasonably tidy and that is about as far as we’re getting.

And do you know what?

It’s fine.

Actually, it’s more than fine.

Good enough is very often more than good enough.

The Things We Think We Should Be Doing

I notice this particularly around seasons and celebrations.

When my children were younger, I sometimes felt an enormous responsibility to make everything special.

The pumpkin patch.

The costumes.

The activities.

The outings.

The traditions.

Christmas experiences.

Days away.

All those lovely things we are shown that families are apparently supposed to be doing.

And I genuinely enjoyed many of them.

But somewhere along the way, I realised that my children didn’t need every possible experience.

They needed us.

They needed home.

They needed a handful of traditions that belonged to our family.

They needed space for things to happen without me orchestrating every minute of it.

This Halloween is a perfect example.

Our house is still decorated for autumn.

I’m in absolutely no rush to change it.

When the children finish school for their midterm break, we’re going away for a few days. When we come home, we’ll decorate for Halloween.

It’ll be up for three or four days.

They have two absolutely enormous pumpkins waiting to be carved. We’ll make the house a little spooky, set a fun Halloween table, probably watch a film or two and enjoy it.

And that will be plenty.

There was a time when I might have worried that we weren’t doing enough.

Now I think:

Enough for whom?

Perhaps This Is One of the Gifts of Getting Older

I think age has something to do with all of this.

Not because I’ve suddenly become wonderfully wise and have life figured out. I absolutely haven’t.

But I have more evidence now.

I’ve lived through enough imperfect days to know that imperfect days can still be very good days.

I’ve watched supposedly urgent things become completely irrelevant.

I’ve worried about things that never happened.

I’ve put enormous effort into things that, looking back, probably didn’t require half as much from me as I gave them.

And I’ve learned that loosening your grip on something doesn’t necessarily mean everything falls apart.

That’s probably been one of the biggest lessons for me.

I still like information. I still research things. I still make plans.

Perhaps, in some strange way, I use understanding to help myself let go.

If I understand why something doesn’t need to be done, or why another way might work just as well, I find it much easier to loosen my control over it.

I’m still me.

Just perhaps a version of me who is getting a little better at deciding what actually deserves my energy.

What Stopping Gives Us

There is another reason I think we need to get better at recognising when enough is enough.

Stopping gives us something.

It gives us the chance to turn around and see how far we’ve come.

To look at what we’ve made.

What we’ve survived.

What we’ve learned.

Who we’ve become.

If we are constantly looking towards the next thing, we rarely get that perspective.

But stopping also creates something else.

Space.

Space for whatever comes next.

Space for anticipation.

Space for spontaneity.

Space to enjoy what we’ve spent all that time preparing.

Space to actually participate in our own lives.

Because what is the point of creating something wonderful if we’re too exhausted to experience it?

Leave Enough Room to Be There

Christmas always makes me think about this.

Christmas Eve is probably my favourite day of the whole season. I love the anticipation of it.

But Christmas Day itself can so easily become work.

Cooking. Clearing. Preparing. Timing. Setting tables. More cooking. More clearing.

And suddenly this day you’ve spent weeks preparing for is disappearing while you’re standing in the kitchen.

Over the past few years I’ve tried to change that.

We go to church in the morning. We look after the pony. We go for a walk.

When we come home, we put out easy party food — sausage rolls, vol-au-vents, little bruschettas, bits and pieces that everyone loves.

Dinner can wait until later.

And that means I get the afternoon too.

I get to sit down.

I get to be beside the fire.

I get to have a glass of wine.

I get to talk to my family and enjoy the strange lovely feeling of Christmas Day while it’s actually happening.

Dinner still gets cooked.

The table still gets set.

Everything that really matters gets done.

But I’ve stopped trying to squeeze so much into the day that there is no room left for me in it.

And maybe that’s what I’m trying to learn in other parts of my life too.

There will always be something else I could add.

There will always be another idea, another improvement, another job, another plan.

There is no natural end to more.

At some point, we have to decide for ourselves:

This is enough.

Not because we don’t care.

Not because we’ve stopped trying.

Not because there isn’t anything else we could do.

But because sometimes the most important thing we can do with everything we’ve worked so hard to create is stop working on it long enough to enjoy it.

Perhaps progress isn’t always about what we build next.

Sometimes progress is being able to look at what we’ve already built and allow it to support us.

To make things easier rather than busier.

To give us time rather than continually demanding more of it.

And perhaps that’s one of the quieter gifts of getting older:

Learning when to keep going.

Learning what to let go.

And learning when nothing more needs to be added.

For now, this is enough.

Chat soon,
Ciara x

• 
  Knowing When You’ve Done Enough
  There is always something else we could be doing. Another improvement, another plan, another thing to organise. But what if we’ve already done enough? A personal reflection on perfectionism, getting older, letting go of unnecessary pressure and learning to enjoy the life we’ve worked so hard to create.
• 
  What Are You Filling Your Life With?
  What are we filling our lives with? A reflection on attention, ordinary goodness and learning to notice what deserves more room in the lives we’re already living.
• 
  A Slower Life, Right in the Middle of a Full One
  Slow living doesn’t necessarily mean having a slow life. An autumn reflection on intentional living, seasonal rhythms, full family days and learning to notice the life that’s already happening around us.
• 
  Slow October: 31 Simple Ways to Cosy Up Your Days This October
  Welcome to Slow October — 31 gentle invitations to notice the season, find little moments of comfort and connection, and enjoy the heart of autumn. Download the free illustrated and large-text October calendars plus the October Journaling Reflections page.
• 
  When the Days Feel Like Themselves Again
  There’s something lovely about summer days losing their edges. But as autumn returns, I’m rediscovering the quiet comfort of the week finding its shape again — Friday feeling like Friday, Sunday feeling like Sunday, and ordinary life settling back into its familiar rhythm.
• 
  Not Everything Ripens at the Same Time
  On a soft, drizzly September morning, the apples, pears and blackberries offered a quiet reminder: not everything ripens at the same time. A seasonal reflection on change, readiness and learning to let life unfold in its own time.