I've had this topic in mind for this week and suddenly the TKO thread came up. I had no clue what it meant as I was reading along this morning til someone explained. Totally Kitchen Obsessed. Yikes, That's me. Instead of Facebook, I read kitchen forum and analyze kitchens on TV and movies.

Years ago, I had two sets of clients divorced after their home remodels that stretched out years. I couldn't understand why as they were loving and long time married couples and it seemed so trivial to divorce over the remodel. Bottomline, it was the stress and how it affect people differently.

Jean Paul Sartre once said "all of life is a choice." Every choice requires a decision. Every decision is a stress. Therefore every choice is a stress. Stress is not just cumulative but also multiplicative. This is why you hear of people just blowing up and doing crazy things over some tiny thing.

Some people innately can handle it because of their mindset while others have to learn to manage it on their own or with training. The military is one place where they train for managing stress.

I unknowingly managed my high stress job years ago by taking two-three weeks vacation in the middle of nowhere. When you have no access to electronics and are reduced to eat, sleep, find food and travel til you reach a civilized outpost, your choices are reduced tremendously.

I would come back incredibly refreshed and loving life for six months despite pulled muscles, bug bites and occasional hospitalization. It took me a while to figure out why. Now I release it in my dreams. Oh the books I can write if I write things down.

During a remodel, we are present with so many decisions that it can become paralyzing. A huge level of stress is a guarantee especially when it's a long remodel. Family dynamics can become fractured even if some people are not involved in the work.

The human mind can deal better if it is given a limited set of choices. The more limited the better.

I'd like to suggest the following method to help in surviving thru your remodel.

1. Break decision down into groups. Money, style, wants, needs and time.

2. Focus decision on one group at a time and stick with the outcome. This will reduce your choices on purpose. For example, using money first as a decision. You know you can only afford $10K. Now your needs will be prioritize over wants and time to complete will take longer as you need to shop and perhaps DIY.

Reducing choices brings clarity and lessens the stress.

3. As you go into each group, subdivide it into smaller groups so your choices are fewer and you can be TKO without going insane. For example, cpartist spending several weeks obsessing over which company to buy glass pulls from but she knows it's glass already so her choices are limited. If she was also juggling color of walls along with flooring choices and kitchen layouts at the same time, she probably would blow a stack. I know I would.

4. Be picky. Eliminate the things you don't like fast and stick to it. I disliked subway tiles and grout lines so that reduced my choice to only one. Slab backsplash of something. This decision 25 yrs ago carried thru three remodels and saved me any stress or decision over my backsplash choice.

5. Make it a game. Let decision making be fun. Laugh over choices to reduce them and release stress. Joke about how things can look wrong.

6. Indulge yourself. Drink wine, eat ice cream, watch a movie... Before the stress builds, sit down, relax and pamper yourself.

7. Affirm the important non material things often. Kiss your spouse, hug your child, say I Love You, really see the people you love... My DH gets uncomfortable over my random intense staring sessions and face fingering but he says that he feels incredibly loved.

8. Don't take anything personally. It's like panning for gold. Pull out the nuggets and dump the slurry. Everyone will have an opinion and some will be hurtful on purpose. I've been called ghetto and cheap by my own siblings along with other less nice euphemisms.

9. Just let it go and compromise. At the end of the day, everything is just a thing and that kitchen is not your soul or your worth as a person. I've watch someone focus on a tiny flaw on her fridge that can only be seen at one particular angle 1/2" from fridge surface and only in a particular light. Yes, she made me bend in half, nose the fridge and squinted up to see. Her kitchen was beautiful and she saw nothing else except that.

Please share your experiences of how you made it thru your remodel.