Everyday Creativity: You Have it Within You

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.—Maya Angelou

We were remodeling, trying to spruce up the bathroom in our 65 year old house without breaking the bank. One of the problems was the medicine cabinet, caked with layers of paint, rust here and there eating away at the shelves. But its frame and overall design charming, a kind of French “shabby chic”—with an overemphasis, lately, on the “shabby.” My husband, Tom, opted for refurbishing. So after removing the cabinet from the wall, weekends spent painting, sanding, and repainting, he completed the job. The cabinet was clean and fresh again, its simple elegance restored. But all was not perfect. When refitted back into its opening, the cabinet door wouldn’t close, leaving a gap. Not a very big gap, but a gap nonetheless.

After a week or two of thinking this might be something we’d just need to learn to live with, Tom came home from a conference with an idea. He removed the magnetic closure from his conference nametag, attached it to the inside of the cabinet door, and voila! The door closed with a satisfying click.

Who, Really Has Everyday Creativity?
When we think about creativity and creative people, we think of the Monets and Hemingways of the world, the Mozarts and Mark Zuckerbergs. It is an ethereal plane they reside on, we think, a place inaccessible to most. But though it may be argued that these people represent the upper echelons of creativity, there is room for us.

My mother was one of the most creative people I know. We lived on a farm ten miles out of town, and when she ran out of syrup for the pancakes she made my father every morning, she couldn’t run to the grocery store to replenish the supply. She’d boil together brown sugar and water to make syrup, or raspberries and sugar. She got creative. She would have said she “made do,” as many of our grandmothers and grandfathers did, their creative spirit coming about by necessity. From scarcity.

Creativity is about flexibility, adaptability, seeing new uses for what is around us. It is moving into a drab apartment and refusing to accept drab as your fate, deciding instead to add a splash of bright color on a wall, find a classy “antique” rocker at GoodWill.

We are involved with everyday creativity in many ways—in the manner we dress. Choosing feather or shell earrings, pairing different slacks and tops, using a scarf for a belt. We find innovative means of stretching the budget, keeping the lawn mower going a little longer, or the car. One friend creates picnic tables from wooden spools that once held rolls of cable, another melts down the stub ends of candles and drizzles them over pine cones for fire starters.

Our creativity quotients are greater than we think. Not only can everyday creativity add beauty to the world, solve problems, and save money, it feels wonderful. You earn the right to walk around for a while with a smug smile on your face. And in a world with there is much to put you down, you feel innovative, creative. You feel good about yourself for a while. –Lucy

For more about increasing the creativity quotient in your life, see http://thewritingandcreativelife.com/.