Long time no post! My blog at ThingsIGaveAway.com has gone MIA, so I am back here for the short run until my other online home is available. Speaking of homes, since it is spring I have decluttering, cleaning and redecorating on my mind. I have two visions in mind: (1) a smaller, well-appointed, more manageable home, here in the Great White North i.e. being in a position to sell this house in the years ahead, and (2) creating a home environment now that supports everyone in the family and that I am not a slave to. That is a pretty big bite, but manageable, provided I enlist some help. Husband will serve as devil's advocate and sharp rock against which I throw myself.
What I am sure of is that I do not want to spend my life energy on maintaining any more stuff than necessary. Of course, this brings one to that essential contradiction in life, trying to find that critical balance between stuff we need and stuff we don’t. Maybe need is the wrong word.
The February 2011 De-Clutter Your Life issue of O Magazine, brought this issue sharply into focus. Oprah declared: "Enough already with the stuff that doesn't enhance who you really are." ("What I Know for Sure", page 212). I couldn't agree more. At the same time, the magazine is stuffed to the suggestion for more things to buy (The O List, Look What we Found!, Great Buys Under $100, not to mention page after page of ads for still more stuff.) And here we have the essential contradiction that so many of us face. What to keep? What to toss? What to acquire? What to invest our life energy in?
This is the question I intend to examine in the weeks and months ahead. For now, I’ve thought of one question to help me stay on task: is this something that I want to drag with me to my next house?
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Moving Day: Meet Me at My New Online Home
Alas, my days at blogger.com were numbered from the start. It is a fine place to begin but, being me, I have to be the Master of my own Domain (http://www.thingsigaveaway.com/), and be able to customize it into a cozy little reading room. So, come on over and visit me there. Come see the dandelions, the empty Tim Horton's cups and riffs on the wonder of vacuum cleaners. See you there!
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Things I Gave Away: Today's Shortlist
• Parenting books, some of which I never read. In some cases, the title alone was lesson enough: “How To Behave So Your Children Will Too” by Sal Severe. Well-put Sal.
• Booking appointments back-to-back, especially if any of the timing is contingent on my teenager getting out of bed on time.
• Multi-tasking in the morning – I accidentally sent one daughter to school with a slab of raw bacon this week instead of the intended two slices of pepperoni pizza.
• A pale-pink bra that was the ideal colour and fit, but inexplicably irritated my skin in a place that was exactly impossible to itch. Is it just me, or is the perfect piece of clothing an oxymoron?
• No more super-sized jars of “just peanuts” peanut butter! Have you ever tried to stir a mega-jar of this stuff? It’s a one-way street to peanut-induced carpal tunnel syndrome. I’m sticking to the small jars, with their manageable stirring-quantities.
• Booking appointments back-to-back, especially if any of the timing is contingent on my teenager getting out of bed on time.
• Multi-tasking in the morning – I accidentally sent one daughter to school with a slab of raw bacon this week instead of the intended two slices of pepperoni pizza.
• A pale-pink bra that was the ideal colour and fit, but inexplicably irritated my skin in a place that was exactly impossible to itch. Is it just me, or is the perfect piece of clothing an oxymoron?
• No more super-sized jars of “just peanuts” peanut butter! Have you ever tried to stir a mega-jar of this stuff? It’s a one-way street to peanut-induced carpal tunnel syndrome. I’m sticking to the small jars, with their manageable stirring-quantities.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
From Thermos to Whine
Seriously? The left side of my brain shrieks at the right. Are you seriously debating the merits of four instead of five Thermoses? Man, you need a day job girlfriend.
Yeah, well, says you, the Right retorts.
Lame, says the Left.
I am overwhelmed, I clean out one cupboard and a single drawer, but instead of feeling the usual surge of energy and lightness that comes with completing such tasks, I feel the heavy weight of dread. There is so much more stuff in this house and I feel crushed by the weight of it.
Does anyone else out there feel like they are living in a warehouse? I mean, apart from the folks appearing on – what’s that TLC show? – Hoarding: Buried Alive. I couldn’t watch that show for more than five minutes. I’d suffer nightmares for months.
I need some fresh air here. An intervention. The undoing of retail therapy (and I’m not even a shopper, for pete’s sakes). I need to call John the Junk Guy and make a date. Yes, that’s the ticket. More on that later in the week. For now, I just need a stiff half-glass of red wine and a good book.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Face Cloths & Trash Mountains
My sister and I sit at the dining room table, post-breakfast, half-finished coffee cups between us. We’re in Florida on a short holiday with our parents, a rare treat, since I can’t remember our even taking vacations together when we were kids, let alone at our advanced ages of forty-two and fifty-one.
We’re fixed on our laptop screens, she and I, checking in with business and domestic crises at home. My dad comes downstairs, still in his pajamas, with a beard of white shaving cream. He would looks like Santa Claus, but for his still-dark hair.
“Where’s mom?” he asks. “In the laundry room?”
My sister and I nod. He heads through the kitchen, opens the garage door, peers out to where the washer and dryer are.
“Juney, Is there a face cloth out there or do you want me to get a new one?”
My sister and I look at each other. Dad trundles out to the garage. There is a low exchange of words with my mother, though we can’t hear what is said. Dad returns, no facecloth in hand, makes his way back up the stairs. The door of the linen closet squeaks open, closes again. The bathroom tap is turned on.
Consider this: my dad came all the way downstairs, mid-way through his morning ablutions, to ask if there is a less-than-fresh facecloth he should be using rather than grabbing a clean one from the linen closet that is immediately beside the bathroom. The transaction cost of this decision was - what – five minutes? Is this not highly unusual behaviour in our drive-thru, I-need-it-now world?
This economy-of-use mentality is what I grew up with. A respect for the innate usefulness of just about anything. A suspicion of anything disposable or at least due consideration as to whether said disposable item might in fact be re-used, re-shaped, or otherwise saved for future use. There was no ‘recycling’ when I was a kid, apart from taking glass pop bottles back to the store for return of deposit.
Wonder bags hanging from the clothes line.
Twist ties and bread-bag clips kept in kitchen drawer.
Margarine tubs kept and re-used. This was in the days before the miracle of Ziplock® (and may I point out the re-usability of Ziplock containers, not to get all defensive or anything).
It is easy to write any of these items off as innately trash-able. But to my parents, born in the mid-ninety-thirties, well, they just don’t see it that way.
My world isn’t like that. My kids use towels once then expect them to be washed. My fault, I know. I am a compulsive launderer. The steel pot I ruined? Garbage. Granted, that was only after it was rejected from the metal recycling. Plastic bags? Oh, for pete’s sakes, don’t even ask.
And then there’s electronics.
A month or so ago, I took my daughter’s portable DVD player back to the local Big Box electronics retailer for repair under warranty. She’d had it less than a year before it ceased to play. A week later, I got a call from the store.
“It is not worth repairing,” the caller explained. “If you bring in the accessories, we’ll replace it for you.”
I was pleased, and yet, there was something unsavoury about this transaction. I envisioned a mountain of ‘not worth repairing’ electronics, my daughters red DVD player, its guts hanging out, tossed carelessly on top, by some young guy drinking Red Bull. How much does this cost? What do they do with that stuff? Is it not, somehow, re-usable?
I don’t know. I have an uncomfortable feeling that I should.
And what would my parents have done? I don’t know that either. It is a different world than the one I grew up in the 1970s, even for them. Despite the facecloth.
It’s a good rule to follow, though, don't you think? What my father did out of habit. To at least give something a second look. Not to start something fresh without due consideration as to whether something already in play is just as good. To stop and ask if that not-yet-mildewed facecloth is still available for use rather than automatically reaching for a clean one - the sacred pause, no? A pause to weigh a certain frugality against a trash mountain, and to decide which is really the better place to worship.
We’re fixed on our laptop screens, she and I, checking in with business and domestic crises at home. My dad comes downstairs, still in his pajamas, with a beard of white shaving cream. He would looks like Santa Claus, but for his still-dark hair.
“Where’s mom?” he asks. “In the laundry room?”
My sister and I nod. He heads through the kitchen, opens the garage door, peers out to where the washer and dryer are.
“Juney, Is there a face cloth out there or do you want me to get a new one?”
My sister and I look at each other. Dad trundles out to the garage. There is a low exchange of words with my mother, though we can’t hear what is said. Dad returns, no facecloth in hand, makes his way back up the stairs. The door of the linen closet squeaks open, closes again. The bathroom tap is turned on.
Consider this: my dad came all the way downstairs, mid-way through his morning ablutions, to ask if there is a less-than-fresh facecloth he should be using rather than grabbing a clean one from the linen closet that is immediately beside the bathroom. The transaction cost of this decision was - what – five minutes? Is this not highly unusual behaviour in our drive-thru, I-need-it-now world?
This economy-of-use mentality is what I grew up with. A respect for the innate usefulness of just about anything. A suspicion of anything disposable or at least due consideration as to whether said disposable item might in fact be re-used, re-shaped, or otherwise saved for future use. There was no ‘recycling’ when I was a kid, apart from taking glass pop bottles back to the store for return of deposit.
Wonder bags hanging from the clothes line.
Twist ties and bread-bag clips kept in kitchen drawer.
Margarine tubs kept and re-used. This was in the days before the miracle of Ziplock® (and may I point out the re-usability of Ziplock containers, not to get all defensive or anything).
It is easy to write any of these items off as innately trash-able. But to my parents, born in the mid-ninety-thirties, well, they just don’t see it that way.
My world isn’t like that. My kids use towels once then expect them to be washed. My fault, I know. I am a compulsive launderer. The steel pot I ruined? Garbage. Granted, that was only after it was rejected from the metal recycling. Plastic bags? Oh, for pete’s sakes, don’t even ask.
And then there’s electronics.
A month or so ago, I took my daughter’s portable DVD player back to the local Big Box electronics retailer for repair under warranty. She’d had it less than a year before it ceased to play. A week later, I got a call from the store.
“It is not worth repairing,” the caller explained. “If you bring in the accessories, we’ll replace it for you.”
I was pleased, and yet, there was something unsavoury about this transaction. I envisioned a mountain of ‘not worth repairing’ electronics, my daughters red DVD player, its guts hanging out, tossed carelessly on top, by some young guy drinking Red Bull. How much does this cost? What do they do with that stuff? Is it not, somehow, re-usable?
I don’t know. I have an uncomfortable feeling that I should.
And what would my parents have done? I don’t know that either. It is a different world than the one I grew up in the 1970s, even for them. Despite the facecloth.
It’s a good rule to follow, though, don't you think? What my father did out of habit. To at least give something a second look. Not to start something fresh without due consideration as to whether something already in play is just as good. To stop and ask if that not-yet-mildewed facecloth is still available for use rather than automatically reaching for a clean one - the sacred pause, no? A pause to weigh a certain frugality against a trash mountain, and to decide which is really the better place to worship.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Lawyerisms
Lawyerisms: These are silly things that lawyers, including me, sometimes say. Therefore, I hereby undertake to cease and desist from their further use. Well, I'll try:
• “I’ll take that under advisement” (advisement?) when what you really mean is “I need to take some time to think about that” or “I’m not sure. I’ll get back to you”. I looked up “advisement” in an ordinary online dictionary and was advised “no dictionary result”. Shocking. I’ll have to check my big fat lawyer’s dictionary when I get back to the home office. (Wait! I can’t because I gave it away – well, that was probably a step in the right direction)
• “I trust you will govern yourself accordingly” when what you really mean is “back off or I’ll sue you”.
• My formal professional title is “Barrister, Solicitor, Notary Public and Trade-mark Agent”. So here’s a question: Does anybody outside of England know what a “barrister” or “solicitor” is? Is there some reason why I can’t just be a lawyer? Besides, I’ve never been too comfortable with the idea that I’m somehow, you know, soliciting.
• “I’ll take that under advisement” (advisement?) when what you really mean is “I need to take some time to think about that” or “I’m not sure. I’ll get back to you”. I looked up “advisement” in an ordinary online dictionary and was advised “no dictionary result”. Shocking. I’ll have to check my big fat lawyer’s dictionary when I get back to the home office. (Wait! I can’t because I gave it away – well, that was probably a step in the right direction)
• “I trust you will govern yourself accordingly” when what you really mean is “back off or I’ll sue you”.
• My formal professional title is “Barrister, Solicitor, Notary Public and Trade-mark Agent”. So here’s a question: Does anybody outside of England know what a “barrister” or “solicitor” is? Is there some reason why I can’t just be a lawyer? Besides, I’ve never been too comfortable with the idea that I’m somehow, you know, soliciting.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Shelving Self-Help
I was half-napping in the family room today, beaten semi-comatose by the April rain, when a row of books caught my eye. A dozen or so, lined up neatly on the highest shelf of the bookcase. Self-help books. I studied them briefly from my position on the couch until seized, suddenly, by the urge to dump them.
Now, don’t get me wrong. These books are well-written, thought-provoking and were, at a certain stage in my life, helpful, at least insofar as shaping my philosophies, if not in solving any of the immediate issues I faced at the time. Issues like: What is wrong with me? Why haven’t I yet achieved total world domination, or at least stopped feeding my family out of boxes every night of the week? Why do I feel so lost? I tried to remember how old I was when I read those books. My late twenties? Early thirties?
“Live your questions now,” Rainer-Marie Rilke wrote, in a letter to an earnest young student, “and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.” I always found that idea intellectually appealing, but of course, I didn’t get it. You can’t get it until you have, well, lived through it. That’s the recompense for getting older: you earn the odd bit of wisdom. You also realize that you don’t know anything. By extrapolation, that means no one else knows much either. I find that realization rather comforting.
I take the books down from the shelf, stack them on the coffee table. Looking at pile, I remember the ambivalence that, by and large, I felt after reading them (or, more often, after abandoning them mid-way through). The exercises, “challenges” and questionnaires left me feeling wanting, empty. Even now, looking at the stack, I feel vaguely – what? Inadequate.
Now understand a few things about me: I have two law degrees. A black-belt. A law practice. A lovely home, a treasure of a husband, two beautiful children, a loving extended family including step-kids and all their attachments. I have a long history of modest athletic achievement. (Do not challenge me to a pull-up contest. I will eat you for breakfast). I juggle a lot and I do it with grace (mostly). I am a lot of things.
Inadequate isn’t one of them.
I carefully bag up the books. I have a niece in her mid-twenties who would very much appreciate them, I am sure. She is exploring life and reads much of this ilk, as she should. It is her time. And, might I add, she should read them without shame. No one should feel like a flake just for hanging around the self-help section. Heck, we should probably stand around and applaud her for trying so darn hard.
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