Take Back Your Home

 I recently searched Hoopla for a book about decluttering that I had seen mentioned. Hoopla did not have it but suggested Take Back Your Home by Morgan Tyree. 

This book differs in several ways from others that I have read. Its emphasis is on sorting and organizing more than getting rid of things. She does suggest that as you are putting "like with like" that you cull duplicates or unused items. She spends a lot of time taking you through "systems" so that you can identify which pertain to you and how to overcome obstacles. Some of her material deals with time management, but she has previously written a whole book about that.

She addresses in part of her book a population mostly ignored by other authors: those with physical disabilities and neurodivergent people (autism, attention deficits) and helps them to work around their challenges. People with short attention spans cannot use tips to go through a whole room or a whole category of things in a short time. She simplifies and breaks things down to make them manageable.  

She includes stories about her personal efforts and those of her clients. Many practical suggestions and successes are described.

For me, the book's perspective does not go far enough in decluttering but does get people to calm their home environments which creates  less stress. Knowing what you have and where it is located pays off.

 

Quiet Here

I haven't posted here for 2 weeks. Now that Winona Literary Club is on winter hiatus and last night the Grace Village Choir presented its Christmas concert things will slow down. 

I took the magazine rack we purchased in Dallas at Weir's Furniture to Habitat for Humanity ReStore today. Edible Michiana that comes out quarterly and that I picked up for free through the years at restaurants in the area and enjoyed so much are most likely outdated as the pandemic has caused many small food businesses and dining venues to close. I discarded them and moved some other magazines to my other magazine storage.

My husband built this for me as a gift a few years ago.

It does have the advantage of having a flat tabletop so I can keep things like my reading glasses handy. 

A task my husband has wanted me to do for several weeks is to get rid of the expired over-the-counter meds and first aid items in the drawers in "his" bathroom. Most of the stuff is 2-4 years over the expiration date, but I have a small bottle of Tylenol that says 2006. I am thinking, however, that it isn't really that old because I think that I put some pills in there for traveling because it was a handy size to pack. But not knowing how old the pills actually are, I will dispose of them.

My next step is to replace most of them by using my Medicare Advantage OTC credits. I do that online, but we continue to get the catalog.

I am accumulating a pile of things to take to Goodwill, also, but think I will wait until the week after Christmas. Most of them are books, a few clothes.

My church puts out a daily Bible reading plan in increments of 12-13 weeks. The one I just finished included all of Genesis and all of Mark and a few Psalms at the end of the week. I had looked up some verses in The Message before but not read long passages in that paraphrase. I do not like it! I especially dislike the Psalms in street language. I have decided to donate The Message to Goodwill. 

I also sorted through my Christmas music CDs. I only got rid of 4 (kept 15). I took these to the Grace Village Give-and-take table.

We are starting to cut back on being with people in crowds. We already livestreamed our church service last Sunday. I did go to Meijer for groceries rather than ordering for pick-up. I mostly don't miss shopping in person; I see that there are limitations on amounts you can buy in the store again. I did find some ground beef marked down almost half off that I would have missed if not in person. 

Actually, yesterday our county had a significant drop in COVID cases. The Thanksgiving surge may be over. However, with all of the concerts and Christmas events last week and this week, I won't be surprised to see another surge. We do have omicron in Indiana but as far as I know not in the northern part where I live. As an older more vulnerable person, I am not up to taking risks I see younger people taking (no vax, no masks, no social distancing). I understand the desire to have some "normalcy".

I have eaten lots of Moose Munch the past few days. I need to throttle back. Our neighbor brought us a small tin of homemade toffee this afternoon. Lots of See's candy sitting around too (Christmas gifts). I did send some of the Moose Munch in a tin with my husband to the woodworking/hobby shop; according to him, the two regulars are munching away. Getting some help in avoiding eating too much myself.

Hope you are enjoying some treats (in moderation). I hope to drive around to look at Christmas lights next week. 

Cozy Minimalist Home

I first encountered Myquillyn Smith on links from other blogs. I read a few of her posts, but I didn't bookmark her Nester site.

Her family has finally bought a home, rather than renting, and her book Cozy Minimalist Home shares what she learned in the process of moving into a fixer-upper and applies it to her way of looking at decorating.

Cozy minimalism seems like a contradiction of terms. She liked the uncluttered space of minimalism, the ease of care, but she felt they had gone too far so the home feels austere. Personally, I don't dislike the remade rooms of her home, but they seem plain with mostly white and brown and some blue tones. She talks of how she has created interest with texture and different shapes (mostly in accessories and plants). Maybe so, but there is no pop of color anywhere to draw the eye. It seems a little monotonous. 

She does not have a set order of rooms or categories to work through like Marie Kondo, but she has a strict list of steps to take in her order: furniture, drapes, lighting, floor covering, wall surfaces, finally accessories. She wants you to complete your flooring decisions before painting walls which seems counterintuitive when you see that a major step of her process is to "quiet" a room by removing everything but large furnishings. Instead, once you have hung the drapes, laid wall-to-wall carpeting or area rugs, then you protect or remove all of that stuff a second time to do the painting. She gives her reasons for this.

The first step is to decide the purpose(s) of your rooms. It will be different for each household and change over time. Then she suggests that you go to Pinterest (or alternatively use magazines or books) to find 50-100 photos you love of each room. The pictures might have things you dislike along with those you love. It doesn't have to perfectly reflect your tastes. I guess I am way ahead on this step since I have all those pictures in folders that I collected over the past 5-6 years. The task is to look at the pictures (ideally to have some friends also do this for/with you) to find commonalities or similarities to identify your preferences. 

Myquillyn says that no matter how much fun those "quizzes" in newspapers or magazines or on the internet are to identify your style of decorating, they are actually worthless in making decisions for your home. 

Once you have collected and analyzed the pictures, you do "quieting". You remove all of the accessories, area rugs, small furniture, most of the lamps and live in the room for several days (she prefers for a week). This is a minimalist idea I have seen on the internet. Gradually you bring back items but not all of them. While the room is "quieted", you spend time observing the bones of the room and its condition. Are there cracks to repair? Peeling or faded paint? Is the carpeting ratty? Awkward door and window placement? What needs to be different to make this room meet your purposes and aesthetics? In the meantime, the rest of your house may be a mess as you had to put the things you took out of the room somewhere. Her process is disruptive to you and your family.

Also, while the room is mostly empty, she wants you to move your furniture to lots of different placements. No can do. As a senior, I don't have the stamina or strength to be moving furniture all over the room. This is definitely not a step for the elderly or disabled. 

The author is known as a Christian blogger, and she does relate her decorating process to Christian values a bit. I expected more.

I would say the book is best for those starting over in a new home, or those who have been paralyzed with doubt and indecision thus not doing anything to improve their homes. In an indirect way, it does help you see that you have too much stuff, that your things cause you to spend time on them rather than on family and friends. Becoming more "minimal" frees you to spend your energy and time on relationships. The book also discusses how to recognize that you have "enough" and don't need to be constantly shopping or keeping up with the consumerism behavior of our culture. Also, temporary "fixes" are suggested until you have the resources to reach your dream home. Perfection is never the goal, however. Comfort, warmth, ease of living, hospitality opportunities are the priorities.

Downsizing the Family Home

I recently finished the book Downsizing the Family Home by Marni Jameson. I've seen this AARP publication advertised in the bulletin and the magazine; I checked my public library, and it was available.

"I wanted to be respectful of my parents' belongings, honor their lives, be a good steward of their assets, and preserve their past and mine. I didn't want to be weighed down by more stuff ..." she writes. She had recently divorced, moved from a very large home in Colorado to a small rental in Florida and had no room for more stuff.

Ms. Jameson found herself in a difficult situation of needing to clear out her parents' house of 50 years and ready it for sale in 9 days. That is all the time she could take away from her job and her daughter. She lived across the country from this house. She had the advantage as a syndicated columnist of lifestyle and home life to know experts she could tap into for advice. She shares this advice and what she learned thru her hands-on experience. 

Her mother was experiencing short-term memory loss and her father was failing physically from lung damage. The father had drafted his son's help in visiting potential assisted living communities and finally decided on one. The wife who didn't like change kept saying we don't need to move. Actually, they cut it pretty close as in less than 6 months from the clearing out and sale of the house the father died. The funds from the sale of the house gave her father comfort that his wife would have what she needed to remain in a safe environment. 

Since Ms. Jameson's father initiated the move and her brother helped select furnishings and household goods for the new apartment, the early stages of the process went fairly smoothly. Her mother had been taken several times to the new residence, but on the day of the move, she stopped at the threshold of her new apartment, clenched her fists, and loudly declared "No, no, no!"

As the book points out in chapter one deciding the timing of the move to assisted living is tricky. If the person(s) need this kind of residence but balk, it makes it harder. Sometimes an intervention must take place. Fortunately, Ms. Jameson had the cooperation of half the couple (her father). Once the clearing out of the house started, her mother knew she could not return.

Because of her contacts, the author was able to identify and set aside potentially valuable items from all the other stuff. She then held an estate sale with her brother and sister-in-law helping, but still had lots of things to dispose of. She had when sorting boxed up the hard-to-decide items and put them in the garage so the house could be painted. But as you might guess, these items were photographs, memorabilia, keepsakes, documents, some jewelry. She did finally ship a painting and her mother's china to Florida using a professional shipping company to pack the items, but of course this is prohibitively expensive for most items and for most people. When the house sold quickly, her brother stored these boxes for future perusal. 

Though she loved her parents immensely, the emotional and physical toll of clearing out this house with all of its childhood memories was overwhelming. The answer is for the parents to make a real effort as they get older of divesting themselves of things. Hers did not. (My mother did not.) The author tries to persuade all of us to be kind to our family by not leaving such a mess. Given that this ideal does not exist for most of us, and we get stuck with handling all of our parents' stuff, her advice is practical. What services children use will depend on their own financial means, time available, and physical stamina, but at least they will know the options after reading the book. 

I do not have children thus it will be my spouse or family member or friend who has to step up to the task. I continue to pare down some so that whoever gets the responsibility will have it easier. Probably my husband and I will downsize from our condo to an apartment and get rid of more items at that time. Moving certainly does help winnow stuff.

The book motivated me to continue with the KonMari method I had started. I finished the clothing and books several months ago but I got bogged down in the paper category. This past week I made progress in the file cabinet drawers so the light in the tunnel appeared. However, a subcategory of paper would be all of the magazine clippings of recipes sitting in a storage box under my bed. I had "indexed" them at one time, listing the recipes on a page for each plastic archival envelope. I am trying to decide whether to make any effort in scanning thru them or just junk the whole mess. When I first clipped them, I would make an effort to cook/fix at least half a dozen recipes per year. That died before I even got to Indiana. 

Because light rain was predicted for last night and today, I scurried to my neighbor's tree yesterday afternoon to gather pinecones. I wish I had taken a bag, but I carried 10 cones home. They had a little sticky pitch that stuck to my fingers. I may only keep them for one season, then throw them out. I should heed the advice of the book I just read. I put them in my woven pine needle basket from the Ozarks which I love and will keep as long as I can.

Category 1 of KonMari Method Finished

 

In the KonMari method of decluttering and organizing, the 1st category is clothing and accessories. I have completed that. Because I am “tidying forever”, i.e., I cull things over time, I didn’t have much to discard. I took 8 items of clothing to Goodwill and threw away 2. In her book, Marie Kondo talks about her clients taking multiple garbage bags of clothes to donate. I guess I am not like her typical client. In fact, this is one of the differences I have with Ms. Kondo. I think it is OK to tidy “forever” (ongoing) rather than doing a big complete purging in 6 months time. According to her way of thinking, I will miss out on some of the magic.

I did surprise myself with one item. I had in the back of my mind that I would get rid of a vest I have had for a long time, but when I held it as she instructs, it did “spark joy” so it is staying.

I have found it helpful to ask the spark joy question in other areas. I received some nice oven mitts for Christmas. When I made room for them in the kitchen drawer, I asked that question of other pot holders I had in the drawer. I took 4 of them to Give ‘N Take, and threw away two really old ones.

Also, when I hung the new picture in my bedroom last week, I asked myself if the picture I was replacing (and owned for over 30 years) sparked joy. It did not, so it went with the clothes to Goodwill.

The next category is books. We own a lot of books. The good part is that half of them are my husband’s thus off-limits to my project re Marie Kondo. The bad part is that she wants you to spread all of your books on the floor and hold each one asking the “spark joy” question. You can do them by subcategory if you have lots of books. I think my problem area is going to be cookbooks. Any way, I don’t have time to do the books for another couple of weeks at least.

The 3rd category is paper (not including love letters and cards, sentimental items). Here I will probably really bog down. Ms. Kondo says “Paper never inspires joy.” So, how do I decide what to discard? Get rid of as much as you can, she says. She would get rid of all of it, but she admits you have to keep certain documents.

The 4th category is miscellaneous. There is a Japanese word that encompasses this stuff and is probably better understood by that culture. She gives examples of subcategories like makeup, kitchen implements, etc. As you might guess, it is very broad but if you use her subcategory order, you still have some direction to keep you from floundering.

I would say the Kondo mindset is helpful, but I don’t think I will ever stop culling over time. I do feel like I am getting rid of things that didn’t contribute joy to my life, but mostly I already like the things I have.

Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

 

In all fairness, I should probably wait until I have tried implementing some of the KonMari method to give an evaluation. For now, I will simply point out some of the differences in this method from the standard decluttering advice and some areas of agreement.

Indeed, there are some aspects I have no intention of following. Her belief that inanimate articles have feelings and that they are sensitive to the owner’s emotions is too far-out for me. Instead of thanking an item of clothing for how it enhances my life and when getting rid of it telling it thanks for its part in my life and wishing it a happy future life, I would rather thank God for providing the item. I do think it is important to treat one’s possessions with care and respect, but I do not believe one has a meaningful dialogue and communication with an inanimate article.

The biggest difference in the KonMari method in my opinion is that one is told to go through one’s items category-by-category rather than room-by-room. This requires gathering together like items in one place and spreading them out on the floor. I can see how this helps a person to grasp how much stuff they own (especially if scattered in different rooms and closets and drawers). It has the added benefit of bringing together items for logical storage. When one creates a “home” for a category of items, it makes it easier to find them.

You may have heard that her criteria for keeping an item is that it sparks joy as you hold and touch it. I do like flipping the perspective from what should I get rid of to focusing on what should be kept. It is a subtle difference but I think it probably has a better outcome in reducing what a person owns.

To train one in identifying this spark of joy, Ms. Kondo has a specific order of which categories to go through first. Her other biggie is that she thinks the tidying (sorting, reducing, storing) needs to be done quickly as one big project. As she says, “Tidy a little a day and you’ll be tidying forever.”

My first thought was that the owner doing the tidying would be overwhelmed and never start. Knowing where to begin is overcome by her strict category order, but fatigue and giving up would certainly come into play. Then in a later chapter she clarifies that she is talking about mostly a 6-month timeframe, doing categories over that span, category by category. And at least in the miscellaneous category and subcategories she admits the order is not so important, especially for someone living alone.

Really, she is in agreement with other declutter writers about the degree of hardness for some categories such as papers, photos, sentimental mementos. That is why she wants you to start with easier categories. She also agrees that in deciding what to get rid of, you are in some ways processing your past. This can be painful at times, but to bring healing or allow you to move on, this step is necessary. All tidying professionals insist that you reduce your stuff before even thinking about how and where to store it. Ms. Kondo is on board with that.

Ms. Kondo has almost a fetish about folding clothes. Without any diagram or picture, I am not sure I totally comprehend her method. She thinks it is better to have few items hanging in a closet and more clothing items folded and standing vertically in drawers. I may try her sock folding/storing idea, but for me, if it is hanging in the closet I see it, if in a drawer I tend to forget about it. This is especially true of tops and pants.

The magic of tidying using her method she says is that you gain confidence in your decision-making capacity which leads to general confidence in your judgment in other areas of life. You will be ready to let go of the past or to not worry about the future, but instead be content with what you have now. Because you love (or need) what you own, you identify what is important to you and what your values are. You will be a happier person.

I have been yearning to get rid of more of my stuff, and I may try doing it in the order she suggests and by touching and holding items. Of course, I share a house with my husband, so there will be things that spark no joy in me, but hopefully touch his heart. One must lead by example, not by trying to get rid of others’ belongings.

Ms. Kondo has some other quirks besides the folding and vertical arrangement of clothing. Give her a try and see how you feel about her ideas, especially if you have put off reducing your possessions. Her method may get you started.

 

The Eye of the Beholder

I want to get rid of this bookcase with pull-down desk within this next year. It was full; the little bears sat in front of books as the little doll figures above still do, but now the bears have nothing behind them. I have made some progress. However, most of what is left on the shelves I want to keep for awhile longer. That means culling the hall bookcase and the den assortment to make room for these.

I have some books that I am keeping because of emotional attachment. They were gifts from my sisters or in the case of a Peanuts book from my high school best friend.

Holly Hobbie was popular from about the mid-60’s to the mid-seventies. I still love the pictures in these little books. I sometimes display the Christmas one on a table along with my other decorations.

The Apples of Gold contains pithy sayings, paragraphs of wisdom centered around the fruit of the Spirit. My older sister gave me this when I graduated from high school and inscribed the event inside the cover.

I may have glanced at it back then, but as I perused it today, I decided to look through it a little bit each day this summer. The advice makes more sense to a 65-year-old than an 18-year-old I’m sure. Here is an item from Meekness: “We see things not as they are, but as we are”. No way a teen-ager could really grasp the truth of this saying. It takes experience through the years to appreciate how subjective our outlook really is. Or perhaps it could be interpreted if we want to see things in a positive way, we need to be positive.
Our past makes up part of who we are. It creates our perspective and colors our viewpoint. Among these books I found a lined-paper composition book with notes from Bill Roorbach’s Writing Life Stories. What a good book! Besides my reading notes, I had scribbled the writing exercises he prescribed. Here is one of my compositions that in its own way talks about seeing, about perspective.

The People in the Floor Other than for the obvious purpose, how could one productively use time spent on the toilet? Sort thru relationships, solve financial problems, plan the day or week ahead are possibilities. My thoughts never manage to turn in those directions. I blame the people in the floor. Not the whole floor, really, just the small rectangle in front of the blue rug. That’s my focus while sitting there, straight ahead and down to the swirling shades of gray. They make quite a diverse populace. Human shapes dominate reinforcing my anthropomorphic bias, but some apparitions obviously belong to other branches of the animal kingdom: the jaunty whale, the long-beaked water bird on the wing tucked into a crease of the menacing dinosaur’s jaw. How can a whale of great tonnage be jaunty? It seems unlikely, but his playful eye says he is. Over time others hidden in the larger figures make themselves known as I dissect smaller and smaller canvases for my imagination. I notice the floppy-eared dachshund and the pointy-eared almost-squirrel-faced fur-ball rodent months after the others. Broadening and narrowing perspectives add to the group. I almost miss the jug-eared man who lives in the pouffed gray bangs of the old gypsy lady with her dangling disc earring. Indeed, after the initial discovery, I lose him for awhile because I forget his address. He is a sub-basement kind of guy, going unnoticed for the most part. If I had such huge ears, I probably would want to fade into the background, too. Odd juxtaposing exists in this under-foot world: a homely club-footed angel chasing the beautiful blonde, the beauty’s filmy chiffon stole billowing out as she rides the back of the Chinese dragon, the dragon’s fierce visage threatening the jut-jawed curly-haired matronly face ahead. It is a world of ambiguity and imperfections. Is that a broad-faced aborigine with a choppy hair cut or a pointy-nosed big-mouthed woman whose cupcake hat squashes flat the fringe of hair framing her ugly face? Contemplating my choices, I am startled to see the slash of the mouth become a screwed-up teary eye for the roly-poly-faced pouty boy who encompasses more footage than my original tight frame. What a crybaby he is! I should disown him and shift back to the native man and the unattractive woman, but it is too late. Now that he has caught my attention, he can’t be ignored. I may miss my imaginary bathroom population when I move in a few years to the retirement community condo. Some of the floor inhabitants pop out so sharply surely the new owner will see them. But maybe not. They exist on the floor, but more in the mind, and thus peering at them requires looking beyond the obvious. I do not tell others of the people in the floor. Revealing them would reveal too much of me. A bathroom after all is a private place. The ancient flowing-bearded, cone-hatted sorcerer in the middle floor tile wisely concurs.

Spring Cleaning

Spring is a time of new beginnings. Traditionally, people have swept out the cobwebs and dust of winter. Why not go a step beyond that and seriously declutter. Here are some good reasons for getting rid of the things that have piled up in our homes over the months and years.
 
1. Clutter creates stress. The more items we accumulate, the more things we have to organize, clean, fix, move, store, protect, rearrange, find, and worry about.
 
2. Clutter makes you feel bad about yourself. You may feel inadequate or that you have lost control. If you have depression, it will make it worse.
 
3. Clutter interferes with personal relationships. You may be embarrassed to have visitors to your messy house. Grandkids may not visit much because their parents think your home is “unsafe”.
 
4. Clutter takes a financial toll. Late fees for overdue bills lost in a pile of papers. Purchasing multiples of items because though you are sure you own it, you can’t find it when you need it.
 
5. Clutter is a time robber. Time you spend hunting for items could be spent chatting over tea with a friend or playing games with the grandkids.
 
6. Clutter shuts you off from new opportunities or hobbies because you have no room to accommodate them. You are stuck in the past.
 
7. When we let our stuff define us, we give control to the stuff. The Biblical command was for man (or woman) to have dominion over the things of the earth, not the other way around.
 
8. Clutter may keep you from seeing how God can meet a need in your life if you are stockpiling everything “in case you need it”. Will you let Him supply it instead?
 
9. Clutter may cause resentment when people have to clean out garages, attics, closets, etc. that you should have cleaned out before you died or were forced to downsize because of health issues.