"Before" photos

The meat of today's post is a handful of photos of Theo and Cori's room on an average day. The state of their room has been bugging me a little lately and I've been wondering if I can make any improvements to it.

I am hoping these can serve as "before" photos and that one day there will be some "after" photos. 

I've been on yet another decluttering and minimalizing kick ever since my seminary roommate, Cassie, recently got me into The Minimal Mom on YouTube. The host, Dawn, is friends with Dana K. White of A Slob Comes Clean and so of course I read all of her books, too. 

One fun tip White recommends in Organizing For The Rest of Us is taking before-and-after photos of the spaces you're working on. 

Usually when I finish organizing a section of the house, I can't believe how I actually improved and transformed a space. Mostly, I'm left wondering why I ever waited so long to start.

But then, despite past successes, I still look at spaces in my house and feel hopeless. It's hard to imagine things being any way other than how they are.

So of course I wouldn't think to take a "before" picture. Because there's never going to be an "after."

However, today, I've decided to get curious and see what might happen if I take a "before" picture—if one can even call it that.

Before (see what I did there?), I would have seen a (my) blog as a platform for showing finished projects. Today, I’m just showing up.

Is it possible to subvert the whole concept of underpromising/overdelivering? What if, instead of setting any goals, be they tiny or aspirational, we held—without expectation—snapshots of where we are right now, existing in what we hope is a liminal space between what is and what might be?

I don't have any grand scheme or a vision of what things could be yet. However, I do find the power and cumulative effect of tiny daily acts really incredible. So whether I just put one sock where it belongs or I take the time to figure out better systems so we don't have to constantly be putting away socks, I'm hoping for evolution.

At the very least, there seems to be nothing to lose, except maybe my pride.

I've noticed that sometimes when I work on home organization projects I eventually hit an aha moment that really brings everything together and makes it "work", but I rarely have that piece of insight at the beginning of the project. 

It’s not unlike that moment where after typing eight pages of words for a five-page paper, you finally arrive at your thesis.

With Theo and Cori’s room, I'm starting today at the "prompt" stage. "Design a room that functions well for them and is not an eyesore for everyone else."

(Could teachers be more vague?!?!)

Knowing me, I’m likely to procrastinate and work on three other places of the house, and to my adult self, I’m saying, that’s okay! There’s no judgment! I don’t have to work in a linear way. There’s no deadline, there’s just something I want—a dream, a desire, a hope—and I’m learning that it’s okay to put this stuff out there.

That said, if you have any tips or ideas to solve all my problems, I’m all ears.

Everything in its place

My kid desk (but "corner office" with a window!) that has worked for 5 years.

You know how when organizing your home, people always say to make sure you have "a place for everything, and everything in its place"?

During Morning Pages on Wednesday I had this random thought. We know this principle as it pertains to stuff, but what about in the way we spend our time?

As you know from all my posts, I have been working hard to carve out space and time for "creative" pursuits. But honestly, it sometimes feels rigid to say I must do morning pages in the mornings, and I must work on my blog in the afternoons.

But I can also see that if I don't make "a home" to work on writing, then other, less-fulfilling things will inevitably fill in those pockets of time.

Before this recent energy around producing/creating/doing, I think I inadvertently spent a lot of my time trying to stay on top of the dishes as a way to feel successful about my day. Hint: I can never keep up, I will never win the battle.

So, technically, as I am now using less of my time cleaning up (perhaps the cleaning is now more consolidated to the evenings, once David is home, ha), my house is actually not that much worse for the neglect - it was already bad - and now I'm using what limited free time I have to create, and create stuff that no one is going to undo (but maybe myself).

I still only have 168 hours a week. But using a few of these hours each week specifically for creativity has filled a place in my spirit which more than makes up for the sinking feeling I would experience when I looked at how un-picked up our house was.

It's weird; the mess is still there, but it doesn't matter as much anymore.

Creating art and living out art has become more important than the blank canvas I use to covet.

David brought up this desk that we built (!) together when we first got married because there was no room for an office in our one-bedroom apartment. Now we are using it again to create a living room office.

This season of diving into blogging/writing without a defined plan - but with clear discipline - feels very different for me. I'm trying to focus more on input than output, but I am, of course, anxious to see how things will turn out. In the meantime, I shall keep plugging along, trying my best to remain open and curious.

Something tells me that if I follow inspiration, it will follow me.

***

And now for the randoms:

1. A new (to me) writer/blogger whose writing is inspiring.
2. An interesting article David sent me on happiness.
3. Tsh Oxenreider's "On Making Friends and Partial Solutions"
4. This looks good, and, as I've already asked Stephanie, can someone please make this for me already? (And Happy Chinese New Year!)
5. Did you know about the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows? Found this through encountering the word "sonder" somewhere.

15. Everything and nothing

Today I have everything and nothing to say.

I'm starting to get to the point where I want to be done with this project so I can reboot with a new one. At the same time, I am wondering what principles I should carry into the next project, because I think there are some valuable aspects, such as the aspect of accountability through publicly declaring a project. May it never be said of me that I don't follow through on my commitments. (Oof, what does that say about me?)

One of the major concepts I'm experiencing within this project is Einstein's tactic of "combinatory play," which I first heard referenced in Liz Gilbert's Big Magic. It's the notion that when you're stuck, engaging yourself in some other way and might help you get unstuck. This could be something simple like going for a walk, or it could be taking up a different artistic hobby.

"I don't sweat the small stuff. Instead, I lump it together with the big and medium things so I can have a major breakdown instead." --Abbyhasissues.com

I don't think I realized how stuck I was in life and in general until I painted our bed white earlier this year, which led to us doing the The Purge, which gave me the mental capacity and energy to sign up for a writer's workshop, which led me to authors and to Inspiration, which led me to this project, which I already feel is leading me to a lot of other paths of unstuckness.

In fact, the subject of my first workshop essay was the painting of our originally black bed. One day after Kathy helped me tidy up our room I was inspired to get rid of the darkness once and for all. (Our room gets the most light in the house and yet it was so depressing because of our black furniture. No bueno in a very grey city.) I wrote about how I just dove in without much prep or planning but that just doing it was way better than not. And now, six months later, I see that that little step - done but not perfect - made a huge impact on how I'm feeling today. It's a lesson for me, to consider the things that are bothering me the most in my life - even if they may seem like insignificant things - and do something to change it, without being afraid to mess up.

This, too, is related to the idea mentioned before of creating your vocation/vacation. As well as the idea of not only being your own best friend, but also being your own therapist. I need to engage myself, ask myself what's bothering me, what do I want my life to look like, and how do I get there.

***

Random: One possible negative of my meditating on thoughts of creativity and non-conformity is that I'm starting to question a lot of the rules I impose on my kids. I try to give choices as many times as I can throughout the day, although obviously they are bounded choices. "I am their mom, not a cruise director." (I can't stop chuckling at that. I also can't figure out who said that first. Someone thought Tina Fey, which sounds right, but I can't prove it on the Internetz so it's not verified.) So I'm going to not let the possible paradigm shifts steer me too much; my sanity is more important than that, for the time being. My kids shall keep conforming to the conventions I set for them, says this mom, aka the benevolent dictator.

***

P.S. A few of you have asked how having kids affects my perspective on decluttering/simplicity. I definitely think it feels hard to get rid of things that I think *might* benefit my kid (one day), but in the bigger picture, but I'm learning that having less stuff to tidy or less stuff to make sure my kids aren't getting hurt on ends up freeing me up to have more time and energy for my kids, which is a good thing. See this article from a slightly different angle that I think makes the same argument.

P.P.S. FYI I brushed up on the recipe page a bit and it's more comprehensive now. Food is another way of engaging "combinatory play" - I need to make and post more recipes!

Took the plunge

Today's post isn't really about food. (Crazy, huh?)

Well, not entirely at least, because it is about something necessary for food to happen.

After two years of putting up with our nice but really annoying sink (#firstworldproblems), David finally put a stake in the ground and ordered us a new one.

You can see in the photo below how the lip is really high, so that instead of the water draining into the sink, it would run around the back. Water would drip onto the floor, and worse yet, cause the particle board under our laminate counters to bubble up. 

Of course, one day when we pay off our home we'd love to change the countertops to something solid and to something lighter in color and warmer in tone. (In a dream world I would have wood countertops and a magic fairy who would keep them clean and dry and beautiful for me when I cook and make a big mess.)

But in the meantime, we decided to do a (relatively) cheap fix that would give us a lot of satisfaction for the price. We could afford to consider doing this only because Kenny is super handy and David has learned a lot from him in the last three years. (I can't believe how time has passed!)

Believe it or not, we bought the sink on Amazon, for less than $150. With Prime, this bad boy arrived on our door step two days later.



Yup, we took the plunge and became a one-bowl family. So controversial, I know.* But we don't regret it one bit.



Even though this wasn't that expensive in the grand scheme of kitchen remodels, if you know how we live, you know that we like to run a very tight ship with finances. So for the rest of that week, we ate a lot of beans and rice.

Literally.

It's been a couple weeks now, and I still love it. At first, I was worried about it seeming like a downgrade because it's stainless and one-bowl, but now I can't imagine going back. It's amazing.

Someone has even laundered money in it. 

Literally, again. 

Are you confused by that picture? Well, let that be a cliff-hanger for a future post.

(You may now return from the edge of your seats...)

Well, that was that! First post that wasn't completely about food. Aren't you impressed?

________________________________________

* Even in this authoritative article about double-bowl sinks, almost all the commenters** say they prefer their one-bowl.

** Chrome is having a spell-check issue with my usage of the word "commenters." So what are these people called?