a gypsy caravan

Bloom Where You're Planted

When I was a newly married woman, we had a small, two bedroom apartment that was modestly furnished.  I enjoyed decorating that first home but was not very satisfied with performing homemaking tasks.  Honestly,  I did not spend enough time on them to know whether I really liked them but I convinced myself early on that I did not. 

I look back on that little place and realize just how small a space it was, yet I remember feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of keeping it clean not because the job was daunting but because I preferred to spend my time doing other things.  I still placed a lot of value in my "me time" and did not want to be burdened with what I thought was the dull, repetitive job of keeping house.   Homemaking was for my grandmother and my mother, I thought, not for me.  I desired to have a big family someday but I did not really consider the amount of work that would come from that blessing. 

Many nights, I went to bed  with dishes in the sink though I had plenty of time to wash them.  I just preferred not to.  I was not very fond of dusting so I went long stretches between dusting and polishing the furniture.  I often waited for the laundry to pile up before washing it rather than keeping up with it.  I did not consider myself slovenly but simply "undomestic".    I wanted to spend my time doing other things and would get to the housework when I could no longer bear the mess.  In time, I grew increasingly resentful and frustrated with homemaking, wishing someone would come and do it for me so I could "get on with my life".   Little did I realize that my home reflected me as a person.  To neglect my vocation was to rob my family and myself of peace and happiness.   

(I believe that the above situations are far different from a mother with many little ones who simply cannot get it all done.  I could have gotten it done but had no interest in doing so.)

We bought our own home eight years ago and no longer live in that tiny apartment.  We now live in an itty bitty bungalow with four children.  There is more work to do these days, not less.   I am no longer working in the corporate world as I was when I was first married but, instead, spend my days reading stories to little people, caring for the day to day needs of my family, driving to ball games and cooking up a storm.  One would think that my "me time" would be even more coveted  because, as many a mother knows, there is little time each day to spend on things that we choose for ourselves.   Yet, oddly, I find myself enjoying my life more now than I ever have, despite my lack of "me time".    

"It is not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do, that is the secret of happiness."
James Matthew Barrie, novelist and author of Peter Pan

Certainly there are household tasks that I do not enjoy as much as others.  I used to abhor washing dishes.  They would pile up until there were no clean dishes to be found before I would touch them.  I loved to vacuum and clean floors but dishes made my head spin.  Then one day I decided to dim the lights (not too dim or the dishes will not be clean. :), fill the sink with hot soapy water, light a candle on the counter and roll up my sleeves.  I really don't mind washing dishes anymore.  The warm water is very therapeutic to me.  That does not mean if you stop by unexpectedly that you won't find any in the sink at any given time (right Anne? :).  It just means that we can find happiness by doing the chores we used to hate if we try to do them with creativity and a servant's heart of love. 

Homemaking, done well, has blessed my family more than any other activity on which I could spend my time.  While I like to knit and scrapbook, neither of those things affect my family as profoundly as my efforts to make our home a welcome, tidy, and clean place to live. I have seen firsthand how our decluttering efforts have changed the very countenances of those who live here. While we are far from done, not a minute of that time was wasted.  I plan to keep it up and not to lose heart.

"Success is getting what you want.  Happiness is liking what you get." H. Jackson Brown 

Now that decluttering has become a habit around here and we have begun to see the fruits of a tidier home, I have become interested in reading more about how to perform different household tasks.   I have been reading two books, Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson  and Keeping House by Margaret Peterson .   Keeping House shares the "why" of  homemaking.   Mendelson's book explains  how to go about it.  I will be using these two books to encourage myself in my vocation as my decluttering is completed. 

"Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies." --Mother Teresa

Is my home always neat?  No, though I'm finding it is much more manageable now that there is less stuff.  The time it takes to tidy up has shortened drastically and will continue to do so as we finish decluttering.   I am inspired to continue to bless my family by being diligent and faithful in my homemaking efforts.  By abandoning ourselves to the tasks at hand with love, we will find joy in our vocations as wives and mothers.  There is great satisfaction to be found in serving others and denying ourselves.  That is the message of Christ and it can be done within the walls of our home each and every day. 

Peter Walsh on Oprah

Part Two of "Inside the Lives of Hoarders with Peter Walsh" will be shown on Oprah tomorrow.   I did not catch Part One but the story and quite a few links worth following are on this page from Oprah's site. 

HT: Cheryl

Just call me Rosie...

...Rosie the Riveter, that is!

Today, in a frantic effort to get ready for company (six people who are arriving this weekend), I installed two of these:

and  two of these:

Removed the old caulk and proceeded to recaulk one of these (no that's not mine in the photo):

BUT, by far the most exciting job completed today was to repair my upstairs bathtub which has not been working since last MAY. (Ahem.)  To make a long story short, the tub would not drain because the little lever thingy was broken as well as the wire thingy that you can't see that controls the little lever thingy. Once I removed the little lever thingy, the wire thingy and its surrounding plate, I dug down the overflow with a wire hanger and pulled this thing out. 

This thing apparently controls the tub's ability to drain.

Not any more!  (insert evil, sinister laugh)

At least now we can use the tub, though for the time being I will have to purchase a temporary rubber stopper for bathtime.  I didn't want our company to have to share one bathtub between the ten of us. 

Do you know that I only spent $18 and now have two working toilets and two presentable bathtubs?  I am pretty proud of myself. 

Now I am going to prop up my feet and have a glass of wine.  Then I am going to bed. :)

A Little Blogging Break

I am taking a little blogging break to work on my home.  It has gotten quite messy and needs my attention.   See you in a few days! Rebecca

Homemaking Update

I have been continuing my  household purging, though completion might be weeks or months away now that we are back to lessons.   It has all been going quite well with two van loads of random items hauled off to Goodwill.  I drove off with forty stuffed animals in the last load.  Do you know that no one has noticed yet?  Not one child has said a peep.  Phew!

Upon beginning to declutter, I was afraid that my biggest obstacle would be my emotional attachment to certain items.  Now that I have seen it played out,  I have not had much trouble parting with things.  In fact, there are few things in my home that are really THAT important to me.  Photographs of my family and my father's model ships are  all I am particularly sentimental about.  Books are another thing I will hang on to as a matter of homeschooling practicality, though I know there are many I will purge when I get to that room. 

I have much much more to do.  (hint: Come over ANNE !!! Please? :)  I detailed the living room and sunroom, dusting everything thoroughly and eliminating a lot of things that we simply don't need in there.  The rooms that are finished are looking a little, well, bare.  Maybe not sterile but certainly streamlined.   It will take some getting used to but in a very good way. :)

Kim and I have talked at length about clean design lines and minimal decorations.  We've agreed that simple, functional spaces make us smile.  I now have two rooms that almost fit that bill.  Honestly, it feels kind of strange to me now that it is happening.  Two rooms down, six more to go (not including a really nasty basement and a scary linen closet).

I've been following the suggestions in It's All Too Much which uses the acronym F.A.S.T.

Fix a time--Schedule a time for decluttering and make it happen.

Anything not used for twelve months--out the door!

Someone else's stuff--return it or get rid of it!

Trash--gone forever.  Once you take it out of your home, do not bring any of it back inside your home.

Setting aside time each day has been very helpful.  The days fly by so quickly and unless I give time to decluttering,  it rarely happens.  Even fifteen minutes makes a huge difference. 

Slow and steady wins the race, right?

Patiently Following the Protocol

It has been hard for me to follow this book, not because it is a difficult read or because I don't like the content, quite the opposite.  I have a tendency to want to skip ahead to the portions that tell me HOW to declutter, rather than reading the whys and following his lead.  I want to know how many sweaters to own, how to organize my cupboards and how often to flip my mattress. I am kind of a "tell me what to do and I'll do it" type of person.  I want to read the last page, to reap the benefits quickly rather than do the life-changing thinking.

The most important activity that Walsh mentions time and time again is to visualize the kind of life you want to live.  This is not because he believes that we can think ourselves into being neat and tidy but because he recognizes the connection between verbalizing our goals and achieving them.  When we take time to write down how we'd like our life to look, we might be surprised that it differs from what we are doing day in and day out. 

I took the time to do this exercise the other day.  I was quite surprised by what I wrote because little of what I feel is important is actually being done.  I am spending my time elsewhere, apparently.  In the shuffle of life I am losing sight of what is important to me.  Here is what I came up with, nothing poetic, just a list of things that I would like to call my own.  I want to:

• rise early each day, feeling energetic and well rested.
• be as healthy and physically fit as I am able given my state of life, to exercise most days and to serve nourishing, well planned meals.
• be friendly and cheerful towards my family, to be an encouragement to them emotionally and spiritually.
• educate my children at home, to teach them the vital basics as well as to exposing them to interesting ideas, inspiring people and heroes of their Faith. 
• make my home a peaceful place to rest, learn and grow.
• have a home that we look forward to coming home to, a welcoming place for friends to visit.
• be sure that our belongings in our home reflect, support and enhance who we are as a family, not hinder us or weigh us down emotionally, physically or financially.
• pray the Rosary, as well as other prayers from the heart, each day.
• to spend my free time gardening, knitting, hiking, reading and traveling with my family.
• to embrace my vocation as a wife and mother by eliminating those outside activities that are a distraction or that rob my family of free time.

Walsh then asks us to envision what we want our home to look like, room by room.  As I mentioned in my last post, we have a small home.  I could wish for a sprawling Cape Cod with an ocean view or a farm house with dozens of acres but I believe he is meaning the current space we have been given.  How would we like it to look?  What is the function for each individual room now?  What should it be?

I am going to peruse some of my old catalogs (before I purge them away :) and get some inspiration.  I am not so much planning to replace furniture or redecorate (though a new coat of paint is not out of the question in several rooms) but I will be taking small steps (after de-cluttering)  to make things more beautiful and welcoming without spending a lot of money or adding more clutter to my home.   I need to remember that the goal in this exercise is to envision the beauty and calm with which I want to surround my family.  The next step will be to eliminate those things in each room that impede that vision.   

Walsh writes:

"Every time you look at an item in a room and contemplate whether you should keep it, imagine the life you want to live and ask yourself these basic questions:  How does your home serve your notion of the life you wish you had?  Do the things you own help you achieve that life or distract from that vision?  Is there room in your bedroom to sleep peacefully?  Does the front hallway welcome you when you arrive home after a tiring day?  Can your family gather for meals, fun or relaxation without the interference of piles of junk?  Every item filling your home should move your life vision forward and serve a real function, one that you can explain without making excuses.  Remember, 'Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.'  Do your things meet these standards?"

For today, these are the things I let go which are awaiting their trip to charity.  The item on the floor is a wicker ottoman, which I do like but have no room for.  We keep tripping over it. The rest is, well, just stuff. 

Good riddance! :)

Is It All Too Much?

I have been reading It's All Too Much:  An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life by Peter Walsh.   I have read many different organizational books in my day, many of which have worked for me for periods of time.  Inevitably, I tweak and tweak the system until it no longer resembles that which I originally read about.  Lately, I have ditched any and all systems as none of them seem to be cutting it, store bought or self made.  Many of you know the feeling that it takes every bit of energy each day just to make three meals and clean them up, let alone organize and declutter.  That is where I am at.  I can try to organize my calendar, my chore system, my daily routine, my lesson plans but the most important thing I can do right now is to eliminate those things which are dragging us down and making my home unwelcoming.

You may wonder why I am taking the time to tell you about this  book when I have just admitted that I have read many of them.  What makes this book different?  In the introduction alone, Walsh tells his readers that he is not going to talk about the "stuff".  He claims that organizing rarely starts with the "stuff" but starts by visualizing the life that we want to live.  "Does the stuff we own contribute to the lives that we are hoping to achieve, or is it getting in the way of that vision?  If it's impeding our vision for the life we want, then why is it in our homes?  Why is it in our lives?  Why do we cling to it?"  These are questions that Mike and I will be asking ourselves in the upcoming weeks.

There is a quote in this book that really sums up my organizational problem.  "You can rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic as many times as you'd like but the ship is still going down."  You see, I have been moving clutter around for years.  I do not have many knick knacks or chachkis but BOY do we have books...and wooden toys...and playmobil men and...fill in the blank.  Peter Walsh explains that most people spend an inordinate amount of time, organizing their clutter into handy, pretty storage bins.  Rather than get rid of our clutter, we buy another storage solution.  He mentions that while families have (sadly) gotten smaller in the past thirty years, home sizes have grown by half.  We have bigger homes and less people living in them.  Ten percent of Americans have a self storage space off their own property. That is a lot of "stuff".

We live in small bungalow with a relatively unusable basement which floods several times a year.  We have very little storage space, like most homes built between the two World Wars.  People were not hoarders back then and they repaired much, rather than replacing items.  Two of our bedrooms have a single door width closet and two bedrooms share a closet which is slightly larger.  We have a shallow linen closet on the main floor and a small crawl space in the attic eaves where we store our Christmas decorations.  I am not complaining about my home, believe me.  However, we have a very small home.  That's a fact.  This is the space we have been given and I need to make it the most pleasant place I can.  I need to declutter and make some "breathing room".   I want to turn our home into a source of comfort rather than a source of stress. 

I will be sharing my thoughts on this book as I continue to read it, along with any and all projects that we tackle head on.   It will be an exciting adventure, believe me. :)

A Friend on a Mission

My dear friend Anne has taken it upon herself to help me get organized.  She comes over here fairly often and I regularly apologize for the baskets of laundry in the living room or the dishes in the sink.  She is a naturally born organized person.  Her home is always neat and clean.  I never quite understand how she does it.  Frankly, I think she has a housekeeper who lives in some back bedroom of her home that runs and hides whenever we come over to play. :)

Anyhow, Anne spent the day at my home yesterday bouncing her godchild and giving me tips and ideas on how to keep my home orderly.   Sure, I can look at a room and know if it is clean.  I can visualize clean and tidy but visualizing it is a far cry from doing it. Decorating, I can do.  Organizing, not so much. 

I asked her where to start and start we did. With all of the Christmas baking and cooking to be done, the kitchen was a great place to begin.   I took the many piles of school papers, Playmobil men, holy cards and coupons off my counters, scrubbed them clean and rearranged them.  Anne told me where things would work best in my small kitchen. . 

We emptied cupboards.  I put together a bag of food to donate at church.  Did you know that I had four GIANT cans of YAMS in my cupboards?   We don't even eat canned yams.  In fact, I don't even remember buying a single can of yams in my life.  Where did they come from?  Why are they here?

Also, as a side note:  Do you know that every time my mother comes over she brings a box of jello?  I have no idea why.  I have about twenty five boxes of jello in my cupboard.   Anne suggested that every time my mother comes for dinner (which is often) I make a some jello.  Tonight I am serving raspberry. :)

My kitchen used to be full of little homemade projects that the children have made: tiny people made of feathers, little bottles of sand art, construction paper teepees and the like.  I never knew how long to keep them.  Which ones do I keep and which go into the circular file?  Anne told me to keep the special ones in a box for each child and toss the rest after a week or so.  I have truly never thought of that.   So you mean I can throw away the Perler Bead creatures that the boys made when they were three.  OH!  Well, that saves some space! 

When cleaning off my counters, she noticed the coffee maker.  "Do you drink coffee?", she asked.   "No."  "Does Mike drink coffee?" she asked smiling.  "I guess maybe once or twice a year."   "Well, maybe you ought to put that away."

Hmmm....never thought of that.

Some other things that didn't make the cut:

• The wine rack--The occasional bottle of wine that enters my home is gone in no time.  Why pretend it will sit for weeks in a wine rack?
• The enormous bread basket-- This was taking up most of one counter.  I kid you not. It had become a home for all the lost items in the kitchen.  (Oh, and the bread.)
• Four cutting boards.  I still have two.  Apparently, we do a lot of simultaneous cutting around here.

So now I have some nice wide open spaces in my kitchen because one woman took time out of her day and helped her domestically challenged friend.  I am so, so grateful.  I have to think of a way to repay her.

Hey, Anne,  does your family like canned yams? :)