A mountain of laundry, and nothing to wear. April 30, 2008

I struggle with laundry, and it should be so simple. A load a day. Why can’t I achieve that? Even Flylady couldn’t get me there.

So I revert back to my old methods - if I’m not getting some household task done, start eliminating and winnowing out and decluttering.

But I ponder this: if we had fewer clothes (which we certainly could get by with here at mi casa) would I do laundry less often? Or would I just wash the same clothes more often.

OR, would we be more diligent about re-wearing things that aren’t dirty? Would I be better about putting a bib on the little one when we are at home to preserve her clean-shirt status so the shirt could be reworn? It’s not like she sweats or anything. Except her head, which sweats like a flowing river, usually when she is sleeping next to me, leading to her being adhered to my body by sweat. But I digress.

What I think would happen is this: I think that if, say, the worst it could ever get is an accumulation of four loads of laundry (except for bed linens & towels), then I would never be overwhelmed by Big Laundry Mountain. I would know “L, there are no more than four loads there, babe, and if you get your tail in there and get started, you will be done before supper.

I think I need to eliminate some laundry potential. You know, like debt potential. Debt potential is the amount of debt trouble you could get into, if you added up the available credit you have on your cards. That right there is your debt potential. My laundry potential remains high. We can go easily a week without doing laundry. Probably because I never did laundry often enough so the husband bought himself enough socks and underwear and garments in general to last him at least two weeks.

So tomorrow is laundry day, and I am sad about that. I don’t want it to be laundry day. I want it to be World of Warcraft Day, but that’s not gonna happen. I’m trying to get excited about it, like it’s a big initiative that I will feel super about when done, but I don’t feel any excitement stirring AT ALL.

So maybe it’s time to go back through and remove ten items from each family member’s wardrobe. I’ve been ruthless with mine, but the girls tend to accumulate garments from hand-me-downs and sales and me sewing little things for fun. They’ve got more than they need though. Way more. And other people don’t. So maybe I could feel a little excitement about laundry day tomorrow IF I vow to winnow out garments from each load of clothes as it comes out of the dryer. AND if I said that since it’s laundry day and that’s my primary objective for the day, and everyone knows that laundry requires about 10 minutes of activity followed by about 45 minutes of waiting, then repeat the cycle….well, what else could I possibly do with my waiting time than play World of Warcraft! So there you have it. I have a sound reason for it to be WoW Day because it will facilitate my laundry operation.

So if you play WoW, I can be found running happily through Lothar tomorrow, hoping to level up and engineering a mechanical squirrel or two. And now I’m smiling about my Wednesday plan.

L

8 Hats in the Car April 29, 2008

Had to clean out the car today before we went to Walmart. Two kids and a husband who travels all the time = lots of accumulated flotsam in the car, and no real time to dedicate to cleaning it out. That’s my excuse, anyway.

So in the back seat, between floorboard and the space between the two car seats, plus cargo area, there were 8 hats for two girls.  My theory is to keep one hat in the car for each girl in case we end up outside somewhere and it’s sunny. But they are both hat-lovers and so favorite hats get brought to the car and left there.

There’s a good 6 more hats inside, counting the coat closet and their closet. So 14 hats, give or take, for two pre-school girls.

That right there is a red light on the dashboard of my life, indicating that I have a consumption problem. Two girls should equal four hats total - summer & winter chapeaux for each of them.  Now if hats were their passion, I could concede a bit more - I mean, I have an ardent love for shoes and handbags. It’s a want vs. need situation, and I’m not saying that life has to be spartan.

But 14 hats. Really.

It speaks for itself, and I post this only to show you what types of things I’m noticing these days. Noticing this stuff is a great step towards fixing it. SORTING your stuff and putting like things all together is a great step towards noticing you have a problem.

My goal by end of day today is to have all children’s hats report to the library table, where I will have them help me  pick some to donate, pack away the Tigger hat with the orange tail in the baby box, and then stow the keepers where they belong.

I gotta start somewhere, right? What crazy things have you noticed that you have rampant amounts of?

L

Analyzing my house. Issue 1: Clutter, stuff, & overabundance. April 29, 2008

Before we get where we’re going, we gotta see what’s holding us back. What’s wrong with my house, and with my household management and practices? Clutter is going to take up this first post on house analysis. Before my house can function like a well-oiled, productive machine, I have to strip it down to the essentials and eliminate everything that is not beloved or useful.

Clutter. Not as much as there used to be, but clutter nonetheless. Clutter elimination was the first step on this long journey, and I started with that after having my first child and realizing that the more things I had to pick up or put away, the more I had to clean and maintain and work. So reducing clutter was a function of my laziness. Get rid of the clutter, reduce the work.  For motivation and inspiration, I rely on:

• www.flylady.net Flylady rules. It’s a wonderful place to start, though the personality and temperament of the site doesn’t suit everyone. For those who function well with having a little friendly housekeeping fairy telling you what to do throughout the day and keeping you on task, it’s perfect. She’s loving, kind, and can nag you without making you feel nagged.
• www.unclutterer.com Oh, how I love this site. Discovered it earlier in the year, and it’s like hanging out with the organized crowd. If you are drawn to minimalism, this is it. Even if you will never be a minimalist, this site will be a good influence on you.
• www.thehealthylivinglounge.com She’s feng shui-focused and has a great philosophical bent. Touches on a little of everything, but a good resource if you tend towards the “clutter has negative energy attached” view.

I’d like to hear what sites motivate and inspire you to pick up, weed out, donate, sell…

The inevitable link to clutter is consumerism. In fact, everything all ties together, but you gotta start somewhere. We’ll talk about consumerism ad nauseam, because it can sabotage everything we are trying to accomplish. But just a bit here: Unless we reduce household consumption, nothing will improve. So if you are starting to eliminate clutter from your life, start thinking about your consumption habits too. That’s what I’m doing. My grocery list sometimes has 50 items on it, my Walmart list 20. Why? Because of consumer habits, because as long as I stay within the budget, I tend to think I’m doing well. 

Ugh. There’s no good place to stop and start posts, because one topic just leads to another.  It’s a vicious chain linked together by bad habits that we all have. Sometimes we don’t even realize it’s a bad habit. It’s just there.  We buy Concord grape juice for the beneficial polyphenols (I think that’s the good thing about Concord grape but can’t remember).  We buy Simply Orange because it’s the best-tasting OJ I have ever had and, well, there’s vitamin C. We buy Simply Apple just because it’s so yummy. Mouthwateringly so. Then there’s mango nectar because of my obsession with all things tropical & for its smoothie-enhancing properties. There’s usually a pitcher of tea in there, and sometimes one of homemade lemonade.  Milk, of course…a few random Starbucks bottled drinks, some Ting (see tropical addiction referenced above), Mexican Cokes (kid is intolerant to corn syrup). On and on and on.

We buy these things because they are available, because we have a food budget that is reasonable, because I am as much a gourmand as a gourmet & food makes me happy, so being able to drink whatever I have a whim to drink pleases me. As long as there was no corn syrup, limited ingredients, sorta kind whole food-ish, I haven’t felt any guilt about it in the past.

But how much packaging is wasted on us (in my house)?  My kids only truly NEED water, breastmilk til they weaned, the occasional juice for a little variety and fun, milk or rice milk or almond milk for cereal, and hubby and I can’t function without our beloved tea. Instead of having 10 or 15 beverage options in our house, we are gonna reduce that down to four or five.  To me, gluttony is consuming because we can, because it’s there - not because we need it.  Fewer beverages purchased means more money saved, less packaging wasted on us, less clutter in the pantry and fridge. This is a win-win and my first attempt at curbing overabundance is to stop buying so many beverages.

Talk to me, Goose. Let me hear about it at your house.

L