Category Archives: Kondo-ing my life

Howard/ Nicole The Duck

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One benefit of keeping an old school blog for the past eight years is that I can easily see patterns in my own life. For example, every single fall I feel like I’m careening off the rails a little bit, in terms of busyness, and yes, we are all busy and tired and whatnot, no one wants to hear about how busy we are, but it is nice to see a pattern and recognize that I feel this way every year.

In related news, October is almost over, and I feel like it should still be mid-September. But no. Sometimes I feel like I’m a duck, gracefully gliding through the water on the pond, but what is not visible to the eye is my pair of little feet-flippers going like mad, just to keep gracefully gliding.

All is good, it is, even though I have bags under my eyes that require their own postal code. Several months ago I wrote something for YMC called “Confessions of a Pulled-Together Mom” and I braced myself for the blow-back. I was expecting trolls to come out of the woodwork to criticize my vanity at the expense of neglecting my children, but I only really received one such comment. The rest were more of the “me too” variety, which was completely surprising. On discussing it with the YMC Editor-in-Chief, I realized that this generation of young moms is much more comfortable with the concept of self-care than MY generation. This is a very very good thing. When I had babies, lo those many years ago, it wasn’t the done thing to admit that you showered every day, put on makeup, and blow-dried your hair. Back when my kids were babies, many of my peers were into that martyr thing: I was so busy I didn’t brush my teeth all weekend, and I haven’t had a shower for days. Hygiene, oral and otherwise, was frequently scorned because my generation seemed to be made up of High Powered Career Girls Who Are Now Putting 100% Energy Into Child-Rearing And Have No Time To Spare On Vanities. Not everyone felt that way, of course, but motherhood did feel a bit like a Project back then. I mean, I had a book – which I have since donated – about how to raise smarter babies, and another one that was all about brain-enriching and sensory-stimulating activities to do with your baby. Such activities included making a pulley system for teddy bears, to illustrate cause-and-effect, and the concept of impermanence. And I actually did those activities. Now, thinking about how my children enjoy such things as Grand Theft Auto and jokes about farting and people getting hit in the testicles, I cannot help but smile at my younger, optimistic self.

But I digress. The only negative comments I had from that Pulled-Together piece were that, in the photos, I didn’t appear to be wearing makeup at all. I had several such comments, and I was taken aback by it a little, because YOU GUYS, if you could see me without makeup. HOO BOY. In particular, today, when I have eye bags under my eye bags, well. I promised my husband I wouldn’t post any more unflattering photos of myself on this blog, but you can see a few here and here. And those are from two years ago, so as you can probably imagine, I have aged somewhat since then. Anyway, I love the thought that some people think I’m all au naturel when really, the opposite is true.

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Eyebags with a side of grey roots.

Speaking of oral hygiene, a few months back there was some kind of expose about Big Dental and the Flossing Conspiracy. Did you know we’ve all been conned into thinking that flossing is beneficial, when in fact there has been almost no empirical evidence to suggest that it prevents cavities and gum disease? Quick, everyone burn your dental floss!

Just like that, but with floss.

Fun fact: I had that fish without a bicycle poster on my office wall when I was in grad school, along with a copy of the Feminist Manifesto.

Anyway, I think I’ll keep my floss, since I’m not a fan of having decaying bits of food between my teeth, studies be damned.

There have also been a number of studies saying that vitamin supplements are essentially useless, and you may as well set your money – along with your dental floss – on fire. Well, I will say this: you will tear my bottles of vitamins out of my cold, dead hands. Especially my Vitamin D, since it has been grey and gloomy and foggy here like you wouldn’t believe. Yesterday my friend and I were walking our dogs at the off-leash, and it was so foggy we could barely see twenty feet in front of us. It was very eerie, like something in a horror film. Maybe it’s just the lead up to Halloween (YOU GUYS, HALLOWEEN IS ON MONDAY! MONDAY!) but it was really creepy.

On that note, I have things I need to cross off my to-do list, and if I start talking about my love for vitamin supplements, or how virtuous I feel because I haven’t yet bought and eaten several boxes of Halloween candy, I’ll be here until the cows (or children) come home. Signing off, xoxo.

But it’s not on the list!

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Part of the Life-Changing Magic that I have enjoyed since Tidying Up The Kitchen is that I have become incredibly organized and non-hoarder-ish when it comes to food. I had gotten into a bad habit of freestyling when it came to grocery shopping. I would think, wow, what a great price for coconut milk!, then I would purchase several cans of said coconut milk, only to discover upon returning home that I had a dozen cans already in my cupboard, but no black beans, which I would have gone to the store for.

No longer! Now, since I’ve Kondo-ed My Life, I not only have all cans/ dry goods arranged by ingredient type and frequency of use, I also have four lists going at all times of purchases I need to make at one of the four major stores I shop at. I do not allow myself to write an item on my list until I am down to the last one or two of something, depending on how valued that item is in my life. For example, I would never go below two cans of chickpeas, but I might go as low as one can of coconut milk. I write every single item on the list, and then I do not deviate from the list.

Usually. But more on that in a moment.

Part of the problem I discovered with myself is that I seemed to have a certain desperate emotion when shopping that I had cultivated when the boys were small and it was difficult to get out to Costco or Superstore. I had that if I don’t get it now, I might not be back here for months kind of attitude, which is no longer my reality. I live within walking distance to a mall, a Walmart, two major drug stores and two grocery stores. I live within a very short drive to another mall, and within a 10-15 minute drive to Costco and Superstore. I am not Ma Ingalls, living 40 miles and across the river from Independence, Kansas, with only a horse and wagon to get to and from for basic living requirements. I am not stranded, thinking that the only thing my children will get for Christmas is a goddamn mini cake baked out of the white sugar I save for company only, because I can’t get to town.

I also tended to have the feeling that if I don’t get it now, what if the item is unavailable which is ridiculous. Rarely, if ever, are the four major stores I shop at completely out of large flake oats, tahini, or the laundry detergent I like. There is no need to hoard. Therefore, I shop based on my list ONLY. Mostly.

Lately I’ve been taking advantage of the hour the boys are at karate to go to Superstore for groceries. It’s a quick hour, but doable. Yesterday I found myself with a full cart behind a lady who didn’t seem to have too much in her cart. Great! However, she had put a divider between every few items, and then would pay for them separately, with different cards. Listen, everyone has a different situation, and that’s fine. I also think it’s kind of bullshit that “Grapes: $2.94, limit of 1” is a thing, and yes, the way around that is to pay for each container of grapes separately. That’s fine. I also realize everyone has different cards and different needs.

I’m just saying that it took FOREVER.

I zoned out a little bit, when I realized the cashier was addressing me. He had his hand on a package of Golden Oreos, which was right before the divider that had two pomegranates in a bag, which was right before the divider that separated my groceries. Naturally, since he had the Oreos in his sight, I figured he was asking about them, and so I said they weren’t mine.

“No!” he said sternly, with a huge frown. “I’m JUST asking if you want the Deal of the Week.” At that point, he waved a box of Q-Tips at me, which was, I assumed, the Deal of the Week. I declined, and he exhaled sharply. “It’s my JOB. I HAVE TO ASK IF YOU WANT THE DEAL OF THE WEEK.”

I get it. Customer service is HARD. It must have been especially hard with the lady paying for everything in separate, tiny groups, while her teenage children kept running up to the till with something else in hand, which he would ring through, and then she’d say that she didn’t want it. I get it.

When I was in university, I waitressed at Moxie’s for a few years. It was a good job for a student, but one August I worked 28 days in a row and by the end of it I hated the entire human race. I hated the elderly who would come and eat their one veal cutlet and drink their endless cups of hot water and then tip fifty cents, I hated the children who would scream if the red crayon was broken, I hated the women out on a girls’ night who would complain bitterly if there was too much salt on the rim of their margaritas and then would fail to tip at all, I hated the way people patted me on the butt or thigh as I walked by, to get my attention. I HATED THEM ALL.

But what I hated most was that we had certain items we had to sell, or promote, and certain language with which to promote them. There was a white board in the kitchen that listed every server’s name and how many of those items we had sold that week, and our shifts would depend on that. The person who sold fifty Long Island Iced Teas would get a better shift than the person who would sell two, and then it was a vicious cycle of bad shifts and inability to sell booze at the noon shift.

Worse, at that time there were “Mystery Shoppers” who had checklists to mark off, and if you didn’t use the particular language or promote the particular product, you could lose your job or get demoted to hostess, which was the worst. Dealing with hangry people in a lineup, seating people only to have them request a table change, or say that they really wanted a booth, with no tips to even soften the indignity of it all.

Any time I had a table, even if the table was full of barely-mobile elderly people, I had to cheerfully ask if they would like to try our feature drinks, today it is a Sea Breeze, and would they like regular or Moxie size for just $1.99 extra? And then half the time the customer would forget that they’d Moxie-sized it and dispute the bill and it was not fun at all.

All of which is to say, I get the cashier’s frustration. I get being tired and hating people and having to ask if they want the Deal of the Week. Sometimes there are people like me who are strictly shopping based on a list and no, lavender-scented liquid soap is not on that list, but it’s $1.99 and I am not made of stone, so I dither a bit and take too long to decide if I am going to spend TWO DOLLARS on an item that is not on my list but will be utilized eventually so maybe?

Anyway, I had just been to Costco, and have a three pack of 500 Q-Tips at home, which is at least a two-year supply in my household, so I was firm on that one. But then I heard the lady behind me, when the cashier asked if she wanted to partake, dither about whether or not $3.97 WAS a good deal or not, eventually deciding in the negative.

The cashier turned to me, loading my spinach and grapes (LIMIT OF ONE) in my cart, and he took a deep breath before muttering, “For FUCK’S SAKE.” under his breath.

And all I could think of was, I understand, buddy. I hope you get the day off tomorrow.

A slight blip in my magical journey

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“Things seem a lot busier with your yoga teacher training.” My husband said this to me over the weekend and it feels like A Massive Understatement. Saturday morning I got up early to bake a cake, then showered, bought groceries, took the kids to karate, and came home to frost and assemble the cake prior to heading off to the Saturday session of teacher training. Fifteen minutes after I got home in the late afternoon, the guests for Jake’s sleepover birthday party arrived. So things have been a bit hectic.

Happy hectic, though. The sleepover was a huge success; I really like the boys’ friends and we did get some sleep as well. The kids didn’t get much sleep, but I got a decent amount, so that’s all that counts, in my opinion. Everyone was in bed early last night and this morning we all felt pretty much rested for the busy week ahead.

I guess I’m not used to this level of busyness – there is something going on every night this week, except for tonight. Between karate, the Welcome Back Picnic, Meet The Teacher Night, and yoga teacher training, my evenings are all filled up. Plus, we have a very special day coming up – Jake is turning eleven!

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That’s one of my favourite photos, ever. And hey, I’m a brunette! And I have yet to develop those deep horizontal forehead lines. Please bear with me while I admire my youth for a moment, along with my super-cute Patriots fan.

So it was a busy, fun weekend, marred only by one little incident. As you know, I’ve been Kondo-ing my house, and all the bags and boxes of things to donate have been sitting in our pantry/ storage area. I gave a few boxes of my favourite things (older Lululemon, pretty sweaters, a dress) to a friend, the children’s outgrown winter coats, snowpants, hats and mitts are all going to the school for newcomers, and I had about twenty large bags and boxes that were slated for donation. My husband has been asking me every day WHEN those bags and boxes would be gone, to which I answered austerely, Saturday. Saturday they would all be gone.

A local charity, which regularly calls me for clothing/ toy/ household items had arranged to pick everything up on Saturday. I stipulated that it would be a large pickup, and they said that would be no problem, as long as I had the donations out by 8:00 am Saturday morning. For days I had been slowly bringing bags and boxes up every time I went downstairs, in preparation. Here’s a sample of what my front entry looked like, and this didn’t even include all of them:

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So when I got home on Saturday afternoon and the bags were still sitting on my front step, my husband was all sorts of unhappy. We waited…and waited…and waited…until finally, we reached a state of acceptance: the bags were not going to be picked up that day. One of my friends texted me to see if we’d had a pickup, because she was waiting for one as well.

Insert slight frowny face here.

Rain was in the forecast, and my husband was unwilling to have the tripping hazards back in our house, and so they are currently sitting in his truck, waiting to find a new home. In The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo talks about wishing our possessions a happy journey as they find their way to new owners. In my case, the journey seems to be stalled. I hope my old sheets and the Ally McBeal soundtrack aren’t feeling sad that they are in limbo right now. Don’t worry, guys. Someone is going to love you again soon.

New (School) Year, New Me

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I have that autumnal Back To School Energy right now, that feeling that it’s A New Year, And A New You, and I’m brimming with goals and things to do and filling my days up with Productive Activities And Work-Related Things. Either it’s a coping mechanism for the house being dead quiet all day and my birds flying the nest, or it’s just a natural part of my yearly cycle; whichever it is, it’s a good feeling to Cross Things Off The Lists.

I am almost done Kondo-ing the entire house! I only have the kids’ schoolwork and artwork bins to take care of – things that probably should wait until AFTER the first week of school, because EMOTIONS – and I probably should take care of the storage room filled with old paint cans and, apparently, shoe boxes. Well, the paint cans can go to the firehall, and I think we can all agree that this will be a very pleasant task indeed, although not as pleasant as when the kids were small and the firefighters would kindly let them sit in the truck and give them fire safety colouring books. There’s a big, big difference in being an early-thirties mom with two adorable little boys, and being a forty-one year old woman lugging paint cans by herself. I mean, they probably aren’t going to give me the tour or let me sit in the truck.

That reminds me, I really should clean out the schoolwork bins sooner rather than later, because when Jake was in preschool I chaperoned the field trip to the firehall. I rarely volunteered for field trips, and so that probably indicates my feelings about the firehall. Anyway, the firefighters challenged two of the parents to a race, to see who could put on the firefighter’s outfit the fastest. Is it called an outfit? I don’t know. You know what I mean – the boots, overall pants, coat, helmet and everything. I was chosen to be one of those parents. Somewhere in one of those bins is a photo the preschool teacher sent me, of me in the firefighter outfit with Jake.

I should probably mention that I won the race. It was against the lone father who decided to chaperone. IN YOUR FACE, STEVE.

(His name may or may not have been Steve. It’s actually killing me that I can’t remember his name.)

My husband has been pretty busy these days, lots of regular stuff plus doing little things around the house like repainting the bathroom after filling giant holes in the wall. The contractors installed towel racks but didn’t use wall studs, and after four years one finally gave way, leaving gaping holes in the drywall. Luckily my husband is a handy kind of guy, but it still took a lot of work and a couple of trips to Rona and Home Depot to get new towel hooks. All of which is to say, I decided that I would take the car in to get an oil change, which is something – BLUE JOB – that he would normally do.

I know, I know, it’s totally retro of me to refer to vehicle maintenance as a Blue Job, but that’s the way it is in this house. I am totally cool with it.

Some of you may remember what happened the last time I took the car for an oil change, but this time, I thought, would be different. For one thing, there’s no nail bar at this dealership. For another, this dealership doesn’t require appointments but instead prides itself on quick oil changes. Or, express lubes.

expresslube

It sounds so dirty!

Anyway, my husband had informed me that there would be no charge, something about included with extended warranty, blah blah blah car stuff blah blah. When I got there, I confirmed this with the fellow who checked me in, and after Looking It Up In The System, he said that indeed, there would be no charge. Yay! I went to the waiting room to stare at the tropical fish tank, read Do Your OM Thing, and admire the chutzpah of a woman wearing the absolutely most colourful floor-length caftan I had ever seen.

You can probably guess the punchline here. When the lady at the service desk called me over, she charged me, and informed me that our two remaining free oil changes would not be free after all, for reasons which remain mysterious. I never know what to do in situations like this. I should probably be more assertive, and squeaky-wheel-ish, but I guess I’m not. When it comes to vehicle maintenance, I have absolutely no confidence in my ability to deal with things. I would have called my husband at work, but I knew he was on a conference call. So I paid it, went home, and texted my husband.

A livid phone call to the service manager, which I was not party to, has resulted in the admittance that the woman at the counter had made a mistake, a credit at the dealership, and much annoyance on my part. Why. WHY does dealing with vehicle stuff have to be so fraught for me? Why do I have no confidence in myself when it comes to cars? When am I going to figure out how to open the hood of my minivan? These are all very good questions and perhaps, in my quest for Kondo-ing everything, New Year, New Me, and reorganizing my life, I should work on this. Personal growth, the automobile edition.

Kondo-ing My Life, The Clothing Edition

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So here we are in the very last week of summer vacation, and finally, FINALLY the weather is lovely. Although it looks like it’s all going to hell on the long weekend, so hurrah for Calgary for living up to its usual weather standards. Well, at least it isn’t forecasted to SNOW. At least, I think it isn’t.

The boys have reached the happy stage where they are busy planning their own social lives and I am the cheerful chauffeur/ casual supervisor. I actually really love hearing the incredibly-loud sounds of tween boys in the house, and I know that sounds sarcastic but I am in earnest. I hope they always want to bring their friends over to Hang Out.

Meanwhile, when they are off gallivanting in the neighbourhood and hanging out drinking slurpees in the back yard, I have been continuing with my quest to Spark Joy In My House By Getting Rid Of All The Crap.

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Also: Sparking Joy By Drinking Beer.

I do not think I am exaggerating by saying that my life has truly been changed. By the Magic of Tidying Up. Holy moly, I have always prided myself on having a very clean and organized house, but I have been in this house for 16 years and there are some spots that have become dumping grounds/ cemeteries for odd items. Things that I never really wanted to deal with, I have been Dealing With. At this time I am up to 25 bags and boxes for donation, 5 bags of garbage (eek) and I don’t even know how much recycling.

Here’s the thing, though: my closet was the least of it. Remember several months ago when I reorganized my closet and I got rid of nothing whatsoever? Well, this time around I kept thinking, KonMari-like, wouldn’t it be wonderful if every clothing item you owned brought you joy? Armed with nothing but a grim determination and also a repression of feelings about fleeting time and the end of summer, I emptied all my drawers containing tops and sweaters on the floor.

Tops

This pile is ONLY sweaters and tees. It does not include my yoga wear, beach wear, or exercise gear. I went through everything, earnestly and whole-heartedly. Here is the “keep” pile.

Keep

And here is the “donate” pile:

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*NOTE* I am keeping Barkley. He just was incredibly confused and probably thought I was packing for vacation or something, and so needed to block me in my room.

The take-away from this exercise is twofold: a) my clothing really does Spark Joy, and b) I have a lot of clothes. By the time I finished going through pants, dresses, pajamas, scarves, shoes, boots, yoga clothes, and swimwear, I had two small/ medium boxes full of items for donation. So of my 25 bags and boxes, my clothing was less than ten percent of that.

That felt good, because I do love clothes and shopping, and I liked that I mostly have purchased things that I really loved. A few items that I donated didn’t fit properly anymore, or didn’t suit me as well as I’d hoped, but as a general rule, my shopping habits have been decent and not overly wasteful.

BUT.

I still have a lot of clothes, and so in the spirit of September, Fresh Starts, and New (School) Year Resolutions, I have one big goal, and if I Blog It I Will Have To Stick To It.

Are you ready?

I am not going to buy myself a single item of clothing until my birthday next April.

Eeek! For me, this is a big deal, but I’m going to stick to it. The next time I see something I like I will a) go shopping in my own closet and will probably find something similar, or b) put it on a Christmas wish list, since my husband and kids like to have specific items to look for when it comes to gift shopping for me.

Mental note: keep Christmas wish list small, or the point of this exercise will be lost.

Much, much more to come on my Personal Growth From Kondo-ing (someone is staring at you in Personal Growth*) but for now I have peppermint fudge ice cream to make, kids to feed, and a giant stack of old magazines to purge. xo

*Big kudos to whoever can name that movie. Hint: it is my all-time favourite.

Kondo-ing My Life

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I consider myself to be a very self-aware person. I know that I can be very easy to live with, in some ways, but very difficult in others. I can recognize my faults along with my positive character traits. So I recognize that at the end of the summer, I become a bit of an emotional mess. Landslide, and all that.

My end-of-summer melancholy is always tempered by my excited-to-start-fresh-in-September attitude, so I’m not trying to say that I become a mopey, weeping person by mid-August. I’m just saying that in the past I’ve had to choke back tears all through Inside Out, which turned into full-blown sobbing about Bing Bong. The year Jake started kindergarten I cried so hard while on hold with the printer Help Desk that the gentlemen on the other side told me that maybe I should go get myself a drink of water, and he would take care of everything. Then he sent me a new printer. 

Anyway, I know myself. And Mark is starting Junior High and Jake is in his last year at our beloved elementary school, where we have spent the last eight years and where I have made a wonderful circle of friends and volunteered at extensively. I’ve been afraid of changing…because I built my life around youuuuuu…

But, as they say, Time Makes You Bolder and so I have taken charge and have redirected all my energies into a complete household reorganization.

I’ve had The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up on my library hold list for a while, and last week it came in. I devoured it. I know, I know, it’s 2016, and KonMari/ Kondo-ing things is so last year. I may be a day late and a dollar short, but let me tell you, I love that book. IT IS LIFE CHANGING MAGIC, PEOPLE.

For those of you who haven’t read it – I can’t be the only one who hadn’t read it, right? – the premise of the book is simple: surround yourself with things that bring you joy and get rid of everything else. Ask yourself why you are holding on to certain things; if it is something that doesn’t bring you joy, then send it on its way, expressing gratitude for the role it has played in your life. For example, don’t feel badly throwing out that lipstick that doesn’t suit you. It taught you a lesson, and that was worth the price you paid for it. That sweater that you don’t like, someone else might love. Send it on its journey.

This, my friends, is exactly the kind of hippy-dippy, non-attachment, Let The Sunshine In kind of thing that I love. Bring in the good energy, block out the bad.

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Now, let me be clear: my house is pretty clean. I am a very organized person by nature. I also live in a bungalow that – including basement and storage area – is 2200 square feet. I don’t really have the room to be a hoarder, and I don’t have a lot of clutter. If you were to stop by unexpectedly, I would not be worried about the state of my house, because the state of my house is always clean. Well, truly, if you were to stop by unexpectedly I’d never answer the door because I don’t want to be murdered by a random stranger, or, in the best case scenario, I don’t want to be solicited for money/ talked to by politicians/ offered lawn services by someone who is scary looking but is probably harmless.

But you take my meaning.

However, there are areas in the house that could definitely be improved on. I have kept so much of the kids’ schoolwork and art work that the bins I purchased for such items are overflowing. I have whole shelving units that were filled with stuff I didn’t know what to do with. The downstairs closets are a disaster, and my hall cupboard was so jammed with stuff that the doors didn’t always close. I have baskets and bins that have loose papers and magazines that I have yet to deal with.

And so I started to Kondo the house, and while it isn’t the very most satisfying thing I’ve done in my life, it is right up there. Every day I’ve been rampaging through the house, like a Kondo machine, bagging things and boxing things and reorganizing things all over the place. In fact, I’m planning to write about this whole experience, so lucky you, you will get to see photos of organized drawers and re-purposed shoe boxes.

It hasn’t all been rabid purging around here though; this week has been all about doctors and dentists and check ups and orthodontists…there was so much non-fun going on that I took a break from my frantic pace to take the kids to the local amusement park. It turned out to be the best day ever; the kids were chosen to be “park openers” which was a thrill in and of itself, and then they were second in line for the log ride. Tons of fun were had by all, but I think my favourite moment was when the park official was telling them what they needed to do, and asked “Are you brothers or friends?” “Both!” they answered, and I swear, I got a little teary.

I guess Kondo-ing everything doesn’t totally keep me from being a bit of an emotional mess. But my house sure is clean.

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