Out of chaos, beauty

At least, getting closer to beauty.

I sewed for hours and hours and hours yesterday, making this gift. It's not done yet, as you can plainly see.

We pulled down the Christmas tree and all the Christmas decorations last night because my Little Friend is inexplicably chomping at the bit to get Christmas up and running this year. I don't remember ever having our decorations out in November, but this year it's happening.

So all of our regular home decoration items have been moved and disrupted and are waiting to be put away for the next month, all the Christmas bins and boxes and halfway-put-out decorations waiting to be arranged and rearranged and otherwise stowed, the tree has been removed from its box, put together and fluffed, but only 2/3 lit and consequently otherwise undecorated because some of our lights apparently got tossed when Christmas got put away last year, along with all of yesterday's "normal-everyday-living" mess which didn't get cleaned up as the day went along because of the hours I spent sewing instead of doing chores.

Have you ever noticed that most times, things get worse before they get better?

I'm not sure where to start on this chaotic mess today, but I do know that there is beauty hiding underneath it.

Country bread

I am making dressing for Thanksgiving tomorrow, from scratch, for the first time ever - up until now I've always bought the packaged cubes or crumbs of bread to make "homemade" dressing with. I found a recipe that sounded good and decided to make it. The recipe calls for "country bread" which sounds fancy and perhaps expensive but I found a recipe in one of my cookbooks for "country loaf", had all the ingredients on hand, and figured "why not?" so I baked it! (What I didn't do was take a pic before slicing into it but you can't tell in the pic.)

It's different, and delicious! It's very large, about 12" in diameter, and if/when I made it again, I will divide it into two smaller round loaves to make it more convenient for sandwiches and toast.

Unloading

I have a lot of yarn. When I say I have a lot of yarn, I don't mean that I have more yarn than I have projects in mind. I mean I have more yarn than two people have projects in mind - about a hundred years' worth - because I inherited almost all of it from my grandmother when she died.

I don't know if she meant for me to take it all. I think it was the logical answer for the people who were cleaning out her things to bring it all to me because I do like to do yarn crafts, and because it was the easiest thing to do since I live in the same state, and I'm sure it was one big item to check off their to-do lists. I am telling myself that that is the way it was because right now, nearly five years after my grandmother's death, I know that I do not wish to use a lot of it. First, because it's not the kind of yarn that fits my taste, and second, it's tangled up with cat hair that makes me sneezy and drippy when I work with it.

I do feel some guilt about this. I have to tell myself that keeping her yarn doesn't keep her close to me. She's gone. She isn't coming back for it. I don't believe, way down deep in my heart, that keeping it safe in a drawer for the rest of my life and bequeathing it on to future generations the way she did is what she expects or wishes me to do with it. I don't believe that she expects me to knit the same kind of sweaters that she did for that reason only. At some point someone in the family has to say, "The diligent keeping of hundreds of scraps of yarn stops here." It may as well be me.

I have made multiple blankets and dozens and dozens of mittens with her yarn in an attempt to use it up. I recently came across a pattern that will use up a few more of the hundreds of "leftover" small balls of yarn that I have from her.

I have decided that when this blanket is finished I will gift it to a lonely widower in a VA nursing home. And then I will donate however much of her yarn is left to the "craft room" at the first nursing home I can find that has one.

If anyone is not happy with this, this is your official notice. If me keeping Grammy's yarn at my house keeps her close to you, I have to tell you that I've done as much as I can for you. You can come by anytime in the next three months and take all this yarn into your own home.

How it's going so far

Remember this post?

I'm here to report that it's going just swimmingly. We still have the same mostly-full package of paper napkins that we had last December (I've used a few to grease an occasional baking dish).
The cloth napkins I made from unused flat sheets I had on hand are not perfect but they are usable. I wish they were softer and more absorbent - 100% cotton or something like that - but they'll do for now. I will hopefully remember to be on the lookout for a large piece of cotton cloth at the thrift store to make napkins with when these wear out.

The large white washcloths that we are using in place of paper towels work great. I started with 40 and have never once ran out before it was time to wash a load of whites. I have put a couple of them into the rag pile because they got stained. For some reason it is more acceptable to me to scrub a bathtub with a stained white rag than it is to dry a dish or wash a sweet little face with a stained white rag. So the stained ones have moved to the rag pile, and we still have plenty of clean ones to use in the kitchen. Barring some disaster I think I will not have to buy more for at last another year.  I've used one to two rolls of paper towels so far this year - of the 10 rolls I started with last December I have six that are still unopened, and three that are partially used. I'm still using paper towels to take care of super messy or greasy or icky jobs like:

• covering bacon while it cooks in the microwave or
• lining the plate while I'm frying taco shells or
• patting dry raw chicken or
• wiping off paint brushes.

It's been so long since I purchased paper napkins and paper towels that I don't remember the prices, but next time I go to the store I will check and try to estimate how much money I haven't spent on these items in the year 2012.

Am I a minimalist?

Or, What Do I Really Want and How Much Will Ever Be Enough?

I've been reading lots of blogs and articles written by and for minimalists, and trying to figure out some stuff about myself. I am fortunate enough to be born into a country where I can be, do, and to a large extent have (where "have" means obtain or afford or both) pretty much whatever I want.

I don't know if I'm a real minimalist. I think I have a natural, in-born tendency to say enough is enough ( I would be more likely to phrase it as "Why do we have to have so much crap in this house?"), but I don't feel like I have to be able to fit every last one of my belongings into a backpack or the trunk of my car, or sleep on a mattress on the floor and have bare, white walls, or have only 57 or some other arbitrary number of items that I possess in the whole world. If you have to live by those requirements to be a real minimalist, then I'm not one.

I do have my own evolving list of "rules to live by" about what I have and what I do, and how that reflects who I am and who I am striving to become, and here is a list of some of them in no particular order of importance:

• I want What I Want to be firmly and squarely contained in the category of What I Need. Mindlessly and thoughtlessly buying, acquiring, and consuming isn't good for me. If I need something I'll get it, but filling up a shopping cart with stuff that I don't need, one little impulse at a time, in order to ease feelings of boredom or dissatisfaction isn't going to make me happy no matter how awesome the stuff is.
• Good enough is fine for me. I don't have to be constantly searching out and trying to acquire the best of anything. Trying to compete with other people's possessions or comply with their expectations or recommendations is too exhausting and doesn't make me happy.
• My home is not for show. It is where people live, and although people do need things, the stuff in my house has to be for the keeping of the people, not the other way around. Homes are containers for people and although homes also contain people's stuff, the actual people shouldn't have to be shoe-horned into whatever space is left after the stuff is moved in.
• A certain degree of sparseness and bareness do give feelings of calmness and serenity for me. My eyes have be able to find a place to rest, and crowded, cluttered surfaces, closets, and floors make me feel claustrophobic and anxious and overwrought.
• I want my home to be comfortable. I want my family and friends to feel like they can wear their shoes, or not, whichever is more comfortable for them. If you want to cook something, or take a nap, or make a craft, or watch a movie, or read a book, or play a game, you can do that in my house. We're set up for that.
• When we're ready to do any of those things, I can find what we need. There is sufficient, but not so much that I spend all my available time digging through closets and drawers for supplies and then have a giant mess created by the search that must now be cleaned up.
• Abundance and excess aren't the same thing.
• Spending money to solve problems or fill needs when creativity and ingenuity would suffice is kind of lazy.
• My good Mr. Dub shouldn't have to spend decades of his life working to provide for me things that I don't need and don't, in reality and all honesty, even actually want. He deserves more respect than that.

Decluttering is a big part of a minimalist's life. It's a big part of my life, too. I was reading an article about keeping like things together, and how that makes it possible to make decisions about how much is enough for you. The example that was used is that if you relocate all your pens and pencils into one place in your house, only then will you be able to see that you have 63 ballpoint pens, and are you the kind of person who needs 63 pens?

I immediately thought of my pencil cup. I do have all my pens in the house contained into, well, two pencil cups, (one upstairs on the desk and one downstairs by the phone. A real minimalist would have only one pencil cup and would run up and down the stairs everytime she wanted to write something. An extremely real minimalist might not have a pencil cup at all, but own only one pen.) and they were both too full. At least once per day but usually many times per day I was struggling to jam a pen back into the pencil cup. Why have I mindlessly fought with my pencil cup every single day without ever realizing even one time that I could and should do something about it? It's ridiculous! And that is a big part of what this post is meant to be about: I want to live and breathe and work and do the things that make me myself in my house without a struggle at every turn.

So I decluttered my pencil cup. I picked out a few pens, a couple of pencils, and a pair of scissors, and now there is plenty of room in the cup to take one out and put it back without any sort of hassle at all. The extra pens went into the school/office supply shoebox that lives on a shelf in a kitchen cupboard. I know we will need them eventually - I mean, pens do run out of ink- but I don't have to have to deal with them while I'm waiting to need them.

While I was thinking about the pencil cup, I washed out an empty green bean can (we had green beans with our dinner last night) and spray-painted it. Then I added some cherry blossom stickers that I had on hand. No overwhelming mess was created while searching for spray paint or stickers. It's not the best/prettiest/most awesome pencil cup in the whole world, but it keeps my pencils contained on the counter by my phone. And when I'm tired of looking at it, I'll throw it out. It's a green bean can with some stickers on it, for goodness sake, and we already ate the beans.

 

To Do lists, who knew?

A few weeks ago, while cleaning out a drawer, I found an old journal-style notebook that I had written in a little but was mostly unused. It was too good to throw away, but I'm doing my "journaling" on my blog now, and I know that I won't use this notebook for that anymore.

So I turned it into a sort of daily planner, or a list of things I need to do. That list is quite lengthy most of the time, and I think my brain must be turning to mush or something because I keep forgetting to do some of the things that are on the To Do list that I usually keep in my head. It's helped me not lay awake at night worrying that I'm missing something vital that I should be doing but can't remember what that vital thing is. I write down in my little book whatever pops into my head that needs attention.

I've been writing the date and the list of tasks that need to be done. I cross them off when they are finished, and it makes me feel good about myself. I like that it's not a real daily planner - the kind with a separate page for each day - because some of these jobs might take me a week or more to finish, and this way it doesn't matter if I finish it that day or not. When I'm done with something I just go back to the page I wrote it on and cross it out. I don't have to re-write the unfinished jobs on the next day's page. In it I can write grocery lists, addresses or phone numbers that I need, directions, recipes, and notes to myself. There's plenty of room. There's no calendary pressure.

The phrase "Calendary Pressure" is my own invention. It means the anxiety you feel when February 22nd's list won't fit on February 22nd's page but bleeds over on to February 23 or 24. At the same time, some days are completely empty, so it feels like a waste when you the year is over and you're throwing away a half-empty planner. This way, some pages can have 2 or 3 days worth of list on it, some days' lists might go on for 2 or 3 pages.

I do still have Calendary Envy, which is what I feel when I see people who have a "real" daily planner and seem organized and perfect and "put together". I've tried it in the past and I have made my peace with the fact that I don't have that kind of life. Or personality. Or whatever it is that those people have that I don't. Which peace, incidentally, doesn't cure Calendary Envy at all.

At any rate, I've found something that works for me. I like my notebook because it's spiral-bound which means that I can open it all the way and spin the front around to the back, which you can't do with a stitch-bound book. No trying to write in the crease, and the book lays open perfectly flat. I also like that it has a hard cover, which makes it easy to write on when I'm not at my desk or some other good writing place. I can write in it when I'm sitting in my comfy chair or in my car. The only thing that would make it a little bit better was if it fit in my purse. When this one is full, I'll look for one that does.

Today I think I'll...

cook!

I felt like cooking when I woke up this morning, and although I enjoy cooking I hardly ever feel like I'd rather do that than something else. So happy day for my family!

It's good too, because today was Bountiful Basket day. In this week's basket is:

• 8 Fuji apples
• 8 bananas
• 1 quart strawberries
• 6 navel oranges
• 3 grapefruits
• 8 onions (which includes a few extra from my bff D. Because D doesn't do onions.)
• 5 baking potatoes
• 3 broccoli crowns
• 1 cauliflower
• 1 pint cherry tomatoes
• 1 head of romaine lettuce

I still had some produce left over from last time so cooking had to be done to clear out the old stuff in order to make room in the fridge for the new. I've baked an apple pie already this morning with the rest of the apples from last time, and started some beef stew. The beef stew used up the remainder of a big bottle of V-8 juice that needed to go, 8 or so button mushrooms, two onions, the last of a head of garlic, a couple of tomatoes, plus celery and carrots that I bought at the grocery store.

I still have half a head of cabbage (which I will use to make bieroc later today) and some blackberries which will become gelato. I found a recipe in one of my cookbooks for gelato and I'm excited about trying it. I need cream and rock salt before I can start.

Since I started getting these baskets I've been wondering how long fresh produce sits in trucks and warehouses before the grocery store sets it out for sale. My mushrooms, tomatoes and blackberries are still good and they've been in my fridge for two weeks. Things like that from the store only last a day or two before I have to use them, or what usually happens is that it goes bad before I get to it and I have to throw it out.

When I bring home my bountiful basket I feel rich. I see all these good things to eat, and I look around at my home and my family. I feel fortunate that I have the skills and the time and other resources to make it all into meals that will benefit my family.

It's abundance. It's blessedness. I'm grateful.

Do you ever worry...

... about the two big "E"s? I'm talking about the Economy and the Environment, of course.

I've been reading some blogs about frugal living lately, and one of the big categories in a house and budget that suck money and resources is cleaning supplies, specifically paper products. Every single day in my house we use:

1. paper napkins
2. paper towels
3. paper diapers
4. and paper... well... just regular plain ol' paper.

Since I'm a grandmother and not a young mother there is no way that I'm going to deal with cloth diapers. Actually what I'm not going to deal with is the rinsing and the wringing and the soaking in the diaper pail that is an unavoidable part of cloth-diapering.

(I will also say here that some truly frugal and die-hard budgeters/green people use washcloths rather than toilet paper but that is out of the question. I mean, really, that is so not happening here that it's not even an available topic for consideration or discussion. Toilet paper is required here.)

But I'm thinking that cloth napkins and a big pile of clean, white cloths with which to dry and wipe in the kitchen might be a frugal and "green" alternative. I already use cloth dishcloths and dish towels, but we also use a lot of paper towels. A basket of white cloths on the counter ready to mop up spills, wipe faces, dry hands, etc. might be a good idea that could work for us.

So I did what women in the 21st century do - I went online looking for cloth napkins. But I somehow just KNEW that when I was looking online to buy cloth napkins (the ONLY two reasons being so that I can stop spending money on paper all the time and to stop throwing away so much of that paper after a single use) that when the appropriate category is listed as "Table Linens" that is not the kind of site I'm looking for. And sure enough - $56 for 6 napkins.

I went to a different site and found some that were more affordable that I like okay. I didn't buy them yet - I'm waiting. Waiting to see if I want to make them instead. With some couponed fabric and my sewing machine they might be even cheaper.

I'll let you know. Because I just know you are waiting to see how this turns out.

Happy Halloween

And all that jazz. I'm over Halloween. It used to be fun for me when my kids were little. I decorated, we had a traditional Halloween dinner (sloppy joes and tater tots), I sewed costumes for the kids, we trick-or-treated around the neighborhood.

I just don't care about it anymore. Avery did look adorable in her fairy ballerina costume, and hopefully she'll bring home a peanut butter cup for her Grammie, but I just wish people would stop ringing my doorbell. Is it possible to be a scrooge about Halloween? That's how I feel this year. Hopefully next year will be better.

(Did I ever mention that I left my camera in Sweden? Yeah, I have no picture-taking capabilities. Maybe I'll get a new one for Christmas? Mr. Dub?)