We're almost out of the storage space! Woo hoo! Unfortunately, my childhood piano, while it looks lovely, is not fixable. I'm sad to say goodbye to it, but there is no reason to keep it if it cannot be fixed. We're going to have to pay the equivalent of a month's storage rent to dispose of it, but then we'll be done with that added expense every month. I have almost everything out of the storage space. While I now have a ton of boxes in my basement, I have gotten rid of a large amount of stuff. We've taken a lot to the thrift store, and we have trashed a lot. I know I will probably get rid of more, but I'm happy for now.
Here is the next load of Goodwill stuff:
We also got some trash out of the storage space as well as an old DVD player that doesn't work (why do we still have that?!) and an old Direct TV box (again - why?!).
Parts of the house are really starting to feel good. Trey and Raymond got a new door up in our bedroom. We still need to put new trim up, paint it, and put on a new door knob, but it's a start. Today, following my five things rule, I went through the basket of socks. I have decided, in an effort to minimize and streamline, that I will have mostly all the same socks, so they are easy to match. I got rid of a bunch of my old socks which empties out my drawer a lot. I can't believe how many socks we have in this house! Well - HAD. I got rid of a lot of mismatched socks and socks with holes. I also went through the dogs' toys. Our dogs are spoiled. I got rid of many destroyed toys, and they still have an entire container full of toys. LOL. Oh well, they need their toys. :)
So far, things are going pretty well. The five things rule is one of the best things I could come up with! It has helped me tremendously. My bedroom is so comfortable. I still need to go through my desk, and there are a couple of things in my bedroom that need to be hung: a cabinet for the bathroom, shelving for my daughter's room. Those things are on the list, and we'll get to them. I'm sitting here in my room now and am just finished doing work for my job as a music director. It's a comfortable place to be. I enjoy being in here. It feels good.
I also tackled my linen closet which was out of control. I should have taken a before picture. With seven people in the house, we have a lot of linens. We just had too many though. That closet is always a mess, and it drives me nuts. My littles never would put things in there neatly, but I realized that with it being so crowded that was contributing to the mess as well. I got rid of a bunch of pillowcases. I can probably get rid of more, and I probably will. I got rid of an old set of sheets, a heating blanket with no heating unit, cloth napkins that I say we're going to use but never do, and some ratty towels and rags. My linen closet is now neat and easy to keep that way!
The downstairs is still making me feel uncomfortable. I'm reminding myself not to get overwhelmed though. Baby steps. I go look at the utility area and smile because it is neat and tidy and decluttered. Then I look in the one drawer that I've done and feel good about it, too. My plan is to maintain and keep moving forward - little by little. Honestly, I sometimes really don't know what I am going to do with the kitchen especially, but I'll just keep chipping away at it.
I've been talking mostly about the minimalism M of my year, but there are other things as well. I'm still struggling with the mindfulness part. I'm still practising self-love, but sometimes I forget. I'm forgetting less than before. I'm still in counseling to help me heal and grow. I'm doing things like hanging the photos in my home that I have been meaning to hang for over two years. It makes me feel more anchored. I have been listening to music more. I look at my vision board and my "home diagram" to help me feel centered and renew my commitments. I'm doing well at keeping the finances under control, and my husband seems to be pretty engaged in that this time as well - which is awesome and helps me to feel not so alone. I'm trying to figure out how to stay engaged and active politically without it drowning me in a black cloud of crazy. I've been taking walks with my daughters. We're planning on hiking again tomorrow with the whole family, so the movement M is going okay. Baby steps, baby steps, baby steps....
I'm very glad that I came up with a "five things rule." It has been very helpful. Very often, when I start off with five things, it quickly moves on to more. It's just a way to get me up off my butt. Today, I spent a lot of time in my bedroom, and it looks and feels great! This post is more of a "what I've been up to over the past few days" because I'm starting to lose track of the days! I have gotten a ton done though, and it feels good.
I decided to clean out my closet even though I had already done that not too long ago. I have realized that sometimes things need multiple passes to get everything. Now my closet feels done. I even did my husband's side. I found out that he has 11 pajama bottoms. He promises me that he's going to go through them. Let's see how long it takes him without me reminding him. It's been two days already. We'll see. The below pictures are after cleaning. The last picture is of what went. The trash bag is trash and the other was give away.
I tackled my bedroom as well. My dresser was a mess quite frankly. The below picture is it now. The drawers are cleaned out as well. I decided to go through one of my husband's drawers - the one where he keeps his t-shirts. With his permission, I got rid of many of t-shirts. He now has 19. Yes - 19. He thinks that's not that many - LOL. Oh well. It's less than half of what he had. My son was going through his room and closet on the same day. We purged a lot! It felt so good.
Another thing we are trying to do this year is to get our house in good shape. We had to move out nearly three years ago because our house was flooded. It was a very traumatic experience. Well, I can't speak for the whole family, but it was traumatic for me. I have not felt like our house is a home since we moved back in. I have been adament about fixing everything in the house that needs fixing. Our basement bedroom is odd. It has this room/closet that you have to walk through to get to the bathroom. It has just been a room, so we're turning it into an official closet. We hung these this weekend. We still have some shelves to hang, but now my daughter has a closet.
She went through all her clothes when she was hanging them and purged quite a bit. She also went through some of her other things. Between her, my son, and I, we filled the back of Dora the Explorer. The thrift store loves me. Ha ha. The trash guys probably want to throw things at my house. Maybe I should make them cookies!
Another of my Ms for 2021 is movement. It is too easy for me to get sedentary when I get depressed or overwhelmed. The whole family (including the three doggos) went on a cool hike up near Golden. You can see the city on the way down. We didn't get to do the whole hike because we ran out of daylight, but we plan to go back. The whole hike is five miles, so we'll need to leave earlier in the day
The picture below is of my Kamala's Own oil. I have had this oil for a long time. I have been burning it this week in honor of our very first woman vice president who will be sworn in tomorrow!!!!!!!
I don't want to skip blogging for too long. I had to run to Ohio because my son decided to come home from college. My "five things rule" is really working. I usually end up doing quite a bit more if I just do five things.
I did get all of my folks' things out of the storage shed and into my basement yesterday. I accidentally brought home one of my boxes. The box was stuffed, and I decided to go through it. I got two small boxes of trash, some giveaway stuff, and kept a few things. Here's the after picture. What I kept is still in the box.
Today, I tackled the laundry area. I should have gotten a before picture, but I only have the after. Trust me - it is so much better!
It is very easy to become overwhelmed. So many things are going on and so many changes are happening that it is just a short step to feeling like nothing will really ever change. I know this is a self-defeating attitude, but it is a powerful one. Yesterday, I was busy and sad because it was my son's last full day at home before he went back to college in Ohio. I won't see him for probably four months. That is so hard for a parent. I didn't want to spend time cleaning and decluttering, so I instituted a "Five Things Rule." On those days I don't have to do a major decluttering or even a whole drawer I can do five things. It was easy to find five things that could go. It was a step forward, and I'll take it.
Today, when we got back from the airport, I was extremely sad. I knew that doing some decluttering would make me feel better, but getting started is hard when all you want to do is lay in bed and have a good cry. So, I remembered my "Five Things Rule." I went to the "junk drawer." I dug through there and found three things to give away and two things to throw away. Then I went outside and cleared out some things that have been sitting out of the way by our porch. Some things were just stuff that didn't get put away - a snow shovel, a snow sled, and a rake. We also had some things that could be thrown away, and there were two things that could be given away. So - bam. One more area that is cleaner, clearer, and more organized. I didn't take pictures. But I did get the picture below. Someone took some of the stuff we had put out for free and left us this lovely note. That felt good.
One of the Ms that I am focusing on this year is "movement." I am a big walker, but when I get depressed and overwhelmed, exercise is something that I have trouble doing. Getting up and getting moving is hard when all you feel like doing is laying down and ignoring the world. Luckily, I have kiddos and fur babies to help me achieve this goal. I really enjoy going to the gym, but I don't feel comfortable doing that right now during the pandemic. Our numbers are going down. If they keep going down, maybe we'll get to the point where I will feel safe enough to go to the gym. Until then, I always have these little guys to get me going.
Two of my kiddos went back to the storage shed with me yesterday. Mostly, I worked to separate the things into piles. I wanted to get my folks' and daughter's things separate. I got a lot of that done. We also got an old TV out of there. Thank goodness my older son was with me because that thing is heavy. Right now it is sitting on the side of the road with a free sign on it. We'll see if it disappears. If not, I suppose we'll have to pay to have it recycled, but that's okay. We also got some broken glass out. The movers who brought our stuff to the shed initially were horrible. They damaged my table, broke several pieces of smaller furniture, and broke a glass end table top. I also found one book to add to the give away pile. It was a small improvement, but we're still moving forward.
I'm still trying that self-love thing, and it is still weird. Today instead of following, "I love you," with anything derrogatory, I just said, "Practising, practising, practising."
When our flood happened, we needed to get a storage shed to move our things into. Unfortunately, it has just sat there with stuff in it, and we've been paying on it for almost three years now. It is time for it to go. It has also turned into a dumping ground. We cannot get rid of everything in it, but we do need to pare it down, clean it out, and move out of it! There is absolutely no need for us to pay over $200 a month just to store crap. Today, I spent about an hour in there going through stuff. I didn't make a huge amount of progress. It's a bit overwhelming to be in there, if I am honest. At least I got SOMETHING done. Here are the before pictures (and yes, they are embarrassing):
A good chunk of the stuff is actually my parents' things, but way too much of it is ours. We have a lot to do before the end of the month. I am not paying $200 again next month. I brought some things home and some things that were the kids for them to go through - books. They actually got rid of about half the books I brought home, so that's good. The below pictures is the box of stuff that I took to ARC and a bag of trash. So, not a big start, but a start.
The below picture is my vision board for this year. It's filled with healthy, whole foods, flowers, clean, decluttered spaces, and tons of words. I've never made a vision board quite like this one. It's more words than anything else. I don't know if I want to talk about it yet, but here's the picture. This year is going to be intense.
I tried the "I love you" thing again today. Again, I had to take a long pause before it would even come out. Then I immediately said, "Oh my god, this is useless." But I changed it. I said, "No. I'm practising self-love. What you practice gets stronger." Well, it's something.
I haven't posted pictures for the past couple of days because I didn't do anything new in the house. I did take things to Goodwill and ARC on the 1st and the 2nd. It felt good to give all that away. We also took our old printer and an old monitor to Office Depot for recycling. That actually turned out to be much cheaper than I expected it to be, so that is always good! I do have another box of old electronics to take to be recycled. I'll get that done tomorrow. Today, we got a lot done in the basement. I didn't get pictures of what we got out. I thought about it in the middle of cleaning, but I was handing stuff to the kiddos to take to the trash, and I figured that I didn't want to harsh that mood! LOL. They were big helps. We got the old cabinet out. That came with the house, and it was crap when we moved in. It's just been a dust and cobweb collector, and it is far too easy to put stuff on there and forget about it. We got three big bags of trash out. I do still have to go back down and take care of some things. We had a bunch of pictures in there that I would like to hang on the wall. They all have to be cleaned because yuck! We had quite a few cans of paint left over from the remodel or rebuild if you will. Right now they are all on my porch. Technically, there were about four I could get rid of because they were empty. They were little ones. Later this afternoon and tomorrow I will be tackling those. There are some that are almost empty that need to be opened up to dry out. We also have some leftover laminate flooring and tiles on the porch right now. I'm going to put them beside the road with a free sign and see what happens. We still have a lot to do in that room. My husband has to go through all his tools and woodworking supplies, but we made HUGE progress:
The last picture is because we finally have a door knob on the basement door! I'm frustrated that I have to say, "Hey! Would you put the door knob on the door?" It still feels like I'm "in charge" instead of having a partner, but it's a start I guess.
I'm glad to have that done. Well, I'm glad to have MORE done anyway. I mean, we're only on day 5. Our goal for this month though is to get rid of our storage shed. We have had a storage shed since our flood. It feels like there's just a bunch of crap in there. I know it's not "just crap," but if we haven't needed it in two years, we need to get rid of it. Right? My oldest daughter has some of her stuff from college in there. A lot of it will be helpful when she gets her own place after she graduates. My parents also have some things they are storing in there. They moved from a house to a studio apartment when they moved to Colorado last year. We have plenty of room in that basement to store everything we need to store though. I'll be tackling the storage shed next weekend.
The second "M" that is guiding my 2021 is mindfulness. Having C-PTSD it is very easy for me to "check out." It's not just the PTSD though. It is common for people to drift through a good deal of their lives mindlessly. It's one of the reasons I decided to blog again. I watched a short TED talk last night about mindfulness. I'm going to post it below when I am done. I would like to make meditation a regular practice. I used to meditate when I was young, and I really enjoyed it. It rejuvenated me. I haven't been meditating, but I have been doing some breathing exercises. I have been doing Dr. Weil's 4-7-8 breathing technique. Now, I don't think it is the life changer that he says it is, but I do think it is very helpful. Who knows? Maybe some people have major life changes. It's a good technique though.
I'm going to try and get my kids to listen to this TED talk and maybe even try what she says. I think my whole family could benefit from meditation. It just seems like we are all so high strung lately. We don't have the patience with each other that we really should have. Our family harmony is not very harmonious. We love each other, but we don't seem to give each other very much grace. I'm trying to start with me and set a good example. I'm still failing miserably, but I wake up every day and try again. I know how important it is to take care of myself. If I don't, I will not have anything left for anyone else. That's a hard thing for a mom though. Everyone seems to always need something from me. I'm still working all that out. I'm a work in progress. In this following video, she talks about saying, "I love you," to yourself every morning. She talks about how she couldn't do it at first. I thought, "Oh, that's silly. I can do that." Turns out, I couldn't. I tried last night, but I couldn't. It felt too wrong. It felt like a lie. It felt stupid. So, I did what she said. I put my hand on my heart and said, "Good night, Misty." Then I went to bed. This morning I tried again. I put my hand on my heart and said, "Good morning, Misty." Still I couldn't say, "I love you." I stood there for at least two minutes just looking in the mirror. Then I said it. Man, did that feel weird. My next immediate thought was, "You're an idiot." Ouch. Not helpful. I'll try again tomorrow. Maybe that will be my mantra for 2021 - I'll try again tomorrow. No. Dr. Shauna Shapiro in the meditation Ted talk says, "What you practice becomes stronger." So, how about - I'll practice again tomorrow.
