Minimizing in other ways

This is a thought that isn't new to me.  I seem to often forget, though, that when I start minimizing in one part of my life I find other parts where I would like to minimize as well.  For instance chemicals.  Specifically cleaning chemicals.  We tend to reach for the 409 or Soft Scrub because it is easy, convenient, and probably what we were raised doing.  My grandmother used to clean her entire house with vinegar, bleach, baking soda and Pine-Sol.  I don't ever remember having any fancy store bought chemical sprays. 

Another area where I really want to reduce chemicals in my life is in my food.  We always complain about how busy our lives are and that we don't have time to cook from scratch, but at what cost to our health?  And how much time does it really take to make pancakes or brownies or a cake from scratch?  I'm tired of eating "food" that has ingredients that I cannot pronounce because they are more chemical than vegetable (or animal for that matter). 

I've started a collection of cleaning ideas and recipes that I will be trying out to see which works the best.  We've already started with some and as we use them I will report back as to how well I like them.  I'll start you all off with brown mix.  We love brownies in our house and while we have made homemade brownies in the past we always tend to fall back on boxed mixes.  I came across this recipe and we gave it a go last week.  They turned out some very yummy brownies.  The instructions said to mix all the dry ingredients in a plastic zip bag and when you are ready add the wet ingredients and bake.  I may do that at some time, but I found that the recipe is so easy that one doesn't truly need to waste plastic bags to make brownies.  Just mix them up as you go.

Dry ingredients: 
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. flour
1/3 c. cocoa
1/4t. salt
1/4t. baking powder

(sift those together or just use a whisk to blend them well)

Wet ingredients:
2 eggs
1/2 c. vegetable oil
1 t. vanilla

Mix and bake at 350° for 20-25 minutes in an 8"x8" or 9"x9" pan. 

We did find the texture just a tad bit grainy from the sugar and we may reduce that amount next time and increase the flour content just a bit.  I'll let you know what I do and how they turn out.

Busy busy week

This past week has been filled with all sorts of different events.  On Tuesday I had my last shift at work in the children's department.  Oh how I will miss my kids.  The happy part was that I got to put up one last theme wall before I left.  I love putting together displays.  It's probably my second favorite thing to do. (The first being putting books into young readers' hands.)

There has been tons of packing this week.  Packing up a room also means that you find things that belong in other rooms, some of which have already been packed.  I decided to put a box in each room that I have already packed so that I can add things that I have found in other rooms.  Hopefully this will make my packing a bit easier overall since there will already be a waiting box for each room.  Another thing that I have found is that I am constantly overlooking some item and then am surprised when I realize I have forgotten to pack something.  Case in point:  my winter bathrobe.  I figured I would leave my summer bathrobe out as I do wear it.  I have two because in the winter I want a bathrobe that I can snuggle into.  I bought the biggest bathrobe I could find, too.  It's probably three sizes too big for me, but it was big enough to go all the way down to my feet and double cross my torso.  It's pink and fluffy and like wearing a Sunggie backwards.  In the summer I still want to cover up sometimes but the winter bathrobe is far too bulky and hot for summertime, so I have a thinner one made of cotton seersucker that my mother made me when I was pregnant with my first child.  Twenty-one years later that bathrobe is still hanging in there and in beautiful shape.  It's also pink.  I was surprised when I closed my bathroom door the other day and found bathrobes (mine and the spouse's) hanging there like they always were.  It's odd how familiar those things are that you don't even think about packing them.  It's one of the reasons Alfonso (my Kitchen Aide mixer for those of you just joining me) is still on the kitchen counter.  Same with the paper towel holder.

So far this week I have packed the former hobby area and organized all the photos.  OK, that's a lie.  They aren't organized, but they are all in boxes with all the negatives in another box (still in their envelopes and somewhat labelled) which will stay here.  I cleaned out the old pantry.  I packed up the teas and spices that I am taking with me.  And as far as spices go the only ones that got packed were those spices that I actually had duplicates of.  Most of them are being left behind and I will only replace when I actually need them.  I couldn't see the waste in buying new cumin in Ohio when I had four (yes 4) bottles here.  Same with poppy seeds and sesame seeds.  I'm hoping to be a bit more organized in my new home so that I'm not purchasing spices every time I turn around.  I have packed the music room.  Music room is synonymous with the phrase dumping ground.  It's that place in your home where everything gets dumped when you come home.  It's all been gone through now and packed or had the items from that room taken to their proper rooms.  That gave me some extra room to stack boxes. 

And speaking of extra room, Dan sent me a picture of the closet in one of the bedrooms.  I am SO in trouble.  There is no way that we are going to be able to share this dinky closet with the two of us, even if we both are doing Project 333.  I'm thinking that we are going to need to invest in a wardrobe.  Here's the closet (the stuff in and around the closet belongs to the current tenants.)



I still need to to through and pack up the Christmas ornaments, but want to go through those with my eldest daughter to see if there are things that she wants.  Also left on my agenda is packing towels, dishrags, aprons, and going through my desk that has accumulated things that I didn't want to deal with immediately.  So there is the Japanese sock from when I was a child, two CD-Roms with e-books on them, my Buddha board, a "stamp-a-ma-jig" and various papers, pins, and campaign memorabilia.  I still have three and a half weeks and packing is becoming more difficult as I'm down to the onsie-twosies and forgotten bits or things that just can't be packed quite yet (like clothes I still need and chargers to all our miscellaneous electronics that we use on a daily bases). 

And the decluttering is continuing as well.  I have taken two car loads of unneeded, unloved, unwanted household things to thrift stores this week and my front hallway stacked yet again with boxes of things to go.  I'm hoping to make a run by there today so I can start fresh this next week.  I'm amazed at how much I have accumulated in the past nine years living in this house.  Things I bought that I have no idea as to why I bought them in the first place.  Things given to me as gifts that I felt too guilty to get rid of even though I didn't need/want/love them.  I still have moments where I am putting something in the donation pile that I think, "Oh, so-and-so gave this to me for my fortieth birthday."  When I find myself in moments like that I take a breath and ask myself if I truly need/want/love it.  If the answer is no then out it goes. 

Even though my packing is winding down, I still have so much to learn about minimizing my life.  This is only step one in the journey.  One very small baby step at that.  Important, but still small.  Hopefully by blogging about this experiment it will keep me going on my track to fewer but more cherished and used things.

Of pictures and picture albums

Today's thoughts have been on pictures and picture albums.  Remember 35mm film?  You took pictures, carried the finished roll to the drugstore, had them developed and then took home that magical little envelope full of highly prized pictures of your trip to Disney, or the kids playing in the backyard, or birthday celebrations, or stupid things you cat did (half of which are blurry pictures as your cat is not a willing participant in the picture taking process). But they were expensive and you really had to think about taking them because every picture had quite a bit of cost associated with them.  Now pictures are almost a dime a dozen.  You can take hundreds of pictures with your phone or digital camera.  You can now select which pictures (if any) you decide to print. 

And then there are the scrapbooks or photo albums into which you carefully (or haphazardly) put them.  You might spend hours creating one page that has three pictures on it, carefully cutting out half-inch letters and meticulously gluing them with acid free permanent glue (which you later find out isn't living up to the 200 year archival stickiness that the package said it would).  You have striven to make masterpieces of pictures of your child's first steps with witty sayings such as "One Small Step for Mankind" or philosophical "A Journey Begins with the First Step." 

I have boxes and boxes of these kinds of things.  I have scrapbooks that haven't been worked on in four years.  I have pictures that date back to my childhood that I truly need to rescue from the horrible acid-laced "magnetic" albums from the 70's.  I have files of (mostly unorganized) pictures of my children from in utero to around 2008 or 2009.  Then we got a digital camera.  And then phones on our cameras.  So we have thousands of picture files on several different computers.  I don't think I have printed a picture other than one or two to frame (such as the picture I have of my kids on the beach the week before the BP oil spill in 2010) since 2009. 

Part of me wants to take those pictures and albums with me and dedicate a time each week to making order of them and weeding out pictures and putting them properly into some sort of album, even if just a binder with sleeves) so that they can be enjoyed.  The other part says, "Why bother?"  I'm trying to come to a happy medium with both of these voices.  I want to bother because those are records of my children's lives and I have this horrid fear that I may one day be like my grandmother and not remember.  I see my own mother starting to have memory issues.  What if I forget?  That would truly be sad.  I want them to be beautiful, but I first want to preserve them.  Neatly rather than in the jumble they currently are. 

Of course in the next couple years we will get to how I manage that.  For now they are going to be packed and taken with me.  And hopefully one day they will be a treasure rather than a burden.  Something I love rather than something I feel obligated to tote around the country with me. 

Releasing Things

Sometimes I wish that we could de-replicate things.  Like on Star Trek when one is finished with something or has no use of something you can simply take it to a cubby in your wall, stick it in, push a button and voila! It is turned into energy that will later be used to replicate something you need, say food or clothing or a nice ball of yarn.  There are times that I will start on a project and quit part way through.  Perhaps it isn't a conscious quitting.  Perhaps I got sidetracked by a crisis, a deadline for something else, or because I noticed and error and knew I had to stop right then or it would become a bigger error so I set it aside with all intention of going back and fixing it Later.  Then you find it weeks or months or even years later.  By now you have forgotten where you were in the process or what the mistake was an how you should go about fixing it.  Something inside you says, "You can't get rid of it because you have invested your time and energy into this project already."  You put it away again or you try to figure out where you were and what you need to do.

There are instances where I have fallen out of love with a project or an object or a somethingelseject.  Yet it is difficult to give up.  Case in point:  I have these two black lacquered jewelry boxes from Japan.  I got them when I lived there as a child.  They have pink striped silk interiors.  One has little metal tabs in the shape of sakura (cherry blossoms) and the other still functionally plays a traditional Japanese melody.  It's a pretty tinkling sound.  I treasure them, but I don't use them.  And, sadly, they too often go undusted.  I don't look at them often and there isn't any truly fond memory other than the short time I lived in Japan.  So why do I hang on to them.  They are going in the box of things I can't quite get rid of, but don't want to give up yet.  Hopefully, in a few years when we either move back or permanently settle in Ohio I will be able to more easily let those things go as they are no longer tied to me.

There is something very freeing about being able to say, "You no longer please me.  Be free and find someone who will."  I'm having to get over the idea that I have wasted money in purchasing something I haven't used or no long want.  My children are really much better at that than I am.  There are times, though, that I go to a thrift store and see all kinds of clap trap.  Odd coffee mugs from conferences, ugly Christmas sweaters from the 80's, a mish mash of half used balls of acrylic yarn.  When I try to imagine those things in my home I get a little queasy.  Maybe it is because I have some of those things anyway (save the Christmas sweaters) or maybe it is because I can see how they were a burden to someone else.  "I went to that conference.  I paid for that mug.  But ..."  Yeah.  It's just a mug.  And that is how I am trying to see the things in my house as Just Things.  Very little of it do I actually have any sentimentality.  So away it goes!

Thoughts on books

I learned to read when I was three.  I think it may have been a mistake, as far as minimalism goes, to allow a child to learn to read so early.  I grew up out in the country where there were no other little girls to play with.  I could only take so much playing with the rough and tumble boys in my neighborhood and most of the time they didn't want a girl, especially a prissy girl who talked about books and knitting all the time, hanging around with them.  Sadly, I was shot with a BB gun more times than I care to recount.  And then during ninth grade I was ill for quite some time and the only thing I had energy for was propped up in bed with my nose in a book.  Even holding a book was tiring sometimes.  I've been a librarian, a bookseller, a wife to someone who loves books almost as much as I do, and the mother of three children who have their own growing collections of beloved books. 

I have quite a collection of beloved books.  My first ever copy of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.  The Red Tent by Anita Diamant.  The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare.  To name a few.  When I first learned to read there was Junior Elf Book called Kate and Kitten which I adored.  Somewhere along the line my mother threw it out because it was "so worn."  I looked for years for that book.  I searched through yard sales, antique shops, rare book stores, online book dealers, and finally Amazon where I found a copy in decent condition.  I bought it.  Oddly, reading it when you are forty-seven years old is much different from reading it when you are three years old.  I found it quite juvenile and the writing was a bit belittling to children.  Also, the father in the story always had a pipe in his mouth, something you would not find in 2013, but was quite common in 1965 when the book was published.  But then this was a dime store book and cost a whopping 59¢.  (Just a note, I remember when the Berenstain Bears father used to smoke a pipe, but newer edition of those books have omitted the pipe.)  So while the book is not great work of literature, it does house fabulous memories for me.  Perhaps my love of this book had more to do with it being one of the first books I could actually read on my own rather than some great story.

There is also a classification of books that I call Sacred.  I'm not talking about Bibles, Korans, or Books of Shadows.  I'm talking about books that I feel should be revered because of their age, their information, their bindings, and their weight.  I have two such books in my collection.  One is Handbook of Heraldry By John E. Cussens.  It was published in 1893 and is still in gorgeous condition.  It looks like a book should look.  It has an olive fabric binding with gold lettering and detailing.  The heraldic roses that decorate this books are actually embossed and it still has the translucent onion skin sheets between print and plates.  The other book I have is called Forme of Cury.  The imprint that I have is from 1791.  It is a cookbook from the time of King Richard II (not to be confused with Richard III who was buried under a parking lot). 

This is what it says on the inside plate:

The
Forme of Cury,

A Roll
Of
Ancient English Cookery,
Compiled, about A.D. 1390, by the
Master-Cooks of King Richard II,
Presented afterwards to Queen Elizabeth,
by Edward Lord Stafford,
and now in the Possession of Gustavus Brander, Esq.
Illustrated with Notes,
And a copious Index, or Glossary.

 

My copy looks newer than my heraldry book and I absolutely love it.  I have also cooked some of the recipes from this book including "Gourdes in Pottage" and "bukkanade." Bukkanade is this sort of greyish stuff that looks like it was cooked during the Middle Ages and left out on the counter for six hundred years before serving.  But it tastes rather well.  In the whole medieval foods kind of way.  Actually medieval food mostly all tastes quite well because no matter when you lived if food didn't taste good people wouldn't eat it.  Some of the spices and combinations of ingredients are foreign to our twenty-first century palate, but they aren't bad.  It's not like eating old kimchi.  (I know, I'm going to get slammed for that one, but I just cannot stomach kimchi or haggis for that matter.) 

Then there are books that you feel indebted to keep.  The first editions of Harry Potter (books 1-7).  The book your friend wrote (which was good, truly).  The book you inadvertently stole from a library over twenty years ago (I didn't realize it got packed when we moved cross country and just found it a couple years ago).  And the books your children gnawed on as they learned to love books.  Some books will always be kept such as my collection of Winnie the Pooh books.  But others?  Do I really need to keep all the J. R. Ward Black Dagger Brotherhood books?  Will I really read them again?  Not to mention that I have them already on my Nook.  So why do I need a paper copy of them?  And what about the seven boxes of science fiction books?  Or the books that seemed interesting and were only half read?  I am quite sure I will never get around to finishing them.  There are too many books on my ever growing list of Must Reads to go back and finish a book that I was only halfheartedly reading while waiting for something better to come along.   And all the ARC's (Advanced Readers Copies) that I took home from work because they were free and the premise looked interesting and might be worth reading some day.  

Those are some of the things that I will need to keep in mind.  And hopefully, as I start digging through these boxes of books, I won't get distracted and start reading.  Which is why my collection never truly gets weeded.

Walking in circles

Sometimes when I am packing and get to a certain point, I feel like I am just walking in circles.  Yesterday felt like that.  My goal was to pack up the dresser, dust it off and put it up on craigslist.  I managed to do that.  However, I felt like I spent most of yesterday walking from the bedroom to various parts of the house.  I would find little odd things that didn't belong in my bedroom and off I would go to put them where they did belong.  It felt much like "piddly packing."  There is very little grunt work to do at this point.  Most of what needs to be packed needs to be sorted and prepared for storage rather than packed to go.  I still need to go through all the linens and towels and see what is going and what is being donated to charity.  I have a hallway of boxes of books that also need to be sorted into "books I can't live without" (or think I can't) which include my first copy of Little Women, books from my childhood and books from my children's younger days.  I also need to go through my old craft room and see what needs to be done in that area.So much stuff I just want to wiggle my nose and have it all simply disappear as though it never existed.

I have to work today, but then have the next three days off.  I think I am going to concentrate on those three areas on those days and start in on some cleaning.  So let's call Monday Linens Day.  Tuesday will be Book Day.  And Wednesday will be Old Hobby Room day.  We will have to wait to see how those days truly turn out.  Hopefully I won't get distracted.  And hopefully I won't feel like I have to keep everything I see.  That's the thing about releasing objects.  At one point there was a reason I wanted those things.  I "needed" that three cup spinny thing.  I couldn't live without the miniature vampire figurine (it is just so adorable).  I made things that I've tacked to the walls.  Most of those things have been untouched in the past year.  In a full year I have not made use of those things once.  That doesn't sound too much like a need to me.  Nor have I lost any sleep over those items.

The good news is that the things I have listed on craigslist are starting to get some attention.  I had one lady come to look at the piano, but she wasn't impressed because it needed tuning.  Uh, it's going to need tuning after you move it.  That's the way with pianos.  I've also been contacted about the dresser (already) and hopefully that will leave the house with a little bit of cash in my pocket.  That will help once we get to Ohio as we aren't planning on taking much furniture with us.  Also, moving is always expensive.  Even if someone is helping with the moving expenses, there are always going to be expenses such as hotel nights, food on the road, portable potty boxes for the cats and all the things one needs on the other end such as shower curtains, brooms, dustpans, mops, and cleaning supplies seeing as I do not believe you should ever take the dirt from one house to a new house. 

Meanwhile the walking in circles continues.  

Every day can't be perfect

Yesterday was one of those imperfect days in the whole plan of things.  I had to go to work so left a list of things I wanted done before I got home.  Nothing got done.  Apparently The Boy didn't want to do anything except kill people on Assassin's Creed (a video game I really don't condone, but I was talked into in a weak moment, assured by friends that it really wasn't all that violent, "not all the violent" has different meanings to non-pacifists than it does to pacifists).  This also means that The  Boy did not shower, change out of his pajamas, do the cat box (it was his day in the rotation of things), of do any of the piles of laundry we found cowering in corners in his room.

Of course confronting The Boy also made the oldest daughter run away.  There are days that I miss her not having a car.  Of course days that she does have a car outnumber days when she didn't, but either way, it meant that The Middle Child had to deal with her brother.  Which means that she didn't.  It is rather hard, though, to deal with someone when they lock themselves away in their rooms and put their headphones on.  

Someone did come over to look for at the piano today, but they were a bit disappointed that one of the keys didn't work.  When I mentioned that it was an easy fix that could be done when they had the piano tuned (which hasn't been tuned in probably 10 years or more) she hemmed and hawed and said she would call me if she decided to buy it.  I'm only asking $250 for the piano and it is worth much more for the shape it is in.  The one key can easily be regulated when the piano is tuned.  It's something I could fix if I had the right tools, but would be better if a qualified technician fixed.  I'm a bit sad to get rid of this piano as it is a lovely instrument and I loved playing it.  However, it just isn't being used at the moment nor do I see the possibility of it being used anytime in the near future.  Plus my spouse has threatened divorce if we ever move the piano again in his lifetime.  Not to mention that I would have to get all new friends as no one wants to be friends with someone after they have had to move their piano.

Meanwhile, we have gotten rid of a desk and the Papasan chair.  It feels good to "release things into the wild."  The people who were going to pick up the headboard never showed, so that may end up going to the thrift store.  I need to make a run there anyway as I have quite a collection of little things that are needing to be home at someone else's home.  More random objects being freed.

I've been reading a book by Tsh Oxenreider (whose first name seems like a minimalist version of Trish or Tish, but her last name makes up for it.  Perhaps she should consider changing it to Xnrdr :) )  called Organized Simplicity.  I've only just started thumbing through it at this point, but I'm liking some of her ideas.  I'll be reporting back on the things that I utilize or ponder utilizing once I've moved.

One other stressful event from yesterday was that the house that The Spouse was supposed to look at was rented from underneath us, so we are back to looking.  Or rather, I'm back to looking and sending him e-mails with houses I like.  It doesn't help that his idea of the perfect house and my idea of the perfect house are two different things.  I want quaint, charming, older, light, wooden, with a big kitchen.  He wants new, spacious, large, dark, with a space for his computer.  The two things we can agree on is that we want smaller than what we have now (2400 sq ft) and in a decent neighborhood.  I'm one of those that can live anywhere for a year or two (or maybe three) as long as the neighbors aren't drug dealers and wielding guns.  (BTDT have the anxiety to prove it.)  I found a few houses today that I hadn't seen before and one of them is just perfect and I think will meet both our major desires.  The big thing is trying to get him to find time to go see these houses.  I know he has work, but I am so ready to move and I know his company is wanting him out of the expensive hotel.  I'm at that point where I feel like I'll never get out of here even though we've set a sort of exit for the first week in May.  Keep your fingers crossed that he can find something and we can agree on it. I would love to find something we both like without me having to go up there again.

So today's agenda is to finish up The Boy's room that was supposed to be done yesterday, make a trip to the thrift store for a drop off, and start working on my bathroom.  One of the problems I am having with that is that The Spouse has many sharps containers from when he used to use needles for his diabetes.  I have no idea where I can take those for proper disposal.  It was something he was supposed to figure out over two years ago when he went on a pump instead of daily injections.  There is a program in our county, but it means I have to be the one to implement it and get rid of them.  Hopefully I can take care of that tomorrow.  I also need to clean out the dresser in my bedroom and list it on Craigslist.  It's an antique and has the original mirror so hopefully I can get it sold.

Hobby Room is packed (ish)

Yesterday went fairly well.  I managed to have my hobby room packed before 11:00 am.  I weeded through the rubber stamps and managed to get all that I wanted to take with me into one medium sized snap lid box.  And there is a bit of room in there to breathe.  I also threw out all my old stamp pads that no longer are functioning.  I put aside the notion that I would just buy refills for them.  I packed up the paper seeing as it was already neatly organized and in easily portable bins and all my sewing supplies that I needed were also packed.  In all I am taking six totes (three of yarn and three of fabric), 2 medium sized boxes, the spinning wheel and sewing machine.  I also packed most of my desk items save my computer, desk lamp, important papers file and Niji Saru.  (Tibby got excited and leaped into a box on his own accord.  He is ready for adventures.)

Yesterday we also delved into my fourteen year old son's room.  Wow was that a challenge!  We had to weed through eight years of toys, books, and clothes.  Wow!  I mean just wow!  We found forks, plates, bowls, and various food containers including no less than a dozen microwave popcorn bags!  We ended up with probably five loads of laundry, all of which needs to be gone through for fit and whether it is actually in wearable condition.  The good news is that he took very well to the idea of a system of boxes.  We made one box and labelled it "Books I Want to Take."  Another box was labelled "Things I Want to Take" (this includes some toys, piggy bank, memorabilia, and rocks).  A third box was labelled "Things I Want to Give Away" and then we had a garbage can.  We did end up with three other containers.  One was a plastic tote for his Lego collection, another a plastic bin for his knitting tools and yarn and a third, which will remain here, that is a footlocker filled with his old Thomas the Tank engine train stuff.  I was very proud of how well he helped me go through everything and sort stuff.  He still has a little work to do today while I am at work, but I was truly surprised at how quickly his room actually came together. 

Today I have to work, but I am going to try to go through some boxes of books in the hallway tonight to see what I can donate to the public library and what I want to keep.  It is going to be a more difficult task to handle as many of those books are my children's books and books from my childhood.  Friday's task will be going through the dining room and seeing what from there needs to be boxed up or given away.  Speaking of giving things away, we were able to release through Freecycle a too small desk, an old headboard, and a rattan Papasan chair.  It was very freeing. 

Kitchen Packing Redux

See those striped boxes?  Those are the boxes from my kitchen along with the three small boxes on top of them and the toaster box.  It looks like a lot, but in actuality those striped boxes don't have all that much in them.  They mostly contain large things like stock pots, colanders and frying pans.  Pots and pans will only nest so much together.  The shorter boxes contain silverware, a flipper, a whisk, knives, cutting boards, and other long skinny or flat things.  I have one more striped box reserved for the kitchen for aprons, hand towels and odds and ends that we find need packing that we forgot.

The exciting thing is that we were successfully able to cook in the kitchen last night with little fuss.  Although we are finding that we may have to hand wash bowls between dishwasher runs as there aren't that many left for my daughter.  I don't think she will need as many bowls, though, as the four of us do.  All in all the packing of the kitchen yesterday went fairly well.

Today's task is the hobby room.  It shouldn't take that long only because much of what I have is already in bins.  All my yarn is in bins that is carefully labelled  (I love my label maker) as is my fabric.  The big challenge is going to be weeding through the miscellaneous craft bins to see what I truly love and need.  Mostly it is paper crafting supplies for rubber stamping and scrapbooking.  Neither of which I have done much of in the past few years.  I'm trying to determine exactly what I don't need from the major culling that I did about a year and a half ago.  My agreement was anything I hadn't used in one year was going.  I need to truly stick to that and realize that I just don't do rubber stamping like I once did and that is OK.  I may keep a few of my favorite stamp sets (like the one with knitting and sheep) and release the others into the wild.  Perhaps I will allow myself one small bin of paper crafting supplies which I will agree to let go of in a year if I haven't truly used them. 

I also need to go through my "collectibles" and decide what I can and can't live without.  Honestly, I need none of it.  There are just a few things that I love and wish to keep.  For instance I have a traveling sock monkey named Niji Saru (Japanese for Rainbow Monkey) that has been all over the world.  She has visited many interesting people been to Japan, Spain, England and Northern Ireland.  She hung out in New York City and LA and visited my dear friend Naomi.  She has a collection of souvenirs that she picked up along the way and she has a pet elephant named Tibby that was made for me by a friend.  I also want my calendar, my small bowl that I use to collect my teabag each morning and my framed signed print of The Silence of the Lambs (not what you think - or if you are a knitter it is what you think).  There is also my stapler, tape dispenser and candle. 

Then there are things such as my placard from the Obama campaign, my dressmaker's dummy, and whether to take the decorations that I specifically bought for this room or leave them as they are part of a theme.  I'm thinking of taking the dressmaker's dummy as I have always wanted one and do use it, but leaving the decorations and the campaign signs.  I have several Obama buttons in my jewelry box.  You never realize how much you have until you start packing it up to move.  Of course I am learning how little one really needs when you think about what you truly use. 

Packing out the kitchen

It all starts with a list.  Of course for me everything seems to start with a list.  I wake up in the morning making a list of how my day will proceed.

1. Get out of bed
2. Walk to the bathroom and pee
3. Shower
4. Dress
5. Make breakfast (try oatmeal with blueberries this morning so those blueberries won't go bad)
6. Read e-mail and check Ravelry

So I made a list of things I believe I need to make a proper kitchen.  Realize that baking, cheese making, brewing and cooking are hobbies for our family.  We would sacrifice large bedrooms for a large kitchen. In fact as far as bedrooms go as long as we can fit our beds and a dresser in them we are happy.  We spend much of our time as a family either in the living room or kitchen.  So here is the list:

• Green and blue dishes (I have several sets of dishes - this is one set that is green and blue)
• 8 tea goblets (out of 20)
•  8 mugs
• Cinnamon sugar shaker
• Butter dish
• Toaster
• Teapot
• Tea kettle
• Silverware
• Cookie Jar (come on, it's a Tardis cookie jar)
• Alfonso (my Kitchen Aid mixer)
• Zester
• Steamer basket
• 1 set of nesting stainless mixing bowls
• Colander set
• Rice cooker
• Measuring cups and measuring spoons
• Sifter
• Funnel
• French press
• Coffee container
• Nesting Rubbermaid set
• Wok
• Lunch bowl (it's a ceramic bowl with a steam vent that I carry leftovers to work in)
• Cake pans
• Dutch oven
• Sauce pan
• Grill pan
• Sautee pan
• Cutting board
• Muffin tin
• Cooling rack
• Turkey roaster
• Turkey platter
• Rolling pin
• Toast tongs (that I bought on my trip to Ohio)
• Deep dish baker
• Pizza Stone
•  Bread pan
• Cookie sheet
• Bar pan
• Pie plate

There are some miscellaneous mixing spoons, vegetable peeler, ladles, pot holders and dish rags.  The spice cabinet will be a bigger challenge.  We have yet to go through it.  That may be something we hold off on until right before our move as we use these things quite often and I'm not going to buy all the spices that my daughter might need over the next two years.  She's a working girl now and can buy her own spices.

I've noticed that we tend to hold on to things that we are comfortable with when there is something just as adequate available.  For instance bowls.  We have this odd assortment of bowls from which to eat.  We all seem to have a favorite, but they don't match.  When we move I am taking the eight bowls that match the eight plates and the eight dessert plates that we bought as a set because we thought they were pretty.  I think if we are forced to use one of the "not our favorite" bowls we will find that oatmeal and soup taste just the same from a squat wide bowl as a conical bowl.  Oddly, we don't have matching cups for those plates, so there will be some hemming and hawing over which mugs stay and which go.  And there will also be some arguing about who gets to keep a certain mug that we affectionately refer to as the "fucking bunny mug"  (pardon the language).

See?  Wouldn't you argue about this mug as well?  (By the way, it is going with me even if I have to sneak it out and hide it somewhere.)

I'm sure that there is something from my list that I am overlooking.  It will probably dawn on me about a week after I have moved to Ohio and reach for said item only to discover that it was left in Florida.  But that is the way of lists.  They never seem quite complete. 

Good morning

Hello World.

I decided to create this blog more as a journal than anything else.  Ever since I was a little girl I desired for cleanliness.  I wasn't very good at it, but I desired it.  I liked the way my room looked when my toys were all put away and the top of my desk was orderly.  I could see what my mother had done, but she never quite taught me how to achieve those things.  As I grew older, I learned about minimalism and only keeping things that you absolutely needed or loved.  However, I was burdened with all kinds of things that I was adding to my collection.  I had craft supplies, pictures, postcards, clothes, shoes, and books.  Oh, the books.  I love books and so they tend to find their way to me.  I even read books (quite a few of them actually) about minimalism.  But having all these things that I felt obligated to keep had kept me from becoming a practicing minimalist.  And then Something happened.

My spouse, Dan, has been living and working in Ohio for the past two years.  What started as a six month project extended into two years.  And then his company decided they needed him in that area for at least another two to three years.  Neither of us looked forward to spending half a decade living like we had for the past two years.  When he brought this concern to his employers, they said, "No problem.  Move your family here and we will pay rent on a house for you while you are here."  Wow! That means we don't have to sell our house in Florida, we can be together as a family, and our adult daughter can try her own experimentation in living my herself as she has decided to stay in Florida for her friends and job.  She will maintain our home here in Florida and we will move, sparingly, to Ohio.

This is where the experiment begins.  What is it that one needs to live for two years (or a lifetime) and still function.  What kitchen supplies do I need?  Do I really need sixteen different pieces of Pampered Chef stoneware?  How many knives do I really need?  Cutting boards? What pots and pans? And which kitchen gadgets do I truly use and which are convenience tools which only do one function?  How many mixing bowls do I truly need?  What spices need to be thrown out as they were purchased prior to our house (going on 9 years)?  How many coffee/tea mugs does a family of four truly need?  Plates? Glasses? Bowls? Strainers? And that's just the kitchen.

I have a unique opportunity to be able to only take what I think I will need while at the same time feeling safe, knowing that all my things are still just a phone call and Flat Rate Box away.  But for now I am having to think about what I want or, rather, need to take with me.  I have been participating in Project 333 for the past two or so years.  I don't keep to it very strictly because there are some things in the project that I already minimally do.  For instance I don't count my jewelry in the project because I wear the same two bracelets, three rings, and two earrings (in my four holes) all the time.  I haven't taken off my bracelets in the past twenty years except when medically necessary.  I have only a few pair of earrings that I change out in my lower piercings and I only have three necklaces that I wear, changing them usually seasonally.  I also don't count shoes in the project as I only have three pair that I ever wear.  I also don't count my knitted wear as I am a knitter and love different shawls, wraps, hats, and socks.  All of my clothes can neatly fit into three medium sized boxes. 

I hope you will enjoy watching my venture into minimalism.  My hope is that when (if) I do return to Florida that I will be able to release all the things I have gathered over the years and continue to live a more simplistic life.