Unsubscribe Day on February 8th

Irrelevant pic from last summer bcuz its January

I know from my days of working in IT that you should mostly just ignore spam and robocalls. Tighten up your spam rules, or use a provider that has spam blocking, and then ignore whatever gets through. 

Here's the reason: spammers buy a database of email addresses or phone numbers, and the information may be months or years old. The spammers have no way of knowing which phone numbers/email addresses lead to a real live person, and which ones are dead ends that are a waste of their time.  

So if you answer the phone, or reply to an email, they know they've got a working, functional contact. That immediately moves you to a different list, a list that they can then re-sell to someone else for more money because these are numbers/addresses that actually work. 

You see the problem. I no longer answer the phone unless I recognize the caller ID. If it's someone that legitimately needs to talk to me, they'll leave a message-- and I'd say more than 90% of the time, there's no message, just a hang-up. If I'm going to be home during the day, I even turn off the ringer (we are one of the seven households in the country that still has a landline.)

That has worked pretty well for the phone. Everyone once in awhile we'll get a day or two of frequent robocalls (and of course, during the election season, it was ridiculous), but if we don't answer, the calls tail off and we're good again for a few weeks. 

But over time, my email situation has become ugly. Once, about ten years ago, we contributed a fairly small amount to an acquaintance's political campaign. We immediately started receiving daily emails, and then several a day, and then a dozen. Not just from that candidate, but from his party, and then from various PACs (fundraising organizations) as my address got passed around. I've never contributed another dime to a political campaign. 

But then even weirder-- somehow my address was passed to "the other guys." I guess they figure everyone in Montana wants mail from gun rights groups and conservative PACs. It got way worse. Last spring, after the primaries, I got sick of seeing all the absurdly overblown subject lines (from both sides, honestly), and I thought at least I needed to get rid of the conservative ones. So I went through and unsubscribed.

(aside: by law, every mass email has to include an unsubscribe link. It may be in tiny print down at the bottom, but it has to be there.)

Unsubscribing worked great for a day or two. But before long, I was getting double the number of emails from the Democrats. Not kidding. There's some kind of sharing going on there. And then within a couple of months, I started getting the conservative ones again ("Dear fellow conservative, help me fight the FAR LEFT TAKEOVER OF OUR COUNTRY").

It is a little better since the election-- for whatever reason, I'm down to 3-4 messages from the left and 6-8 from the right. But it's still really IRRITATING. So, that's why I'm having unsubscribe day on Feb 8th. 

Well, that and also I need to unsubscribe from the previously mentioned trial periods I never cancelled. For example-- I kept a list for a couple of years of Kindle Unlimited titles I wanted to read (Kindle Unlimited has hundreds of thousands of titles that are available for "free" if you pay $9.99/month). When I got up to a dozen, I signed up for the free month. The problem is, six months later, I've only read one or two-- and for the $60 I've spent, I could have bought those two plus three or four others. Thus: Unsubscribe day on February 8th. Since I've told you about it, now I have to do it.

I think this qualifies as MORE THAN YOU WANTED TO KNOW. Here's to my dream: Spam- and robocall-free living.

I'm going to start posting once a week, probably on Fridays. Twice a week feels like too much. 

have a great weekend!

7ToF: If you could only have one color of toenail polish, what would it be? Some version of dark teal for me, I think.

1. I’ve been reading another decluttering book. It’s a less obnoxious than Marie Kondo, but still has some major eye roll moments. I’m working on our bathroom right now—which is an easy task since it is tiny, with a pedastal sink and has no cabinets other than the over-the-sink medicine cabinet we installed when we moved in. The author of this book wants your bathroom countertops to be completely bare. You can have a candle or a potted plant, but nothing else. In other words, your bathroom will look like a hotel.

2. I’m not really a candle fan, and I avoid house plants because I kill them, so that would mean I could have absolutely nothing on the counter. Which is Not Happening. Especially because there are no cabinets, and thus no countertops, in our bathroom. We have a vanity with a sink in our bedroom, and that’s where all my bathroom crap is. My God, she would go ballistic. ALL THAT CLUTTER, AND A SINK IN THE BEDROOM. But you know, our renovation funds only stretched so far and completely rebuilding the master bed/bath was way outside our budget.

3. Why in the world am I always so much wordier than I meant to be? This was only going to be one Thing. So anyway, I did decide that I would try to at least cut back, so that the only things on the counter (on the vanity in our bedroom) are the things I use every day. Everything else has to go underneath in the cabinet. And I have to admit (grudgingly), it does look better. Although I don't think it exactly makes me feel calm and serene.

4. Also, she wants you to limit yourself to one bottle of fingernail polish, one bottle of shampoo, one eye shadow, and so on. Doesn’t she ever have moods? What if she wants green toenail polish one week and fuchsia the next? (says the woman whose toenails are navy blue at the moment). Does she just throw out each color as she gets the next one? Probably not. Probably she is that put-together person who has a signature toenail color, and a signature scent, and all her bath towels match. More power to you, lady, but that’s a little twee for me.

5. (It’s possible that I’ve been overusing the word twee recently but it is so perfect: “excessively or affectedly quaint, pretty, or sentimental” according to Google.)

6. Major new tool in my battle with my phone: I have an iPhone, a 6-Plus, which I love so much that I may just get another one when this one dies. I upgraded to the new iPhone operating system (iOS12) this week and was happy to discover that they've included a new app called "Screen Time" that tracks your screen time by application, and also lets you set limits for how much you want to be on your phone. So far it's by application group, which is less helpful than it could be (for example, both text messaging and Instagram, which are two entirely different things if you ask me, are included in Social Networking)-- but still it has been great. If you go over the time that you specified, you can choose to ignore the time limit, or get a reminder in 15 minutes. So far, love it. 

(Also, if you're setting it up on a teen's phone, you can require a passcode to override the limits, but since I'm just using it as a reminder to myself of how I want to spend my time, I haven't used that feature.)

7.  Food for Thought: I tried a new podcast called Conscious Construction. In the episode I tried (from August 16th), the host Abi Robins interviewed a therapist named Matt Inman, who talks about how to live inefficiently. Our culture prizes efficiency: maximize profit! speed through your to-do list! get more done! streamline your workflow! But the things that make life enjoyable, the things that make life memorable, are things that are inefficient, that accomplish nothing—playing Uno with your kids, sitting and watching the sunset, playing a musical instrument badly just because it’s fun. I mean, let’s face it, dancing around the kitchen while you’re fixing dinner slows you down. I could become a big fan of inefficiency.

So, that’s it for me. I’m pre-writing my posts for next week since I’ll be out of town, but as long as I get them scheduled right (always a dicey proposition), they’ll show up on time. Let’s be inefficient this weekend! Have a good one!

7ToF: a bunch of updates, belly fat, and bookstagram

1. Declutter update: I didn't get much done this week. My main accomplishment was pulling everything out from underneath our bathroom sink, throwing out a bunch of old lotions and samples of skin care products, and reorganizing it. But since that only took a couple of hours, I can't claim to have had a good decluttering week. Next week I tackle the dreaded under-the-stairs storeroom, though, which has been the big, nasty part of this that I've been working up to all along. I'm saying it here so I'll have to do it.

2. Reading report: Thumbs up for The Dry, a murder mystery set in Australia, Sing Unburied Sing, a story about a black family on the Gulf coast which would be terribly depressing except her writing is so beautiful, I Am I Am I Am, a memoir about the author's surprisingly frequent brushes with death, A Study in Charlotte, a YA novel about Sherlock Holmes' great granddaughter at boarding school with Dr. Watson's great grandson, The Talent Code, non-fiction about the neurology behind skill development (which sounds yawn-y but he has such great stories to go with it that it's a good read).

2a. Thumbs sideways: The read-all-day book from Tuesday's post was The Rules Do Not Apply, by Ariel Levy. It starts out really interesting and entertaining, but the end as she grieves the complete dissolution of her life devolves a bit. It's good but trigger warning for pretty much everything. Don't tackle it unless you're in the mood for some heavy reading.

3. *slight blush* Remember I told you I was trying to figure out an alternative to my nightly use of face wipes? Yeah, well, I decided I didn't care that much. So I don't have an update to report on that. I'm still using face wipes.

4. Several years ago, I wrote a post about post-menopausal weight gain. We all deal with it. (And actually, a lot of men in their fifties are dealing with it, too, so maybe I shouldn't restrict this to women.) I'm really conflicted about this, because on the one hand, out of the dozens of women I know who are older than 50, I only know one woman who hasn't thickened around her middle, so why are we so worried about it? Why don't we just accept it as normal and get on with our day?

5.  And the reason why is because of this week's "Interesting Read": The Dangers of Belly Fat. Apparently gaining weight deep in your abdomen--which can happen without actually registering as overweight on the scale--leads to a host of health problems. Those of you who have been around awhile know how much I hate dieting, and I still do. But eating sensibly and (most importantly) staying active, are really important. Damn it. It's easy to do now in the summer when the weather is nice and we can go for frequent walks, but in the winter this is tough.

6. The short version of #6 and #7: I have a new account on Instagram for bookish pictures, @bookspate, if you're interested.

Long version: Last year I discovered #bookstagram, which is simply a hashtag on Instagram used for pictures of books. It's nerdy and fun. A couple of months ago I posted a few. Then I took an online class about taking better #bookstagram pictures.

And then, as seems to happen with all things on the internet, I discovered #bookstagram is A Thing. It's become so popular that publishers are paying attention and sending out free books to bookstagrammers who have lots of followers. The fun snaps of your #currentread or your favorite books or an organized bookshelf (#shelfie) have turned into professional quality photographs of shiny new collector's editions.

7. And yet still I'm doing it, because figuring out interesting groupings of books and how to take photos of them has turned into the creative project I was looking for a few months back. I know it's nerdy, and since I'm not the world's greatest photographer and I'm taking pictures of books I actually own and in many cases have owned for decades, I'm bucking the gorgeous #bookstagram trend.

But I've decided I don't care. (Keepin' it real on Instagram.) I created a separate account for this, so if you're on instagram and you're interested, it's @bookspate. Like all internet names these days, bookspate isn't the one I wanted, or even the fourteenth one I wanted, it's just what I came up with while endlessly trying to find a username that wasn't already taken. But it fits well enough-- google defines "spate" as "a large number of things or events occurring in quick succession."

And I'm off. Have a great weekend.

7ToF: mid-life aches and pains. Also what I learned from podcasts this week.

I added an email signup over there on the right side so you can type in your email address and receive posts in your inbox as they are published. Thank you for being interested, person-who-asked-for-it!

1. Fair warning: I am bad about editing and re-publishing my posts, so if you sign up, they may show up in your inbox more than once. All I can say is that I'm better about it than I used to be. (Originally this was followed by a long discussion about self-editing and the pros and cons of writing snobbery, but it was way too long so I'm moving it to a later post.)

2. A friend of mine who has young kids looked at me with panic in her eyes when she told me she had read my post about de-cluttering. For the record, the kind of decluttering project I'm doing right now probably wouldn't be possible with kids around--and is way less necessary, anyway. You've only got ten? twelve? years of stuff, not thirty-four. It's an empty nester project. I probably should have said that in the original post. When I had young kids, I was lucky to make a sweep of unwearable clothes and broken toys every year or two. Don't panic.

3. Dean and I were on one of our evening walks this week and the topic of aging came up. You spend your whole life knowing intuitively that you get older every day (and for the first half of your life you're really excited about that!!). We all know from our parents and grandparents and popular culture that getting old involves aching joints, less refreshing sleep, wrinkles, and an endless series of tiny indignities. But still, in spite of knowing this practically from birth, we are both frequently surprised and personally outraged as each new sign of age appears. And then, every time I adjust to the new normal, it gets worse. *grimace emoji* Aging is not for sissies.

4. I have a friend who told me once that Aleve worked as well for her as codeine, so I went out and bought some that day. But you know what? Aleve does nothing for me. And I bought the Costco size bottle. So since I had that big jug of Aleve, I've started taking one Advil and one Aleve when my particular ouch-y spots flare up, instead of my usual one Advil. The combination works better than either one of them alone.

Full disclosure: Dean, the medical professional, says-- with a barely suppressed eye roll-- that's because you're taking two painkillers instead of one.  You be the judge.

5. Also, arnica. May God bless the person who discovered arnica with an unending rain of blessings (seems likely that it was an Indian or a wise woman, since *clears throat* unnamed medical professionals are skeptical). I hesitate to even say this-- because the surest way I know to experience one of the signs of aging is to smugly note to myself that at least I don't have that yet-- but so far my knees are good. *knocks on wood* But when I do something a bit out of my normal level of athletic activity, they ache, and arnica clears it right up. What works for your aches and pains? Am I the only one thinking of trying copper?

6. I Heard It On a Podcast #1: From the 10% Happier Podcast, episode #133 with Catherine Price. Before you figure out how to eliminate the negative side of obsessive phone use, it's a good idea to figure out what positive things you want from your phone. Back in Jan/Feb when I was trying to dial back my phone usage, I spent lots of time figuring out what I could eliminate, but I never did the opposite: what do I want my phone to do for me? This seems worth some time. Texting-- the #1 benefit of my phone. GPS. Information like weather, movie times, business phone numbers and addresses. What else?

7. I Heard It On a Podcast #2: From The One You Feed, episode #224 with Cheri Huber. Everybody gets stuck in a downward sprial of negative thinking occasionally, and it gets worse when we're stressed. I'm the worst person ever. I'm such a failure. We've been endlessly told that the solution is to think positively! But unfortunately that usually means saying things we don't believe: I'm awesome! I'm amazing! I can do this! 

Really what we should be doing is telling ourselves things that are true: I love my family. I have good intentions. I care about the outcome of this situation. Even silly things like I love the color blue. Music makes me happy. Whatever you can tell yourself that you know to be true can break the cycle of negative falsehoods, because --I'll let you in on a secret here-- none of us is really the worst human being ever. 

p.s. Cheri Huber, who must be a genius to have come up with this, actually recommends recording yourself saying the true things so that you can play it back when you're down and hear your own voice telling you true, positive things. I'm not sure I'm quite brave enough, but I'll try it if you'll try it. We all have voice recorders on our phones, I guess.

Have a great weekend.

7ToF: this will be quick because I'm on my way out of town. ROAD TRIP!

1. The post I had planned for Tuesday got eaten by the internet. I have no idea what happened. It was two-thirds typed. Blogger has an auto-save feature that saves it every 10-15 seconds, so I know it had been saved. It shouldn't have disappeared, but it did. And then there was the holiday on Monday, and I'm leaving to go out of town tomorrow, and there went the week. Oops. If I can remember it, I'll redo it next week.

2. I've discovered a really great thing about my de-cluttering project. With most home improvement projects--say, repainting a room or renovating your kitchen--you can't enjoy the results until you're done. But with decluttering, as soon as you've cleared out a single drawer, or made one good pass through a closet, the results are obvious. I'm not anywhere close to done but I'm already happy about how it’s going.

3. This week's major accomplishment: cleared out, dusted, and re-organized the massive roll-top desk Dean inherited from his grandfather. It was a cluttered mess, now it's a usable space. *throws confetti*

4. What's your opinion about getting rid of financial documents? I discussed this with a friend a couple of days ago. We've had all the same account numbers for 25 years, so anything with an account number is current. My friend says if it's in a trash bag and headed to the dump, how is anybody going to find it? It's not like there's someone in the back alley chomping at the bit to go through our trash. So far I've been just paranoid enough about this that I'm shredding everything that has an account number or address on it. But then you've got all this shredded stuff you have to do something with. (Hmmm, I suppose I could use it as confetti.) *throws confetti*

5. This week's interesting read: What I Got Wrong About Cultural Appropriation "The do-or-die way we talk about cultural appropriation has somehow made it easier to punish those who have the most to learn, and reward those who know just the bare minimum." The language in this article is fairly academic, but it's a thoughtful piece prompted by the furor over a young white student who wore a qipao, a Chinese dress, to her high school prom. Worth reading.

6. I'm making a genuine effort to read books by more diverse authors this year. So far I've read memoirs by Phoebe Robinson and Gabrielle Union, and our book club is doing Sing Unburied Sing in June. They're thought provoking and worth reading. I also read the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks which is about an African American woman whose cells changed the world of medical research-- fascinating. I thought I was pretty up on the ways we discriminate against people of color, but broadening my reading has opened my eyes to things I didn't know. It's never too late to learn. Or to change.

7. I'm driving to Seattle this weekend to meet up with my older sister and attend the memorial service of a cousin's son who was killed a couple of months ago. The whole situation is just so sad. So between the traveling and catching up when I get back, I may not be able to post by next Tuesday-- not sure yet. Say a prayer for Paige. In spite of the sad event, I'm looking forward to the road trip.

Hope you have a great weekend. I plan to-- my sister has only been to Seattle for professional meetings so I get to show her around a bit.

7ToF: irritations major and minor. Well, OK, I guess they're all minor in the grand scheme of things.

1. We are among the few dinosaurs left in the US who still have a landline. We've had the same phone number since 1992, and it is tied into everything. We had a great reminder of that last weekend: a friend from college that we haven't talked to in several years called and fortunately, we have the same old number we've always had.

2. But we've had a sudden dramatic increase in the number of automated calls we receive. Used to be that runup to elections were the worst, when we'd get a half a dozen calls a day. And I thought that was infuriating. But yesterday, the phone rang half a dozen times before 10 a.m. It's ridiculous. Sometimes we'll get twenty calls in a day. That phone call from our college friend was the first time in weeks that the phone rang and it was someone we actually wanted to talk to.

3. I thought Dean had accidentally clicked on an ad, or I had bought something from a new vendor who'd sold our number far and wide. So as annoyed as it makes me, I was a bit relieved to read this article that reports robocalls increased by 900 million during the month of April alone. It's not just us, it's happening nationwide. And if I cancel our landline (which I was on the verge of doing), we'll start using our cell numbers when we sign up for things, and then our cell phones will be inundated with unwanted calls. So I guess we're just stuck. Since our landline almost never receives phone calls we want, I may just turn off the ringer and check the answering machine once a day.

4. Remember my confession that I use face wipes to take off my makeup at night? Well, under the heading "Gross Things I Wish I Didn't Know," file this article, about enormous clumps of trash and cooking waste that are turning up in sewers in the UK. Know what they are mostly composed of? Wet wipes. They're wipes that have been flushed down the toilet, not "binned" (put in the trash)(which is what I do with my face wipes), but still. It was disturbing to read, and disturbing to realize my guilty habit really has no excuse.

5. So I'm working on a new plan. Plan A: compostable wipes. I found some at Target in the baby department. They are multi-use, not just for--ummmmmm--bum wiping, shall we say, so I'll let you know if they work. Plan B: buy one of those packs of a dozen washcloths and create my own wipes that get tossed in the laundry. I'll keep you posted. I'm not usually a DIY person, but if I can come up with an easy way to do this, I'll pass it along.

6. Why do I hate washing my face in the sink so much? I always have, this is not a new thing, but I've never really thought about why. It makes a mess. It's hard to get all the soap off, so I end up with dried soap around the edge of my face, which makes my skin itch. I hate having water drip down my forearms (sensory issues, remember? don't judge).

But now that I'm old and must wear makeup to avoid looking like one of the walking dead, I have to do something. If I skip the night-time makeup removal step, I break out. It happened on my trip-- I ran out of wipes the last night I was in California, so I figured it wouldn't matter if I just skipped a night. 24 hours later, I had one of those crater-like zits on the side of my nose. Haven't had one in years. Almost two weeks later, it's mostly gone but there's still a spot there, damn you slower healing middle aged skin.

7. You remember in the last post I said something about throwing out canceled checks from 2003? I thought I was hilariously exaggerating by going back fifteen years. But guess what I found yesterday? A whole drawer full of check duplicates going back to 2003. *facepalm*

We wouldn't have to eat Kraft dinners, but we would eat Kraft dinners.

 And then I found vet bills from 1992, and EOBs from surgery I had in 1996. So, decluttering continues. As it will, apparently, for some time to come. Have a great weekend.

P.S. In case you missed the Laurel vs. Yanny debate this week (this year's version of the blue dress vs. white dress), this article from the NYTimes explains it and has a tool so you can try it yourself. I very distinctly heard only Yanny at first, but then as soon as I moved the slider, I heard Laurel, and now I can't not hear it. Funny how the brain works.

The Big Cleanout, part 2 (Declutter Like You Mean It)

I am never going to be a minimalist. I like having a stack of magazines on the coffee table, shelves crammed with books, mementos from trips, photographs of the kids. But there's no denying that we have too much stuff for the house we live in. Hence, the Big Cleanout.

There are lots of great resources for decluttering, so what follows is a list of my favorite tips and ideas. Unfortunately due to fifties-memory-syndrome I don't remember where some of them came from, but none of them are my own ideas.

1. Like most of us, I was raised to not waste things. Some of my stuff is worth passing along, but a lot of it just needs to be thrown out. A huge roadblock for me is not wanting to throw things away. Even stuff I don't want anymore is hard for me to jettison. (Want my lecture notes from grad school, anyone? cancelled checks from 2003?)

Here is the most helpful decluttering tip I've seen: if it's trash, it's trash whether it's in your house or at the dump. Either you're going to throw it out now, or you're going to have to do it later when you have less energy, or someone else is going to have to do it for you when you're no longer capable. Keeping something I don't want or need because I feel bad about throwing it out is not going to solve anything. I just have to get over myself on this one.

2. And by "throw it out," I mean, depending on what it is: recycle it, throw it in the kindling pile, take it to a charity shop, or put it in the trash. Once upon a time, I would have included "sell it on E-Bay" in that list, but now it sounds like too much work. Ditto having a yard sale.

AS GOD IS MY WITNESS, I WILL NEVER HAVE A YARD SALE AGAIN

 3. On the other hand, if you really want to keep something, keep it. (I made it through about 20 pages of Marie Kondo before I got too irritated at her preachy tone to continue, but if you're a fan, you can use her question: does it bring you joy? if yes, keep it.)

4. Surfaces are for working, cabinets and closets are for storage. So keep counters and desktops clear, and store things out of sight. I like this in theory, but it's not entirely possible in this house-- we don't have very much storage space. But it's a good principle to keep in mind while organizing things. (This one and the next two are from Gretchen Rubin's Happier podcast episode #160, where she is helping her sister organize and declutter her office.) 

5. Gretchen is a visual person, so she recommends starting with clearing out and decluttering things that can be seen first (like counters and desktops) and dealing with what is out of sight later (like cabinets and cupboards). This immediately explained to me why Dean and I have such a hard time working on decluttering/organizing together, because Dean is exactly like that. Whereas in my opinion, it doesn't make sense to do the "visual" part (organizing the things that can be seen) until you've organized what's inside the cabinets and cupboards so that you have room to put things away. This isn't bad advice, it's just not the way I do things, and it helped me understand the way someone else (Dean!) looks at it.

6. The third helpful thing I learned from Gretchen is how to make decisions about mementos and/or souvenirs. If an item represents something you want to remember-- a trip, an experience, a grandparent, a moment in a child's life-- does it actually capture that moment? Does it do its job as a container for memories? And is it something that you still want to remember? If so, keep it. If not, let it go.

7. And the corollary for me: do I really need eight things in my dining room buffet to remind me of my beloved grandmother? Would one or two be enough? It's really tempting to want to hold on to every little thing that reminds me of someone I love, but it's not necessary. I remember her pretty well even without things to remind me.

8. And another corollary: I've discovered that items that have sentimental value to me don't necessarily mean anything to my children. Hummel figurines remind me of my grandmother, but my daughter didn't really know my grandmother and she declined to take a Hummel figurine to her new apartment. As she should have if she didn't want it. There's no point in saving things to pass on to my children if they're not things my children want.

9. I wish I could remember who said this, but I don't: If you don't later regret at least one or two things you got rid of, you didn't go far enough. That is genius. Most things can be replaced.

10. Another one from a source I can't remember: Always have an empty shelf. At first, that was so foreign to me that I almost couldn't wrap my brain around it. But it gives you room for your library books, or to sweep away some clutter when unexpected company is coming, or if you need someplace to put the extra mega-box of your family's favorite cereal you got at Costco so you wouldn't have to go back so soon. Those are all things that only need a temporary place to land.

11. Don't put off taking stuff to the dump or second-hand shop longer than a couple of days, or it will start to drift out of the neatly organized piles you created. Don't wait till you're done. As soon as you've got a few things, run them by the Salvation Army on your way to the grocery store (or wherever). It only takes a minute, and it both gives you a feeling of accomplishment and also keeps it from creeping back into the house.

12. And finally: the whole thing is a work in progress. You can't live in our world and not acquire new stuff. Or at least, I can't. You receive gifts, you need new hiking boots, you want a copy of that new book by your favorite author. But I hope once I get the big, massive cleanout done, staying on top of it will be a simpler project. We'll see.

That's it for me! Have a great weekend.

<-- Part One of this post

The Big Cleanout, Part 1: Getting Started

When we moved into this house six years ago, we only lost about two hundred square feet in terms of actual square footage. But because it's arranged differently, it seemed like major downsizing. We lost a walk-in pantry, a study with two walls of built-ins, a linen closet, and two bathrooms (with cabinets). And the kitchen in this house is considerably smaller than the old one, and although we still have a laundry room, the old laundry room had a full wall of cabinets that the new one doesn't have.

In exchange, we got larger rooms with not much storage and an amazing view out the front windows, plus more room for the dog and no covenants against chicken ownership. So, overall: total win. But we have way more stuff than we have places to put it.

At the time we moved, I was still in grad school. We had planned the move for my six-week Christmas break. But you know how those things go. The house needed a bunch of work before we could move in, and it kept taking longer and longer. So we ended up moving the weekend before I had to start classes on Monday. Just in case you can't read between the lines, that was NOT A GOOD IDEA. The de-cluttering that should have happened when we moved didn't happen.

We shoved things in wherever we could find a spot. And now we've lived here six years, and I can tell you for sure that the magic de-cluttering elves have not visited. I've done some emergency clearing now and again, but we are stuffed in this house like cornbread and oysters in a turkey.

I'm not a hoarder, but if there is a personality scale for minimalist vs. hoarder, I'm definitely more on the hoarder end of the scale. I would never let it get so bad that you had to pick your way through piles of stuff to get through the living room. But on the other hand, the idea of living in a pristine house with blank walls, all clean surfaces, and everything put away out of sight is not appealing to me at all-- it sounds sterile and unwelcoming.

I like some magazines piled on the coffee table, books everywhere, treasured knick knacks on the mantle and family photos tucked into corners. But it makes me just as nuts to be faced with piles of crap I don't know what to do with as it does to think about the blank walls and empty shelves. The price to be paid for the tendency to hoard is that periodically I have to clear things out. And oh, how I hate it. (Although I know I'll be happy when I'm done.)

Now my job has ended, and it is time, as Rafiki said. It's such a huge task that it has been a bit difficult to know where to start. So yesterday I just picked a place (a shelf on my side of our closet) and plunged in. Then today I went through all my work clothes and jettisoned the stuff I know I'll never wear again. I already feel better, even though it's not much. At this rate, I'll still be decluttering in 2035.

Probably not very many of you are doing this with me, so I will try not to overdo the decluttering posts. But since it's what I'm thinking about, you're stuck with at least a few.

(This was originally the first half of a longer post, but that post got so long that I split it in two. Part 2 tomorrow.)

7ToF: Mexico, WiFi, and our pitiful NCAA Bracket

1. Mexico was great. Just in case you had any doubts. We stayed at a little place about an hour north of the Los Cabos airport. Apparently, it is their shoulder season because we were practically the only people there midweek. When the weekenders started rolling in on Thursday, we were a little bit pissed that they were taking over our private pool.

imagine James Taylor singing "Mexico"

2. One of my favorite things about it was the way they had their wireless set up. The hotel units circled the pool, and then there was a beachfront restaurant. You could only connect to their wireless if you were at the restaurant (or sitting on one of the benches outside). It was perfect--no problem to go and check your email or text messages if you wanted to, but no internet in the rooms or by the pool. It made me wonder if we could figure out a way to restrict the wireless at our house to a single room--easy to access when you need it, but not too easy.

3. I think I'm coming to the end of experimenting with online access (see relevant posts back in January). I'm glad I took a break for awhile, because it let me see how my brain feels when I'm relatively disconnected vs. how I feel when I'm "always-on." Honestly, there are some times when "always-on" is what I want. But usually, I feel better if I'm only accessing the internet when I actually consciously want to use it, as opposed to just automatically reaching for my phone every few minutes. Of course, I'm not always perfect at doing this. But I'm better at it than I was before.

4. One of the things I've had to adjust is being an information junkie. I love trivia. If you're a trivia nut, Google is the most amazing, terrific, sublime thing ever. You can find out any little thing you ever wanted to know from Google. You can track down the name of that British mystery series you read ten years ago. You can figure out where you've seen Sally Hawkins before (she was Anne Elliott in the BBC version of Persuasion). It's become second nature to me, anytime I don't know something, to grab my phone and look it up. It's hard to even remember what it felt like back in the day when you had to wait till you got home to look something up in a dictionary or an encyclopedia. But when I grab my phone while having lunch with friends, it doesn't matter if I'm googling movie trivia or checking text messages, it's rude. I'm trying to stop.

5. And just to prove how imperfectly I am accomplishing this: I downloaded a new game this week, which both reminded me how much fun games can be, and also how quickly I get sucked into spending 2-3 hours a day on them. This week, it was fun and relaxing. But I think I will probably delete the game in another day or two. For one thing, I've reached the point where you have to start buying things to keep going. They get you hooked on the levels that you can win for free, and then gradually amp up the difficulty until you can't progress without paying for extra tools or boosters or whatever. Really irritating, but since I'm so cheap, it also acts as a natural deterrent-- I'm OK with spending $5-ish on a game that I'm enjoying, but past that point, there are other things I'd rather spend my money on. About a million other things.

6. Like everybody, our March Madness bracket got trashed. I used the CBSSports app, which allows you to create three brackets for free. We picked Virginia to win it all in the first one (they lost in the first round), Cincy to win it all in the second one (they lost in the second round), and for the third one we used the "auto fill" option for random selections, which gave us Villanova as national champion (still possible). Pretty sad when the random auto fill is smarter than you are.

7. You remember about a month ago when we were discussing how to weed out books when you have too many of them? I complained that all those "clear your clutter" advice people are not much help when it comes to books, because they (apparently) don't like books. They generally think you should get rid of them. But not long after I wrote that, I read somewhere (apologies for not remembering where) a comment that said, "Seriously, if you've had a book for five years and you haven't read it yet, are you ever going to?"

My first reaction was dismissive. I have stacks of books that of course I'm going to read some day. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought maybe they're right. I could go through my as-yet-unread books with that thought in mind-- am I really going to read this someday? and I bet I could get rid of a bunch more. Because we are still in need of major decluttering around here and I could use the shelf space. Hmmmmm. I am thinking about  this. (The house-wide decluttering project is #1 on my list once I finish my job.)

Part Two of the Obliger Life post is coming, I just couldn't get it done in time for Friday. Have a great weekend.

7ToF: book lovers' edition, not on Friday

1. Somehow, I have no idea how this happens, in spite of regularly taking boxes of books to the thrift shop or our church bazaar or the Friends of the Library book sale, new books keep showing up at our house. So the carefully arranged bookshelves--arranging books is one of my most reliable calming activities-- are suddenly bulging again, with books perched sideways on top of other books, tucked into corners, or stacked up in places where books really aren't supposed to be.

Hmmmm. Is there anywhere books aren't supposed to be?

2. I've told you before that I love my kindle. But, as has recently been made clear, I'm also frugal/thrifty/cheap and if a book is cheaper in print than as an ebook, I buy the actual book.* And some books--cookbooks, for example--will always imo be better in physical book form. Also, a longstanding family Christmas tradition is the annual stack of books from mom (i.e., me). It's my favorite part of shopping for Christmas-- everybody gets four books. But it means that every Christmas, a whole bunch more books show up at our house.

* /soapbox on/ I may be cheap when it comes to buying books, and I've snapped up dozens of kindle books when they go on sale, but I am completely opposed to pirating them. I didn't even know this was a thing until this past week. Don't do it. That's flat-out stealing. We want our authors happy, healthy, well-paid, and writing more books. /soapbox off/

3. So finally we're getting around to the point of this post, which is figuring out how to cull my books. The "clearing your clutter" folks are not much help with this because to them books are not friends, they are clutter. They just want you to get rid of them. (Insert here the story of the interior decorator I worked with last year who wanted me to keep only a few books that look good on the shelf, i.e., just go ahead and JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER. *shudder*)

4. So to help me figure out what I could get rid of, I made a list of the reasons I will keep a book.
- I loved it so much that just seeing it on the shelf makes me happy.
- It's one I will re-read. I don't re-read a lot, but I do have favorites I come back to.
- It's one I want to read. A supply of books I'm looking forward to reading is like having a supply of made-ahead meals stashed in the freezer. *happy*
- And the one that was a surprise to me: it represents the kind of person I'd like to be. I'd like to be the kind of person who would read a book on the history of mathematics or the origin of the galaxy. And sometimes I do read that kind of thing. But mainly I just like having them on the shelf. (this one occurred to me because of something I read, I think on Book Riot, so it wasn't my idea. But it's so true.)

Bye-bye to these books :-(

5. So what books can I get rid of? In the most recent round of downsizing, I got rid of some books I once wanted to read but that no longer sound all that appealing; some short story anthologies that I picked up when I was teaching the short story class; and a bunch from that last category above. I like having those books on the shelf, but I don't need 30 of them.

6. I discovered Book Riot last fall. It's a great site for book lovers. Even though the conversations skew toward millenial readers, I just like reading stuff written by people who are as reading addicted as I am. My favorite posts of theirs so far are their book recommendations based on your Hogwarts house. I thought the lists for Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw (me), and Slytherin were inspired and spot on, but the list for Gryffindor was disappointing. Not sure why. (Fair warning: Book Riot is one of the reasons I needed an internet break. They often publish several posts a day and it's a lot of keep up with if you have obsessive tendencies.)

7. Another reading site that you probably already know about is Modern Mrs. Darcy. It's a lot of fun, and I find Anne Bogel to be very appealing. But she doesn't always post about reading, so although I read there occasionally, not all of her posts are about things I'm interested in. But what I recently discovered that I love is her podcast What Shall I Read Next. If you've never tried it before, start with episode 62, the first anniversary of the podcast, where the usual format is reversed and readers recommend books to her instead of the other way around. Even though it isn't a typical episode, it will give you a good idea of Anne's personality and the kinds of things she looks for when recommending a book. Warning: it will make your TBR pile explode.

This is sort of #8 but I'll just tack it on here and hope you don't notice. If you haven't figured out how to use your library's ebook website, you should, because it is so fun. (You don't have to have an e-reader to read ebooks, although admittedly it isn't much fun to read on your laptop or your phone.) The downside is that usually the books I want to download from the library have waitlists. This can be annoying, but I've become sort of attached to the waitlist process. It's a method for managing my TBR (to-be-read) pile--the book I'll read next is the one that's available next. The only problem is that it is surprising how often I'll have 6-8 books stacked up in my waitlist, only to have 3, or even 4, become available within a few days of each other. And since you only get them for two weeks, that's a problem. Somehow, I manage.

For the record, I am posting this one the old-fashioned way, because I couldn't figure out how to add pictures in an email. Sorry this got so long, but at least for those of you who aren't readers, I got all my books news out in one place! I kept editing it to try to make it shorter, and instead of cutting it down, it just got longer and longer.

7ToF: in which I restrain myself from using very bad words.

I started this week's Seven-Things-on-Friday days ago because I knew I would be busy getting ready for vacation. Instead of making it quicker to write, though, I ended up spending at least three times as much time on it as I normally would. Then I accidentally freaking DELETED IT. I am saying ALL THE BAD WORDS.

Even after I googled how to recover a deleted blog post and tried a dozen different things, I couldn't get it back. I spent so much time on it that I'm sick of it and I have no desire to re-write it. So here is the abridged version.

1. We are going on vacation for two weeks, leaving on Saturday: two Souths (Carolina and Dakota) for back-to-back family reunions.

2. I'm feeling guilty again about having too much crap after seeing a TV ad this week about how charities don't want your stuff, they want your cash. Since I'm still clearing clutter, what the heck am I going to do with all this stuff?

3. So I'm having a hard time justifying buying a new comforter, even though our current one is ten years old and I'm sick of it, because I don't know what to do with the old one.

4. But I'm overcoming that guilt and buying one anyway because I'm not all that virtuous and I wants one.

5. Continuing my rampant consumer theme, I went on a (noble) quest to find good beer mugs. ha. I'm buying microbrews in cans now (we can't recycle glass locally), but I don't want to drink it from a can. So here is a picture of our new beer mugs, which I got at TJMaxx. Dishwasher safe, sturdy, and with a handle.

Check me out, stylin' a photo. Don't laugh.

6. I have a household hint. I may be a rotten housekeeper, but I'm good at finding things that work like a charm and save me a lot of work. To remove coffee and tea stains from ceramic mugs, put a tablespoon or so of baking soda in a mug, add a bit of water to make a paste, scrub around with your fingers. It's like magic. I'm so smugly pleased with myself I almost posted a before and after picture.

7. Originally I had planned to re-post some stuff from my old blog while we're gone, but at the moment, I'm so done with the whole blogging schtick that I'm taking a break instead. I guess accidentally deleting all that work struck a nerve. I'll probably be back at the end of the summer, but who knows.

And there you go. I'll be over being pissed (probably) by the time you read this. The good news is that it's WAY shorter than the original. Have a great weekend and a great summer.

Pain in the neck, plus Too Much Stuff follow-up

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I told you I was going to see a physical therapist for my neck? Part of his treatment plan involves setting up a more ergonomic computer space--and since for several years now I've spent a good part of my day hunched over my laptop, this has been too long in coming.

So right this minute I'm typing on a split keyboard--not one of those ergonomic keyboards with a raised center and an inch of space between the two halves of the keyboard, but an entirely split keyboard. I've got it set up so it's about three inches apart (a little further than in the picture), which makes it so I can square my shoulders as I sit here and type. So far, I love it.

Kinesis Freestyle 2 keyboard, with separate
accessory kit installed. It's wired, but I've never liked wireless
keyboards anyway since it seems like they need new batteries
every ten minutes.

I thought it would take me awhile to adjust to the split, but it hasn't taken any time at all. Also, in the boring-trivia-you-don't-need-to -know department, I've discovered that I always hit the space bar with my right thumb. There's half a space bar on each side of this thing and I would have guessed that I use them interchangeably, but I don't. Right thumb, every time.

The PT also recommended sleeping with a pillow between my knees. I took this with a grain of salt, because while I can see that would be a great help to someone with hip or lower back problems, how would it help me with my neck? I didn't even try it until four or five days after I saw him.

But you know, your hip bone is connected to your...spine (someone should write a song about that), and your spine runs right up your back to your neck, and it has made a remarkable difference. I'm sleeping better, and waking up without feeling like I'm eighty. I still feel like I'm 53, darn it, but not 80. Highly recommended.

Too Much Stuff follow-up:

Seems like everyone I know is dealing with clutter right now, and in her Friday post, sister-of-the-heart Debbie mentioned using her old stuff in craft projects. Oh my word, is that ever something I wouldn't think of-- you can't imagine how un-crafty I am-- but it is a great idea, so I thought I would pass it along. If I understand the process correctly, she is cutting old T-shirts into strips, which will then be knitted into a rug. *envy*

London Mabel also wrote a post about how you figure out which things to keep and which things to toss, using Marie Kondo's criteria: does this item bring me joy? Great post exploring the larger implications of how we organize our lives.

If you haven't heard of Marie Kondo, she wrote a book about decluttering as spiritual practice that is really popular right now. On Amazon, it is here. I haven't read it yet, but I've read enough about it that I almost feel like I don't need to.

And if you're looking for inspiration, I have two sites to recommend. The FlyLady is an entire internet phenomenon all to herself. I personally would not recommend joining her group or getting her emails, since they can be a bit overwhelming and obsessive (my opinion, and many people disagree). But her website is great and has lots of good ideas for how to get started and how to keep going.

And Unfuck Your Habitat (excuse the profanity). In spite of the profanity in the title, UfYH is a great resource with not much other profanity. She has checklists of ways to get started, and an entire community of people who post before/after pictures of their formerly-junky-now-spacious habitats (keep scrolling down if you're not seeing pictures). It's aimed at young people who are on their own for the first time, but still there is some great inspiration.

One thing both of them highly recommend (and I completely agree) is starting small. Fifteen minutes a day, or whatever works for you. It's too easy to get overwhelmed if you try to spend an entire weekend cleaning your whole house. You'll burn out right after you get everything pulled out of your storeroom and then you'll just have a bigger mess.

Not that I would have any personal experience with that, I'm just relaying what I've heard. Really.

So off I go for my fifteen minutes.Well, actually, I'm taking Sadie on a walk first, but then I'll do my 15 minutes.

7ToF: too much stuff, part 2

I'm pretty good at going through and culling things that I no longer want or need. The dilemma is: what do you do with the stuff you're ready to jettison? That's where I stall out. So this is to help me figure out how I'm going to handle my current round of clutter clearing.

Here are the options I can think of, with their pros and cons.

Free Space in "What to Do With Your Stuff" Bingo: Don't do anything. But eventually you end up buried under piles of unwanted junk. I've never watched the extreme hoarders TV show, but I've seen the ads. It's ugly.

1. Garage Sale/Yard Sale.

Pros: You make some money off stuff you no longer want. You can be pretty sure that your stuff is going to people who want/need it, because otherwise why would they buy it?

Cons: Around here, people are looking for stuff dirt cheap. If it's over $2, they're not interested. You put a bargain price on something and they're still going to want to talk you down. Also, yard sales are lots of work. LOTS. OF. WORK. You may or may not make enough money to make it worth the effort. 

2. Donate to someone else's yard sale/rummage sale/fundraiser.

Pros: presumably you're donating to someone or some cause you care about, so you get to help them raise money. Also, they do all the work of sorting, pricing, running the sale, and getting rid of the leftovers.

Cons: There may not be a rummage sale at the time you need to dump your stuff.

3. Goodwill and other charitable secondhand shops:

Pros: You help a good cause raise money. You drop the stuff off, and they deal with it. You get a tax break if you remember to get a receipt. Your stuff eventually finds its way to someone who needs it.

Cons: if you don't do your research carefully, you may end up supporting a cause that you don't agree with. Also, these places get so much stuff, it may be a long time before yours gets processed and makes it way into the retail area.

4. Consignment shops:

Pros: You get some money back for your stuff if/when it sells, like a yard sale, but you don't have to mess with advertising, pricing, organizing, or selling. If you have nice stuff, you'll get more money this way than from a yard sale.

Cons: some consignments shops are really picky about what they'll take. You only get a small percentage of the price. If it doesn't sell in a specified period of time (90 days?), they have the right to drop the price, offer your stuff as part of a 2-for-1 deal, or dispose of it as they see fit.

5. Participate in freecycling, which is a fancy name for giving your junk to someone else who needs/wants it. In some communities, this is done informally by leaving your stuff out at the curb, a known signal that people can help themselves. There is also freecycle.org, an informal network that helps you find people who want the things you don't want anymore.

Pros: You don't want it, someone else does, problem solved.

Cons: finding someone who needs your stuff can be a chore and the logistics of getting it to them can be a hassle. As with almost everything in life, your good intentions can result in strange or unintended consequences. I guess that is true of just about all of these, come to think of it.

6. Throw it out.

Pros: It's easy. Temptingly easy, if you've tried any of #1-5. Sometimes it's unavoidable.

Cons: It's going in a landfill, and ours is already overflowing. Our county landfill is nearly full, and no one wants a new landfill to go anywhere near where they live. Space for trash is an increasing problem everywhere. I mean, there's a huge island of trash in the Pacific Ocean, and people have come up with ever-crazier ideas, like sending it into space.

I cleaned out my closet this week. I highly recommend this, not only do you find things to get rid of, but you find things you forgot you had. I ended up with several "new" outfits from my very own closet--double win.

Aside: My advice for closet cleaning: start by taking everything out of one section at a time. Then don't put anything back unless you're sure you still want it. This results in way more clutter-clearing than just riffling through and hoping to find a few things to pass along.

And in spite of the "cons" list for charity secondhand shops (#3), I will be taking the stuff from my closet to one of them this afternoon. It's got to go somewhere, and our church rummage sale doesn't take clothing.

Aside #2: Here's my other bit of advice: As soon as you're done with one closet or shelf or cabinet, get rid of the results. Because if you save it all up to take at the same time, it ends up just becoming more piles of stuff.

Which brings us to:

#7, the Philosophical Thing On Friday, which threatened to take over the entire post but my brain just isn't big enough to handle it. I mean, why do we need so much stuff? and I'm not being holier-than-thou here, I'm as bad as anyone.

I love my things. I have many beloved possessions--my great grandmother's Haviland china, Dean's coin collection, kitchen gadgets I could do without but that I appreciate when I use them, old scanners and printers and cameras. Shelves of photo albums. Stacks of books. Hunting equipment, fly tying equipment, skis and bicycles and hiking gear. And camping equipment. Oh my word.

What is it with Americans and stuff? If we lived in a third world country, we'd somehow manage to get by without all this stuff. In fact, from a global perspective, there is no definition of the word "need" that covers a third pair of pumps or exactly the right knick-knack for the top of the dresser in the guest room.

And yet still I buy things. It's not a good thing, but neither is it bad or evil. I'm learning to be careful--in the sense of taking care-- to not buy things thoughtlessly, just because something catches my eye or it's a good price or it's something I don't have. But you know, even though I have an entire drawer full of T-shirts, sometimes a new T-shirt makes me inexplicably happy. It doesn't make sense. As with most things, this is a work in progress.

edited to add: Our very own LondonMabel works at a second hand shop and wrote out some great advice in a comment to the first "too much stuff" post-- the link is here.

Midlife problems: Too Much Stuff

When we were younger, we could legitimately say there were things we "needed." When I got my first real job, I needed professional clothing. When we moved to a bigger house, we needed everything from wastebaskets to furniture.

I'm not an obsessive shopper, but when I had the time and the inclination, I enjoyed shopping. Dean and I were never ones to need everything perfectly decorated right off the bat, so we gradually collected stuff over the years as we found things we liked and as our budget would allow. We've also inherited stuff from our parents, grandparents, great aunts, and the previous owners of the houses we've lived in. We've brought interesting things home from trips and received gifts from dear friends.

But now we've been accumulating things for 31 years, and we've got too much stuff. Every time I buy another pair of shoes or a new pair of jeans, I think with despair of my bulging closet. I can no longer enjoy shopping because we cannot stuff one more dang thing into this house. Especially after we downsized to a smaller house three years ago.

We're not hoarders, at least not in any extreme sense of the word. I would never let so much stuff stack up that you had to make a path through the dining room to get to the kitchen. But on the other hand, neither of us is good at getting rid of things, either. We each have clothing in our side of the closet that we haven't worn in years, but what if we need it next month?

Or maybe it has some special memory associated with it, like the T-shirt MadMax designed in grade school that was a picture of three striped columns. I couldn't tell what it was until I saw the similar t-shirt one of his classmates had drawn: OH! beech trees! (Sadly MadMax has inherited his parents utter lack of artistic skill.) Obviously we can't get rid of that. 

The central areas of our home are clear and relatively uncluttered. But around the edges? We've got a mess. Closets, the back counter of our kitchen where mail piles up, the storeroom where we keep moving things around so we can shove one more item on the shelf, the corners where I stack extra books, the bottom shelf of the sofa table where who-knows-what has accumulated: just thinking about it makes me feel buried under a mountain of stuff.

It's not so bad when you can feel good about donating things to a good cause, but a few years ago I made the mistake of looking around the back of one of our local charitable second hand stores, and was astonished to find vast mountains of clothes, piles of stuff, mounds of crap. My smug delusions that at least my excess stuff was going to someone who needed it dissolved in the face of the reality of how much stuff Americans are shifting from one location to another. The logistics of relocating our junk are far more complex than I wanted to know.

So what in the world are we going to do with it? Stay tuned. This post turned into two, the second half, about figuring out what to do with all the stuff, is in progress. (Fair warning: I have no magic solutions, just more thoughts.)(so what else is new.)

(last minute note: sorry this went up late. I had it written last night but I must have screwed up the "scheduled publish" thing. Oops.)