The Thanksgiving Christmas Gap

Ah, late November - the week after Thanksgiving and BEFORE December is that magical time where there are usually NO parties, no gift-giving opportunities, and no mandate for decorating.  If you have already decorated your tree, no shame will come because it IS post-Thanksgiving, after all.  

It's also post-Black Friday sales time, which as we all know, is that Friday who is the nemesis of any so-called minimalist.  The day/weekend/week that is the siren song to all, calling and beckoning with 65% off if you just enter the coupon code.   Ok, yeah, I got a few things.  Hurry up UPS!

In truth, I do try to take advantage of a few sales.  NO early morning TV adventures here, but the interwebs offer security and temperature control during my shopping.  What does this have to do with minimalism, you ask?  

LAST year, I promised myself my Christmas decor would find a home OUT of the attic space, and more organized than before.  Unfortunately, my garage became its temporary home, and the cats just wanted to investigate all the containers and use some as a litter box.  So, up the decor went to disappear for another 11 months until it needed to debut for Holiday 2022.  I'm back where I started.  

With red and green tubs of crap.  

Once again, out of the mouths of babes I hear wisdom.  Second son was helping with the annual pilgrimage to the depths of hell (getting boxes down from the garage attic).  I told him I hope he kept some of this when I am dead to remember me by.  He said nope, BIG garage sale.  WHAT?  All these memories from your childhood, out on the lawn with an OBO sticker on them (yes, I have become my mother-in-law)??  He casually glanced over in the crevices of the dusty attic at a stray plastic pumpkin that lights up with an "EEEEEK!" cut out and said, "THIS?  This thing is not my childhood memory".  Touché, Sparky.  

Once again, I will try to cull the herd.  Although, the Christmas contagion caught me off guard this November, and I ordered duvet covers with reindeer for two beds at the house.  In my defense, I needed to wash the existing ones anyway...

Until I do start with the unveiling of Christmas 2022 and the subsequent Put Back Up Before the Dawn of 2023, I am going to enjoy the mild influx of a few holiday decorations.  Not much, and maybe this will suffice?  Will I lose steam and just say enough is enough?  Perhaps.  That's how minimalism tends to increase with age.  We just don't care anymore.  

Enjoy the last vestiges of fall's glory before the Christmas busyness envelops you.  It may be the MOSTEST wonderful time.  

Oh, and you don't need that snowman collection.  Your kids won't want it.  Happy holidays, minimalist friends!

Check in: Busy?

As the "we'll get to it after the new year" season approaches in the universe, I like to do a self check-in on how I feel about life's busyness.  The end of the semester is nigh, holiday events are looming, and my list isn't getting shorter. 

How do I feel about this?  Honestly?  I am ok with the level of busy.  It's not a badge of honor for me.  But it IS how I run on a daily basis, because I'm an extrovert/unmedicated ADD/energetic person.  It's not right for everyone, but it works for me. 

It doesn't make me too stressed, because I force myself to prioritize.  I am a closet procrastinator, and heaven only knows how I finished a doctorate without any extensions or tardies.   My students usually get to the top of the list for deadlines, because they too are working on deadline.  It's just respectful to not make them wait on grading/feedback/etc. 

Family obligations are nearly tied with professor life for A-1 designation.  My flexible gig makes it pretty simple to do both.  I have a handful of hobbies, and now that pickleball has taken over my life, I have to make time to dink!  One thing I have had to remind myself frequently is that if I don't have time to get to a hobby, or if it sits on the back burner for awhile, that is OK!  No one is monitoring my hours spent and pickleball/flight training/organizing will wait (clearly my lack of attention to this blog is proof that it's still there right where I left off). 

As my children have entered adulthood and have their own lives and partners, I have scaled back the holiday events and planning.  I still love to celebrate with them the football day of Thanksgiving and all the things Christmas season can offer, but I don't hang so much "making memories!!!" pressure anymore.  I swear, I don't know how the millennial moms do it with the social media influencers beckoning to make everything the most AMAZING.  We Gen X'ers are glad to be out of that pressure cooker.  

I have more post-it notes than a true minimalist probably should claim, but I use them to remind and make lists.  It's the only way to keep it together.  I am not leaving this planet without enjoying it, so here's to the holidays and sticky note your way to a wonderful season!

Craft your Bliss Station

It's time for summertime, Minimalist friends!  I am hopeful this means more relaxed schedules, time for outside play, and maybe some snow cones.   And maybe some post/during-pandemic travel.  I definitely have travel on my list for the summer, and as 3/4 of us have already had Covid and three vaccines, I am hopeful it won't muck up the plans.  

If you're like me, you might start your day with a handful of rituals.  Regardless of workday or weekends, I make time to brew a cup of coffee, defeats today's Wordle, and check balances on my Mint app.  And also email.  In two places, because work and personal.  And the news.  Which inevitably pops up when I am just trying to solve the Wordle before my 6th try evaporates.  It's already a lot of bombardment before I even get to the second cup, right?   

I happened upon Austin Kleon's newsletter about Bliss Stations.  Consider me hooked.  The idea behind this is that you have a place, or maybe just an hour, where you don't know what's in the newspapers, you don't know who your friends are, and you don't know who you owe or who owes you (clearly someone has been spying on my morning habits).

I realized my office at home is none of those things.  It IS a cute curated spot with my colored post-its, snarky desk calendar, and rose gold digital accessories.  But definitely not blissful.  Not really where creativity and thoughts flow.  

My job has minimal areas where creativity is nurtured.  Science is science, and I gotta teach the kids the way to be good nurses.  I can't even stamp "Good Job!" on their homework and grade in purple pen because everything is turned in online.  So I have other avenues for creativity.  My garden, this blog, house decor.  The idea of the Bliss Station grabbed me.  

Even if you have a small space that you share with children or other family members, maybe an hour they are at school or before their pre-dawn awakenings is your time to enjoy your bliss station.  Away from bills, notifications, news, or other distractions that nag you.  

One thing the pandemic and its related quarantine-y times have reminded me is that boredom makes me do bad things.   Not like illegal or immoral things, but stuff I wouldn't as easily fall prey to if I didn't have "due to covid" as my fall back excuse.  Too many unnecessary visits from Amazon, way too many pounds from baking and drive-thru tacos, and not enough creative outlets.  Isn't boredom supposed to promote creativity?  Isn't that what we tell our kids when school lets out, and they are bored on the second day of summer vacation?  Go find something to do!  Be bored!

I'm going to manifest this Bliss Station idea.  I have a spot in mind, and there are no electronics there.  I will leave my phone on airplane mode (which Austin Kleon calls not just a phone feature - a lifestyle!) and find a creative outlet there in writing, journaling, maybe just drawing what I want the garden to look like next season.  I have a salt lamp thingy somewhere in the house, so I will find it and get those good ions zapping around.  I do love my colored pens, so they will never be far. 

Consider a Bliss Station for yourself.  Maybe it's a yoga mat in your closet with some pose reminders and a candle.  Maybe it's your patio where you become a bird watcher and cloud namer.  Make the time.  Austin Kleon and I think you won't regret it! 

Don’t Ignore the Negatives

 Happy Spring Break Minimalists!

I usually start my #40Bagsin40Days post and purge this time of year - I am a bit behind!  I have been diligently working on my pledge to decrapify the attic of all its far-reaching corners of stuff I have successfully ignored for years.  

I know - shocking to hear my confession of hoarding, but I must speak truth to crap.  After my Dad died in 2014, I was charged with doing a lot of the “keep or toss” decision making, as my sister’s metropolitan Vancouver abode did not permit frivolous storage.   So in my grief, I hauled the boxes of his life to the ranch, posted up in the attic, and kept going with life and recovery.  

I decided, after countless views of the Home Edit on Netflix, that it was time to sort and organize all that resides in the rafters.  We had done a lot of involuntary purging after the Great Flood of 2021 and its subsequent renovations, and now I must face the attic.  

My Dad had a zillion slides, shown with projectors that were cutting edge for the mid to late 70’s with a cool fade in/out feature.  They were meticulously labeled and numbered, often with the person(s) in the photo, date and location (proof this shit is genetic - thanks Dad).  But WTH do *I* do with all that?  I am not going to set up a slide show for the neighbors while they sit on my chesterfield in the sunken living room noshing on fondue and listening to the Moody Blues and Steely Dan? 

Digitize.  

It sounds so easy, yet so cumbersome and time consuming.  I have boxes of slides.  PLUS, I have 4 binders full of my own *carefully labeled and dated* negative sleeves from my own cool SLR camera before digital cameras came into our lives.  So here’s the plan.  

Caution to reader: there will be an expense, and I am not getting kickbacks for this advertisement.  

My digitizing plan will be assisted by THIS :

The Kodak Slide & Scan for negatives and slides.  The goal?  To get all the images on an SD card, which I can then store in the cloud, share, or print if I am feeling really crazy.  It won’t happen in a weekend (should have planned my spring break better) and definitely not this summer.  But, I don’t need a laptop for it, just the handy scanner, so I will scan and date a little at a time.  

What will I do with the slides/negatives when I am done?  They will probably find themselves in the recycle bin.   The SD card is so tiny, and the cloud is (I hope) forever.  

I’ll update as I am successful in transforming the huge volume of physical images into digital ones.   I hope this triggers a desire to digitize your family memories - it’s definitely a labor of love!  I am setting up a little table in the corner with the scanner and boxes so that I can go pop a few in when I have a half hour to kill.  It will get done eventually! 

I am sure this counts as at LEAST 1 bag per day (only about 28 days left of 40 bags in 40 days so….). Best of luck in your transformation!  

New Year, New Confessions

 Happy Hopefully-Pandemic-Ending-New Year friends!

As we look somewhat apprehensively at aNOTHer year with masking and trepidation, I turn my focus to the things I CAN control, and hide under the bed when the news comes on.  Hey - you cope your way; I’ll cope mine.  

Last month I talked about the apparently never ending red and green boxes in my attic holding my Christmas decor.  This month, like I presume many of you are doing, I am sorting through it again and trying to cull the herd of reindeer and Santas.  And snowmen.  And nutcrackers.  Dear Lord, what was I THINKing.  

I have also vowed, and this time I really mean it, to not return these boxes to the attic.  As I get older and more creaky, it whas become increasingly difficult to do the yoga/limbo required to return the tubs to the hinterlands of the garage attic.  Ridiculous head-smacking on rafters.  Not this year.  Which brings me to the conundrum of where do these damn Santas live until Thanksgiving 2022?  Seriously, I am getting a shipping container delivered out here, but that’s a blog for another day.  

The beginning of a year gives me renewed energy for sorting out my life’s goals, so I have compiled a few to share as motivation/comiseration for any readers out there.  

1. Finances - always at the tops of our lists, right?  As I have blogged about before, I use Mint to keep track of my spending.  It links all your bank accounts, investment profiles, and credit cards in one place so you can monitor everything without loggin on to multiple places.  I get no boost from recommending here - it just works for me.  You can also set goals for vacations or debt payoff and see success in a graphic for motivation!

2.  Health - also topping lists everywhere!  After ignoring Covid-pounds and smugly thinking how I have avoided a positive PCR for 2 years, I decided to be a grown-up and get a doctor.  That’s right - I have dodged the primary care provider for about 15 years (yes, I do my well woman exam annually but she doesn’t care if I have a cold).  So I made an appointment with one I had met while volunteerting, shamefully admitted my personal neglect, got my lab work done, and promised to book my screening colonoscopy.  Then I got a Starbucks to reward myself.   Balance. 

3.  Relationships - part of our lives daily, but often neglected.  I started this year by taking a hatchet to my social media feeds.  I didn’t “quit” Facebook with an announcement about how I am taking a break from social media, so please text me with any updates (that is so funny when you see that declaration, yes?).  I love keeping in touch with old and new friends that life doesn’t permit me to have other interactions with, like my dear high school drama friends Tamera and Melissa.  Without FB, there would not have been “Lee High School Girls Take NYC 2020”.  What I did was delete all the people from my feed who just showed up there by happenstance, we met at an event, or I knew their sister’s dogsitter’s best friend.  These folks probably do NOT care about my current events, and I don’t care about theirs. 

Same with Twitter, which I find amusing, but all the people I follow are healthcare people and they are tired and cranky.  Covid posts are a buzzkill, so I laid off the Bird app. Instagram has nice pictures and some fun reels, so I browse that when I am bored.  I have intermittently deleted these apps from my phone, which does help limit my “oh I am in line at the UPS store so I will see what Helga from North Dakota is doing on her snow day up there on Instagram”.

4.  Clutter - equally as important as numbers 1-3, but had to have a number of some kind.  Clutter has many forms.  Too much stuff lying around, too many toxic people in your life, and too many obligations littering your calendar.   If you’re like me, you are happy with things on your calendar.  Covid shutdown showed me that sitting at home has its limits, and I can’t be admiring the homefires for months on end.  I am careful to curate my obligations.  I love to travel and will clog the calendar and my American Airlines app as much as finances permit.  When things get too much, just say NO THANK YOU.  No excuse/reason needed.  

Too much stuff?  See all my other blogs about your stuff.  Or the myriad others out there to help you ditch that physical clutter.  Too many people?  Also say no thanks.  You don’t have to offer reasons for your personal boundaries.  They are yours; protect them.  I’m working on that too.  The same litmus test works for people as it does for stuff - do they add value to my life?  If yes? Give them a call!  Set up a lunch or a zoom call.  If not?  Consider a sabbatical from that relationship.  It’s 2022 - you deserve a good year.  

Happy New Year, friends.  We’re gonna make it to the end of the pandemic this year - I just know it!!