Ninjanun Confessions Part IV

I'm tired of school. I need a vacation.

I wish I knew what I wanted out of life.

But I'm pretty sure it's not kids.

Even though I had a dream in which I had a baby boy, and was happy about it.

I also had a dream that I could fly in an airplane, and even do aerodynamic flips and barrel roles and stuff without getting sick. I don't think it means I'm supposed to be a pilot.

I dropped a class this quarter partly because I couldn't stand one of the other students in it.

I bought a new dress about six months ago, and still don't have shoes to match it, or an occasion to wear it. It was on clearance. From J.Crew.

I'm constantly bumping my shoulder or elbow into door frames when I pass through them. It's like I forget that I have a body, or forget what the dimensions of it are, anyway.

I wish I had a different nose. But then I feel guilty because my nose looks like my granny's nose, and I like her nose (on her).

I think I have a moon pie face. Especially in profile, when I smile.

My butt hurts.

I'm not motivated this quarter, I've not done most of my work so far for my projects, and finals are next week. I'm stressed.

Also, I think I may be depressed.

No Wonder I Agreed

I was re-reading a blog post from The Parish just now, and read a comment I totally agreed with. A little further down, I read another comment that I thought was spot-on. Then I saw that it was my own.

Um, oh. Heh.

Anyway, I still agree! Do you? Here's what I wrote:

I have to say, what Jay said really resonates with me, especially the following quote:

I'm bombarded with church and community as "same." I see the opposite everywhere I go. The contradiction of it all drives me insane.

I honestly think a lot of people still in the church organization don't even realize they aren't true community, because they've never really been a part of a community that *can* be so gut-wrenchingly honest. It's sad, but I've seen quite a few church people that just think they're always supposed to censor themselves (to the point they don't even realize they're doing it). I mean, biting your tongue and being tactful is appropriate in many circumstances, but if you are never allowed or never feel you're in a safe place to really pour your heart out,(no matter how ugly or petty that might look), you start to censor yourself before you will even allow yourself to think through your emotions/thoughts. And that's not healthy. Sadly, I think some church people do this even within their own marriages, and closest friendships. I know I do (at least, with friendships, anyway).

It only takes a few instances of getting the "bitch-face of disapproval," as I like to call it, before you realize you're being judged for your thoughts and emotions before you can even work through them.

Operation C.R.A.P. Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide

You can't run from clutter. You can't hide it away and not expect it to disrupt your life in some way. If you have the tendency to shove it in every unseen nook and cranny of your home before company comes over, promising yourself you'll "deal with it later," you're only creating more work for yourself later on. Every time you open the junk door, the junk room, the basement or attic, you're going to be greeted by it. And it will drag your energy down and weigh on your conscience until you make the time to master it. I speak from experience on this one. Every time I see the office work table piled with random junk and unfinished projects, it taunts me with negative thoughts that I can't finish things and I'll never be organized. When I open a file cabinet drawer to put away a bank statement, I'm confronted with other, overstuffed files teeming with old college papers and half-read magazine articles that I saved to read "for later," and never got around to. Everywhere I turn, if I've let the clutter pile up, it sends a silent message that I have a lot of unfinished business laying around. And unfinished business makes it hard to move on and face present circumstances, chores, and concerns.

The ancient art of placement, Feng Shui, talks about how everything in your house is a reflection of you and your life. The book by Malcolm Gladwell, Blink confirms this, noting that strangers who only have half an hour to study a person's inhabitance often do a better job of assessing certain personality traits about the person who lives there than their friends do.

An excerpt from the book:

Gosling says, for example, that a person's bedroom gives three kinds of clues to his or her personality. There are, first of all, identity claims, which are deliberate expressions about how we would like to be seen by the world: a framed copy of a magna cum laude degree from Harvard, for example. Then there is behavioral residue, which is defined as the inadvertent clues we leave behind: dirty laundry on the floor, for instance, or an alphabetized CD collection. Finally, there are thoughts and feelings regulators, which are changes we make to our most personal spaces to affect the way we feel when we inhabit them: a scented candle in the corner, for example, or a pile of artfully placed decorative pillows on the bed. If you see alphabetized CDs, a Harvard diploma on the wall, incense on a side table, and laundry neatly stacked in a hamper, you know certain aspects about that individual's personality instantly, in a way that you may not be able to grasp if all you ever do is spend time with him or her directly. Anyone who has ever scanned the bookshelves of a new girlfriend or boyfriend—or peeked inside his or her medicine cabinet—understands this implicitly: you can learn as much—or more—from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face.

What does your space communicate about you to others? To yourself? There are things your conscious mind may not pick up on (you start "not seeing" the stack of papers in the corner) but your subconscious mind still registers. Subconsciously, you are affected by everything that enters your field of vision, and it affects your life, whether you are directly aware of it or not.

Imagine, instead of being greeted by crammed closets or overflowing drawers every time you open a "hidden" area of your home, you are instead greeted by order: all your possessions neatly placed in areas of your home that make sense and allow you to use them with ease. Imagine how that would lift your energy, providing you with a sense of calm assurance that your home and its contents are there to aid and support you, rather than you having to always police and corral your possessions. You'd feel uplifted and supported, rather than tired and burdened.

Take control of your possessions. Make them work for you, instead of the other way around. You can't hide your clutter and hope it won't find you. It will be waiting for you every time you open a door or drawer. You have to deal with it.

Now, I have to go clean off my work table.

Operation C.R.A.P. : Sock Drawer

I mentioned in an earlier post that the Pete and I had gone to Ikea and bought some soft-sided compartments to organize dresser drawers. I thought I'd post some pictures (yeah, that's right; I consider my sock drawer blog-worthy. DEAL WITH IT.) and give some insight into the process.

I love clothes. And shoes. And purses. I might not have as many of these things as the typical fashionista (which I do not consider myself to be), but that's not to say I wouldn't like to. I love the touch, the feel, of cotton (the fabric of our lives), the slinky-ness of silk, the fuzzy cuddliness of cashmere. And because I love these things, I actually enjoy (for the most part) doing laundry. And my closet is pretty darn organized, especially considering we have the typical closet setup of a single hanging rod with a single shelf above. I dream of having one of those closet organizational systems, where every shoe has its own cubby, and there are drawers for scarves, and hanging rods for belts. My anal clothing-organizational tendencies would have free reign. I know this is rare, but I'm really just giving you insight into my organizational skills. I am capable of being organized, but for some reason, this has only extended as far as my closet. I can't seem to get a handle on paperwork, or time management, or just about any other aspect of my stuff or life.

I guess what I'm saying is, determine what aspect of organizing/decluttering you think you're good at, and try to figure out how to expand on that to the other areas of your life. Like, I bet if I was as enamoured with the feel and smell of paper as I was with clothes, I would find a better system for filing paperwork. That's just how my brain works. If it pleases my senses, I can take pleasure in the mundane task of organizing.

Anyway, I meant to talk about my sock drawer, didn't I? So those Ikea compartments did a pretty good job of organizing my sock/underwear drawer. They work and look much better than the strips of foam core I had cut to make dividers, that's for sure.

So. Before yesterday, I had been organizing my socks by the "balling up" method. That's where you place a pair of socks together, and then flip the cuff of one sock inside out over both socks to hold them together. It worked great for years. Until recently, when I noticed all my little sport socks' elastic was wearing out, causing my socks to slide down over my heel. And then I read in one of the organizing books I checked out from the library, this little gem:

Fold or roll socks. Don't ball them up because it causes them to lose their elasticity over time.

It was like a light bulb went off (on?) in my head. I had seen pictures of socks rolled up, all in neat little rolls, but it had never occurred to me that this system was in any way superior to my own. Honestly, I thought it was just a pretentious little "staging" thing that closet companies did to make their products look more appealing, similar to how they tend to use the same one or two colors of clothes hanging up in their closet systems (as if anyone only wears lavender and khaki, for instance). But now that I had it in writing from an organizational expert that I should fold or roll my socks, I was going to try it. After all, I'm always on the lookout for new and better ways to play with organize my clothes.

I wish I had taken a picture of what my sock/underwear drawer looked like before (both before the Ikea compartments, and before I started rolling my socks), but alas, I did not. I rolled all my socks, which honestly, took the same amount of time per pair as "balling" them had, and put them back in their compartments. I was astonished that all my socks really did fit better with them rolled. No pairs had to lay on top of the others, as they had with my previous method.



This morning I was also pleasantly surprised to note that my other socks didn't unroll when I selected a pair to wear. And laying hands on the exact pair of socks I needed was a breeze--not that it was so difficult before, but this was even easier.

Now, compare that to the Pete's computer cord drawer:




He recently organized all the cords in little rolls and such, but they still had to lay on top of each other. As soon as I pulled out the cord I needed to transfer pictures from the digital camera to the laptop, I made a big mess. There's got to be a way to organize this so that it stays organized even when you use it! Otherwise, as evidenced here, it's back to being disorganized.

So the new lesson learned from all this:

Any organizational system you use must be easy to maintain, otherwise it is ineffective.

Operation C.R.A.P. Continues...

Well, I managed to get two bags of clothes and other miscellaneous stuff out of the house yesterday. All of it went to the thrift store, including a bridesmaid dress I had been hanging onto since 2002. I don't know why I kept it for so long--did I honestly think I'd wear it again? It didn't even fit properly when I wore it in my friends' wedding, because I only got the hem and the spaghetti straps shortened, and couldn't afford the more complicated procedure of having the bodice fitted.

Anyway. I figure chronicling my decluttering will help me stick to it. If I just do a little everyday, I'll eventually see some results. The hard part is just doing a little everyday, and not getting burned out by doing too much at once or by stopping the whole business in despair that progress isn't evident.

I also managed to organize all the wedding and honeymoon photos, which I hope to scrapbook someday. At least now they are being safely stored in a pretty archival-quality photo box, instead of in a plastic bin in the basement. BTW--any photos you have should be stored in an archival quality photo album, scrapbook, or photo box. Those paper or plastic sleeves that the film developers give you your pictures in are not photo-safe. Those old magnetic albums are also not photo-safe. The glues, chemicals, and organic materials in non-archival storage devices can eventually discolor or otherwise destroy your pictures. Most reputable film stores and scrapbooking places sell archival-quality storage devices. Just look for the words "archival" or "photo safe" on the packaging. They may also say "lignin and acid-free." Be wary of photo albums and boxes that don't have one of these labels, especially if they are bought at a discount store.


One of the organizing books I checked out from the library had good advice concerning dealing with your stuff:

Step #1 - Decide what you want to get rid of. (See questions in my previous post for how to decide.) Get rid of it, and don't look back!

Step #2 - Inventory everything you own. This is very important, as you can't maintain control over things you don't know you have. It's time-consuming, but you can make the process easier by sorting items into categories first (kitchenware, clothing, etc.). One person in the book said, "Now that I've gone through [this] process, I realize that it really was the first step to taking control of my possessions rather than having my possessions control me. I was able to make better decisions about what I wanted to keep and what I was ready to get rid of." In case of some disaster, such as a fire or tornado, you'll have a better idea of what items need to be replaced. Keep the list in a safety deposit box at your bank. Photograph or video tape expensive or rare items, and keep those in the safety deposit box, too. This will make it easier to clear up disputes with your insurance company, should they arise.

Step #3 - Take stock of your home's storage. Make a note of existing storage, and what places could be modified for additional storage, if need be.*

Step #4 - Identify your clutter patterns. Now that you've pared down to things you love and use, what areas of your home still tend to accumulate clutter? For me, it's the coffee table, dining room table, and the work table in the office. Random bits of mail, notebooks, and projects-in-progress clutter up these areas and create a visual distraction that keeps me from effectively working on anything.

Step #5 - Identify the times/moods when you're more likely to contribute to clutter. For me, it's when I'm tired, think I'm too busy to clean up after myself, or right after coming home from work or school. Things just get dumped in their usual "clutter spots." Retrain yourself to put things away in their proper place.*

Step #6 - Don't buy more stuff you don't really need. This one is tough for some of us, because we view shopping as a leisurely past time. A good rule to follow is, if you buy something new, you must get rid of something you already own, and it's best if the item is like-for-like. For instance, if you buy a new pillow, get rid of the old dumpy one. If you buy new sneakers, get rid of the old frayed ones. When you spot something you think you want to buy, ask yourself first if there's anything you currently own that you'd be willing to give up in exchange for bringing the new item into your life. Famed American artist Georgia O'Keefe followed this rule of thumb, and so even in her old age she wasn't burdened with lots of stuff to maintain or that someone else would have to deal with when she passed away.**

That's pretty much the gist of what every good organizing book covers. I may go into more detail later on, or maybe not. I've been home sick with a cold these past three days, and once I get better, I'll have a lot of catching up to do on my school work, especially as I'm nearing the end of another quarter.

*A place for everything and everything in its place. Once you've assessed what you're going to keep, you need to see what items still need a designated place. For instance, we've never had a good place to keep the cell phone charger, kitty toys, and over-sized school projects. There's also not a convenient place to keep our shoes, which we take off by the door. Those are just some areas in which we need to assess our storage needs and buy/create/designate a more permanent place to keep them, so they're not always floating around, contributing to the visual clutter. Having a designated spot for everything also makes it easier to put things away, because you don't have to keep deciding over and over again where certain things should go. You don't have to think about it; you just put it where you know it belongs. I had a hard time with this concept for the longest time, because spending money on stuff to store my stuff in seemed kind of ridiculous. It wasn't until I observed my more organized clients/friends' houses and lives did I understand that having effective, attractive storage solutions saved them time, kept them organized and focused, and contributed to a feeling of calm and order in their homes and lives.

**This rule may not apply when you're just starting out or starting over. For instance, if you move from an apartment to a house, you may find you need a lawn mower or set of tools that you had no need for before. If you're having a baby you'll need baby furniture and clothes, etc. If you're adopting a puppy, you'll need a doggy bed, leash, chew toys...you get the idea. Just remember, if you want to bring something new into your life, you still have to make space for it, both physically and emotionally!

Operation: C.R.A.P.

So, last week's Adventures in House Hunting spurred a flurry of decluttering activity for me. I've been noticing all the C.R.A.P. in our house, as well as the stuff that's not C.R.A.P., but isn't organized or displayed very well. This flurry of activity soon spread to the Pete, and both of us have been trying to organize and generally make the house look more spiffy. It's funny how seeing someone else's crappy house can open your eyes to your own home's flaws.

C.R.A.P., by the way, stands for Can't Really Appreciate Possessions.© When you can't really appreciate your possessions, they're C.R.A.P. Yes, I thought that one up myself. Somebody make sure I get the credit when the wordanistas start throwing it around and fly lady and other motivational organizers start using it in their literature.

The British poet and designer William Morris said, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." If you are in possession of something that is not, for you, useful or beautiful (or has some other personal significance), than it's C.R.A.P. But remember, one man's C.R.A.P. is another man's T.R.E.A.S.U.R.E. (Totally Rad, Excellent, And Surely Useful Resource to Exploit), so donate your C.R.A.P. to your local charity or thrift store if it's still in good condition.

So, Operation C.R.A.P. involves the Pete and me getting the house de-C.R.A.P.ped before our V.I.P. guests arrive in early October to visit for a week. Maybe not every nook and cranny will be C.R.A.P.-free and totally organized, but we're gonna make a valiant attempt for the house to at least pass the Ninjanun Show Home test. The main question I ask myself when contemplating potential C.R.A.P. (besides is it useful, beautiful, or hold sentimental value) is, "If we were moving next week, would I bother spending the time, money, and energy to pack it up, move it, unpack it, and organize it in my new digs?" Another question to ask is, "If we were showing the home next week, would this item be worthy of display/organization? And if not, would I spend money to put it in short-term storage?" If the answer is NO, then out it goes. Some of the stuff will undoubtedly have to be put under consideration more than once, as it's hard to let go of things that sorta kinda hold sentimental value; like notebooks filled with mediocre poetry I wrote in college and which represent where I was at that stage of life. This, however, does not excuse the fact that it's mediocre poetry, bordering on Embarrassingly Awful Poetry, and is taking up valuable real estate on the bookshelf.

The Pete and I went to Ikea on Saturday, and bought a few organizing tools, such as little collapsible compartments to organize dresser drawers. You know, just in case potential home buyers a year from now scrutinize my underwear drawer while going through our house: they'll be blown away by how awesomely organized it is and offer us $10,000 over the asking price.

C.R.A.P.-free in 2008!

Adventures in House Hunting

Last week, I looked at a house for sale with my realtor, who helped us get into our first home. No, we're not seriously considering moving. But maybe in the future, when I'm finished with school and have a good job, we'll seriously look into it. I love our house, and the location is not bad, but the Pete and I would rather live in the next town over (which, in the greater Seattle area, is just a few blocks away). Still, that's at least a year away to consider. But a house for sale caught my eye in the town we'd like to live, and the price was comparable to what our home is worth. From the MLS listing, it looked cute and charming and had roughly the same square footage and lot size as our home, which piqued my interest, because seriously? That town is so much nicer that home prices are usually 20% more than what they are in our town. So I called my realtor and we went to check out the house together.

The outside was nicely landscaped and the house itself had almost a ginger-bready feel, but without all that horrible bric-brac trim adorning it. The driveway was a little hard to find and it was off of a fairly busy street (but behind another house, so not too bad), but the house and yard definitely had "curb appeal." The owner was home (she had requested that her agent NOT inform her when prospective buyers wanted a showing) and was slightly inconvenienced by us coming by, even tho' we had given her agent fair warning, and didn't have any way of contacting her personally. Her perturbed demeanor soon vanished as she started showing us around the house.

Which. Was. Awful. OMG, y'all, the layout of the house couldn't have made less sense if it was drafted by a drunk monkey. They had put up a wall in the middle of the "great room" to make a bedroom (so bye bye, living room!). This "bedroom" was narrow, had no closet, and monopolized the fireplace. The stairs were steep and practically bisected the dining room (which you walked right into from the front porch--no entry area), and a low-hung ceiling fan hung over them meant you could practically reach out your hand from the upper section and suffer injury from the spinning blades. The kitchen was tiny with crappy finishes, bric-brac trim, and a refrigerator that was recessed into the wall on the other side of the door to the garage and almost in the family room. The garage was stuffed with crap, there were clothes and trash all over the floor in the downstairs bedroom, and beach towels were hung over the windows in the family room, thwarting all God's attempts to Let There Be Light and making the room feel like a cave. The house looked like it needed a serious scrubbing: dirt collected in the corners on the first floor's hardwoods, bathtubs had mold and grime around their edges, and there was an 18-inch diameter hole punched through the sheet rock in the kitchen, which the owner had been "meaning to get to for awhile, now."

And the clutter, Oh Dear Lord, the clutter! Every surface was piled with stuff; it even greeted us on the dining room table when we first walked through the door. Closets were overflowing, the kitchen counters held paperwork, ceramic knick knacks, and toast crumbs, and the master bedroom was overflowing with the husband's CDs, computer cables, and hobby-type things on a desk, hutch, and shelves that wreathed the room at head height.

Several other agents had left their business cards in a bowl on the dining room table, and the lady revealed that she had already had three offers, but they were all kind of low, and she could tell they were from "investors," and had rejected them all. She was hoping to get someone to buy her home who would "continue with her work." She thought the reason normal buyers were scared away was because of the lovely huge garden surrounding her home. Nobody (including her agent, apparently) had the heart to tell her that the house--which she had lived in for 20 years and had remodeled herself--had a horrible, choppy layout and wasn't really in saleable condition, considering it was stuffed full of crap, needed to be cleaned, and obviously needed work to make the inside as charming and liveable as the outside promised it could be. Sentiment had blinded her to how awful her home looked to potential buyers. She couldn't understand why people would walk through in less than five minutes, and not ask her any questions. The MLS listing showed three lovely (and accurate) pictures of the outside, and two (misleading) pictures of the kitchen--both taken from the same angle, so you couldn't see how nonsensical the layout of the house really was. So it's not like people were showing up to see the house because they hated the way the outside looked. But this lady couldn't put two and two together. Her agent was really doing her a disservice by not urging her to get her rear in gear and at least clean and declutter her home before showing it. Oh, and patching that ginormous hole in the wall.

It really boggles the mind how many people can't see their home from the buyer's perspective, or even bother to clean their freakin' house when they put it on the market. They must know that dozens of strangers are going to be scrutinizing every square foot. What's weird is, her husband was a contractor, so you'd think he would at least be aware of the home's turn-offs to potential buyers. A few episodes of some of those "real estate" shows on HGTV should at least make the average person aware that their home should, at the very least, be clean and free of obvious defects (like a gaping hole in a wall). I know, I know, I'm a bit of a design snob, but c'mon, people! This isn't rocket science.

Make Good Tables

"The Church's approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables. Church by all means, and decent forms of amusement, certainly--but what use is all that if in the very centre of his life and occupation he is insulting God with bad carpentry?....No piety in the worker will compensate for work that is not true to itself; for any work that is untrue to its own technique is a living lie. Yet in her own buildings, in her own ecclesiastical art and music, in her hymns and prayers, in her sermons and in her little books of devotion, the Church will tolerate, or permit a pious intention to excuse, work so ugly, so pretentious, so tawdry and twaddling, so insincere and insipid, so bad as to shock and horrify any decent craftsman. And why? Simply because she has lost all sense of the fact that the living and eternal truth is expressed in work only so far as that work is true in itself, to itself, to the standards of its own technique. She has forgotten that the secular vocation is sacred. Forgotten that a building must be good architecture before it can be a good church; that a painting must be well painted before it can be a good sacred picture; that work must be good work before it can call itself God's work." --Dorothy Sayers, "Why Work?" in Creed or Chaos, 1949