June Pointless Lists

Hey, school's out! Um, when does school start back up again? No particular reason why I'm asking, ha ha, I love summer and having everyone underfoot home! It's just that a friend of mine was wondering.

Moving RIGHT along.

I don't know what's going on here, but my classified ads for various kitchenwares are finally taking off. To the same person. True story, this lady took my cake and tart pans, my oval bakers of varying sizes, and my pie plate. All at different times. It's possible I'm on speed dial at this point as "EX Crazy Pampered Chef Hoarder." Anyway, she seems thrilled, and I certainly am because it's always heartening to see things move out the door. Eric's office looks normal again (that is to say, cluttered with only his home-brewing gear) and my reading retreat looks almost inviting. Almost. I've been bad about letting general clutter get the best of me again. (Like: What am I supposed to do with the bath salts Johanna gave me for Mother's Day as part of a class project? I appreciate the thought, and she's so excited about me taking a "relaxing bath," but... I don't fit in our bathtub. I'm 6' tall, people! I don't fit anywhere! But I can't toss these things for obvious reasons. And that's only one small part of the whole ordeal... Getting overwhelmed again, thinking happy thoughts, happy thoughts are stupid, where's the coffee?)

Anyway, between the rummage sale (sorry, last time I'll mention it) and the ads, my mental health has greatly improved. I can see the finish line. Except it keeps moving, which seems reasonable, actually, so that's cool. We're getting there is what I'm saying.

Also: 19 days and counting until the big 4-1. I am in no way as emotionally distressed as I was last year at this time. It's like, 41? BRING IT. So that's an improvement. I feel like maybe I should have something else to say about this, but I really don't.

Pointless list time!

Books read:
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. True story, I read this as a REAL book and not on my beloved Kindle because my brother-in-law lent it to me and I was like, well, I guess I should read it, then. Real books are weird. Anyway, great book, easy read, Enzo the Dog is awesome--he's the narrator, as it were. It's not exactly light reading, and bad things happen all over the place, but Enzo just does what he needs to do and helps his people as best he can. Recommend!

Garden update:
The lettuce and spinach are completely overwhelming at this point, which is kind of awesome. We're eating a lot of salad is what I'm saying. The basil is doing okay, and I've managed to make a couple recipes of pesto (although, disclaimer, one was because I broke down and bought basil at the farmers' market). Eric had us all out in the garden weeding as a "family activity," and the good news is that my pessimism went unrewarded and we didn't get killed by lightening*. Also: The onions, carrots, zucchini, tomatoes and cilantro are looking good, the blackberry bushes are loaded, we've picked three huge bowls of raspberries so far and have barely been able to stay on top of that situation. Time for jam.

So that's been fun. Um, except for the weeding, but I do what I can to set a good example. Sometimes. Plus, I really want the carrots to grow.

Check this out:
My Imaginary Well-Dressed Toddler Daughter. Quinoa and her friends might be imaginary, but they are fabulous.

Things I've learned:
When you start making iced coffee and vanilla syrup at home, you tend to get a little spoiled. Because what I put together in my kitchen tastes way better than what I buy at the coffee shop. I have not quite figured out my iced coffee limit, however, which may or may not explain why I'm fairly jittery these days. Also, I'm on my eighth batch of each. (Just kidding. I'm only on number seven.)

P.S. Abby is a big fan of fancy-pants peppermint mochas. Let's just say that with my coffee base, a quart of organic chocolate milk (which is apparently made with pure gold and the blood of innocents for the price of the thing), and a homemade mint extract (more on that next month), she's been a very happy camper. Unforeseen benefit: For the price of the chocolate milk, she can have a week's worth of mochas instead of one drink at the coffee shop. My wallet thanks her.

Also, wow, you guys liked the Minimalist Christmas post.  My husband's family has been doing something similar to this for years--we call it the Christmas House--with all 24 (soon to be 25) of us pooling our funds and renting a house and pretty much just hanging out together for like three straight days. It's awesome. And a good alternative for those who don't care for excessive driving, which my side of the family is generally immune to.

*FINE, there wasn't any lightening at all. Who cares, it's totally a threat, I've seen 20/20!

Meanwhile, back at the office...

Our office is undergoing a major remodel. This is a good thing, of course, because things are a little iffy out there in the world for newspapers, and the mere fact that ours is expanding (albeit the printing part of the business) is kind of amazing.

So now that I've got THAT out of the way, let me tell you how I really feel.

Since the print shop is taking over half of the space previously used for editorial (everything fits, no biggie), there's a lot of moving and sorting and purging going on. We've got a dumpster and a shredder, so you know it's legit.

We've all been encouraged to "go through" our things and "take advantage" the dumpster et al (we have a recycling bin too, of course, and a couple people have put stuff outside with a "free" sign). I have managed to not accumulate much, so I was pretty smug about my lack of participation in said purging until Joe the Publisher announced he was trading his office for the conference room (makes sense, his current office is bigger) and all those awards on the wall? Needed to come down.

By the way, this is when my full 6-feet-one half-inch comes in handy. I GOT those awards on the top shelf, yo, and I got them good.

And then I spent two hours taking awards out of their frames (we kept the first place awards, but the honorable mentions from 1964 got tossed). What this left was a huge stack of frames by my desk. I was feeling a little stressed out anyway because I was trying to figure out a place to store a huge stack of archival books--I'm putting together a column these days of the "what happened on this day X number of years ago" variety and had previously kept them in the conference room--and it just wasn't working. I could literally not find one square inch of free space. There are stacks and stacks of things that no one knows what to do with because they've been there since Day One, but no one can make a decision because they're not sure if they're the proper authority for that kind of thing. Which I understand because I'm fairly sure I am NOT an authority able to move any o' this crap on to its final resting place(s) and therefore just spin my wheels a lot.

Anyway, though, eventually Joe came out of his office to encourage the front office staff to take home frames, and Chris the Office Manager was all like, Trisha's a minimalist, she's got like one electronic picture frame for the entire house, and I was all, well, I don't actually have an electronic picture frame because I've never understood the point, but yeah, none of this is coming home with me.

Also: I guess I talk about my minimalistic tendencies more than I thought because I had no idea anyone at work even knew what I was up to over here.

Anyway, after the minimalist door was opened, so to speak, Chris felt emboldened to ask me about my "lifestyle choice." She was mostly just curious whether or not we had anything on our walls.

That made me laugh. Our house has stuff in it, people. We have furniture, for one thing, and photos of the girls and even a quilt rack with some antique tea cups on its shelf.

So we talked about my home's wall situation, and how for me, minimalism is mostly about mindful consumerism and choosing experiences over stuff. Maybe there's still a general conception of minimalism being all about stark cold interiors and self denial, I don't know, that's the impression I got talking with Chris, and I think she felt better knowing I'm not looking at blank walls all the time.

And then I embraced my title as an Honest to God Minimalist and I tackled my desk. I tossed (yes, tossed) things that had been under my counter untouched all 2 1/2 years of my employment with the paper (dude, we don't even OWN an Cannon copier, what the hell has this empty cartridge been doing all these years?), I had Cranky Steve kill the spider that was living behind a stack of newsprint, I recycled papers and catalogs, took a Clorox Wipe (or six. It was disgusting) to everything, stacked the homeless archival books up on the floor and called it a day.

Chris, noticing the stack, commented that maybe someday we'll get the shelves behind my desk cleaned out for my use (she thought it was a shame the archival books are on the floor, which it kind of is, I guess) because it would be nice to have the shelves used for something other than a dumping ground.

Word up, Chris. Word up.

Um, so that's what I've been doing. The end, I guess.

Lessons in rereading and a rummage sale update

**UPDATED**

The other day I was feeling self indulgent nostalgic, and I went through all of my minimalism posts just to see how far I've managed to come with this whole ordeal.

Apparently I am a big fan of the church's annual rummage sale because I mentioned it in practically every post. I also learned that I say "shit" a lot. (Sorry, Mom. I don't really swear in real life, but for some reason when I write, it kind of comes out.)

The good news is the St. Mary's Rummage Sale was last weekend, so probably I won't have to talk about it anymore.

After THIS post, I mean. You're welcome.

I took two big carloads to the church two weeks ago--as in, the trunk was completely full, as was the backseat--and this has done a lot for my mental stability. Visual clutter is depressing. So is realizing that you've spent so much time and energy and money on things you don't even need, but I try not to dwell on that. Forgive and forget, my internet friends. And anyway, our mindset is different now. We've learned a valuable lesson from our previous consumer driven ways. That's worth the price of admission, right?

Rereading those posts gave me a lift, though, because I realized that we have come a long way. Sometimes I forget about that. I've been a little frustrated with my efforts lately, maybe because I'm a big picture kind of girl and details stress me out, and just to see that I've actually accomplished something here was good for my self-esteem. Our lives are different than they were only eight months ago. That's kind of amazing.

***

I went to the sale to check things out on Thursday and to say hello to my mother, who was working. She must have told the ladies about my minimalistic tendencies because as soon as I walked in the door I was bombarded with questions. That's cool, I'll talk about it. So they're nodding at my answers and I'm thinking that maybe they don't think I'm too weird (because apparently people worry that you don't own furniture when you're a minimalist and are relieved to hear that you do), when one says, "Well, but what does your FAMILY think of all this?" in a tone that implied that she thought I was weird after all, or at the very least didn't believe that this was possible with a husband and kids. And I was like, um, Eric is on board, Abby is a minimalist until you get to her bookshelf and closet, and Johanna is a hoarder. Although that doesn't give Johanna enough credit because, well, yes, she IS a hoarder, but it's not like everywhere we go she requires new things. She's just attached to her old things. And likes to take stuff out of the recycling closet because she sees their potential. Or something.

Oh, and then I found the most gorgeous blue long-sleeve button down, a soft beautiful grey sweater, a white waffle-weave long-sleeve t-shirt, and a lovely grey skirt. All for $7.50. The t-shirt and sweater will replace items in my closet, but the blouse and skirt I purchased simply because they are amazing. The benefit of shopping at your church's rummage sale is that everyone knows who you are so you can go try things on in the bathroom and then model. I haven't been very keen on wearing used items in the past (well, I have issues), but I figure this is really the next logical step in my personal minimalist / zero waste journey, and you know what? Experiences like this one (seriously, $1.50 for that skirt... it's a thing of beauty) show me that I'm on the right track.

Update: Rereading this, I see I forgot to mention that I've been going through my closet again and am putting aside any item that doesn't make me feel a rock star. Because of this, my closet is slimmer by six. Sorry, felt like I need to explain myself because people get weird when you mention minimalism and shopping, no matter what kind of shopping it is. Johanna likes to screech, "YOU'RE A MINIMALIST!" if I so much as glance at anything remotely consumer-ish, which is probably not as fun as you'd think it would be. Anyway, I am currently on the lookout for used items to replace my worn black sweater and hole-y long-sleeved black t-shirt. This is also not as fun as you'd think it would be. Well, at least I'm in no hurry. P.S. I have come to the conclusion I will never be able to find a used pair of pants. Too tall. Good thing I'm in a skirt phase, I guess. Reminds me of the '90s when pants styles were so short I just wore shorts and tights all the time...