Frugal Finds and Fixes: To Top That Off

We've been in our new place for several weeks, and it's starting to feel more like home. While we unpacked pretty quickly, there were still some unfinished bits and temporary messes...well, there are still things to work on, but the big needs are taken care of and the messes are fewer. I find Dana K. White's two cleaning-out questions very helpful, especially when it comes to large, strange assortments of stuff. Her first is "where would I look first for this?" Someone's bleeding--we don't have an obvious medicine cabinet in any of the bathrooms--so where's the first, easiest place I'd look for bandages? I think the cupboard right over the stove would make the most sense. But that still isn't where they are, so I need to fix that.

The second question is, "If I suddenly needed one of these, would it even occur to me that I already had one?" And, obviously, that I'd then know where to look for it. This is where White's Decluttering at the Speed of Life meets Marie Kondo: everything needs to have a home. It can be a weird home, but if that's where you'd most easily put it away (Kondo) and where you'd instinctively look for it (White), that's fine. I'm not sure which question or which voice I was following when I shredded some thirty-year-old work contracts (don't ask me why I still had them): just call it a Greek chorus of "no, it would probably never occur to you that you had those buried in the bottom drawer. Even if the chance in a million happened that somebody actually wanted to know what you got paid for two weeks' temp work in 1991."

I already posted about the amazing bedroom closet. I'm still full of awe and gratitude for that space. I attached plastic shower curtain  rings on the end of the bottom rack, and looped scarves through them. (I do better when I can see things than when they're hidden away.)

We re-purposed a metal decoration that had been hanging outside, for the kitchen wall.

The plumbers finally came, fixed a few things, and replaced one bathroom sink. Mr. Fixit asked if I could make the boring brown bathroom more interesting, so I tacked a travel clothesline to the wall and pinned up some favourite postcards (I had mini clothespins from a long-ago craft project).

We found a ceiling fan for half price, for the upstairs bonus space. This is the best time of year to find deals on barbecues, fans, and patio furniture.

Mr. Fixit did a bunch of fixing, pulling out, and cleaning up in our little backyard space.

In cheap entertainment, we've been watching a library DVD of Stargate Atlantis Season Four. We're also watching Stephen Fry's lawyer-in-a-small-village-surrounded-by-crazy-people series Kingdom, and the first season of The Saint.

We've used some two-for-one hamburger coupons when we wanted fine dining with no cooking. We also improvised a pot of vegetable soup one night. The freezer compartment here seems to work much better than the one in the apartment, so we're planning to make freezer meals soon.

We've also been to a couple of early-fall yard sales. I didn't find much more than a box of stationery, but Mr. Fixit found a small vintage record cabinet to hold things in his not-in-the-dining-room-anymore workspace.

Speaking of workspace, I used mine to finish off a new study guide. (Just throwing that in.)

On to clothes: I'm happy with my fall #Project333, but I did find a couple of nice extra things on thrifting trips. The first was from the store where I volunteer. No, I did not strictly need an animal-print tunic dress, but for a couple of dollars I thought it would be fun to try out being a person who wears an animal-print tunic dress.

Later, I happened to be in the Mission Thrift store with Ponytails (not a usual thing, but it worked out that way); and I came across a blue cotton t-shirt. I would have bought it anyway, but I was a bit blown away by the label. If that name means anything to you, you'll know why. My very lucky day.

Finally, I got in a quick visit to the Salvation Army store last night while Mr. Fixit and Grandpa Squirrel were looking at Cruise Night vintage cars. This is what I found: a red leather vest with an embossed floral design.  

And that's hard to top.

Best conscious-consumer post I've read this week

From www.Restitchstance.com : 

"Whatever I might gain from convenience or price, it’s often worth it to wait to decide if I’m making the right choice or spend more money for something that I truly love…if only so I don’t end up in this exact same situation a year from now, wondering how on earth I managed to buy so many things that I hate.

"The Konmari method also gave me permission to say goodbye to those mistakes, something I feel awfully guilty about as a person invested in sustainable living. I shouldn’t hoard stuff I don’t even like to make myself feel better about wasting less; instead, I should learn from my past decisions so I can make better sustainable decisions in the future."

Read the rest here.

What I did with my closet (A little KonMari Tidying)

I said recently that I don't own any plastic drawers, but they had already been on my mind. Not because everybody and their aunt are talking about KonMari, but because I had been looking at the assortment of bins and boxes on the closet floor, and thinking of possible improvements. And not because I love plastic, but I did figure out that Sterilite's wide-drawer unit was just the right size for the space, if we left the wheels off, so it was probably the simplest choice. 

So you may have already noticed the drawers in this week's minimalism posts. I've added scrapbookish inserts to the fronts of each drawer, but they can easily be removed or changed. 

Some people would probably use closet drawers for underwear or basic stuff. For me, these are more like spark-joy holders. One drawer is for scarves, because I'm strange like that, and also because adding the drawers meant losing the basket they were in. (I will probably eliminate a few of these.)

One drawer is for doilies, mats, and small tablecloths, because I've never been able to arrange them "joyfully" before, or get at them easily, and because we got rid of their bin. Also some crocheted pinecones which never had a real home before.

The third drawer is for summer clothes. Now I can use my suitcase again.

Fitting in the unit moved two plastic bins on to a new life in the storage room, and it eliminated several cardboard boxes. I also cleaned out our "medical" supplies and found a new spot for the overnight-guest bedding, and it all made me feel very productive. And yes, I do things other than clean my closet, but this seemed like a good way to take better care of my stuff. 

Besides, it was too cold to go out.

Gotta thank somebody (KonMari tidying)

I probably don't need to repeat this, but I'm old. I've been around through a lot of decluttering and organizing fads. I always wished for a magic clean-up wand, but I never connected success with seriously purging my belongings (weren't they all important?), or with not buying more yarn on sale. I grew up without much sense of "stop, that's enough stuff." If someone gave you a present, you were supposed to keep it. When the dolls on your dresser outgrew the dresser,  you didn't stop collecting, you built them a shelf. I had no idea that anyone could have too many books.

But I did try. I moved out on my own with books by Don Aslett and Sandra Felton (and stayed just as Messie), I survived house moves with It's Here...Somewhere and Deniece Schofield, and I watched Peter Walsh do the Clean Sweep.  I attempted Sidetracked Home Executives, but somehow escaped the FlyLady. The old advice to Keep What You Need is about as obvious as Don't Spend Money So You Don't Go Into Debt, but we got better at that than we did at keeping a handle on Stuff. We didn't buy a lot of new Stuff, but we did find a lot of used Stuff, and had a lot of free Stuff given to us, to the point that we had trouble sorting out the Keeper Stuff from the rest (or what one person called Keeper, the rest of us called the rest).

Pop psychology time: Mr. Fixit and I are both firstborns, and both of us were close to our grandparents. We felt a lot of expectation that we would be keepers of the family story. You can figure out the rest. 

Fast forward through our full-on decluttering and downsizing, which brought in more library books, Tiny House videos, and Apartment Therapy posts, plus Project 333, but not much awareness of Marie Kondo or KonMari. (I did post something about it once.) When I went to the Tiny Wardrobe Tour lecture the summer before last, I got there early and sat beside a woman who introduced herself as a professional KonMari organizer. She didn't know much about Project 333, and I didn't know much about KonMari, but our attempt to compare notes got cut short by a loud argument over priority seating. I seemed to be sitting in the middle of the war zone, and I think the KonMari lady blamed me somehow, so I did not learn any more about it that night.

Then Tidying fell into my lap while I was sorting books at the thrift store. Our move to a smaller space had sparked a new kind of Tiny-House-ish deliberateness about what we were keeping and where it should go, so the book helped us get over some storage bumps.

Now, suddenly,  Marie Kondo is on the Lifestyle page of our local paper, not to mention all over Youtube and everybody's media. Folding your clothes is suddenly cool. And the Big Thing that I am picking up from this came from a brief review where, I think, they got the reason for her popularity absolutely right. Even if you don't literally hug your sweater to see if it sparks joy (I don't), KonMari appeals to our emotions, because it is about valuing and thanking. If you arrange your shoes on a rack from lightest to heaviest, top to bottom, you're not saying "look at all the shoes I have" but "I am taking the time to appreciate how each pair fits into my life and into my space." If you're a bit animistic, you add "And I want the shoes to know that." If you're a Christian, you use that boring term stewardship, which means, essentially, that you're Jeeves cheerfully polishing Wooster's silverware. Stewardship is just taking care. Guardianship, sort of. You get the privilege of living with and caring for the shoes, but you know Who really owns them. When they're dirty, you clean them. When they wear out, you get them fixed.

And here's the rub: you can't do that with as much stuff as North Americans typically live with. Lots, in this sense, is not better than a few. Or one. We are finite beings, with limited time and attention spans. But, as Charlotte Mason says, we can develop habits of attention. We can invest time into knowing where pieces in our collection came from, hearing their stories. We can value loyalty. We can be thankful. We just can't do it so well with an overload of stuff.

A year of KonMari tidying here

Marie Kondo seems to be getting more popular than ever--she now has a show on Netflix (which I can't watch because we just unsubscribed). The word most often applied to her personally is "cute," but she also has her firm side. In one You-tube video, the owner of a messy pantry shows her a package of spoon-shaped cookies, drawing appreciative coos from Kondo but followed quickly by a pointing out of their months-old expiry date. Cute cookies aren't worth much if you don't eat them.

In 2017, I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and described some of my early experiments on the blog. Someone commented (kindly) that it would be interesting to know how long I'd stick with it.

Well, it's been a year-plus since I made my first t-shirt stand up straight, so I guess that's long enough now to call a habit. The food in our storage room has remained organized (and the wrapping paper I used on the bins has held up pretty well). The bathroom has stayed uncluttered. We had already gone through a lot of decluttering, during our downsize to the apartment. I had also done quite a lot of putting things into containers, and containers within containers, before I read Tidying Up. 

What I think KonMari added to our vision for a newer, cleaner space here was a sense of aesthetic pleasure, an extra bit of harmony. One of the odd bits I picked up from Kondo's books was the idea that containers and boxes with clashing labels and random printing may contribute to a sense of info-overload. They can feel like commercials that never get turned off. Solutions to garish containers include peeling off a label, painting or covering the box (as I did with the very miscellaneous pantry bins), or emptying the contents into a jar or something else neutral. If it's a shoebox or something to be repurposed as a drawer organizer, then the outside printing doesn't matter. But if the storage container is going on a shelf, you might want to pretty it up a bit. That doesn't mean crocheted cozies for the toilet paper, but just keeping in mind how what we look at every day can boost moods (or bring them down). If we have to look at words in our homes, let's make them important and beautiful words.

I appreciate Kondo's encouragement to use whatever you have instead of buying new (often plastic) storage goods. One thing she does like are the sets of large plastic drawers for closets, partly because they keep storage behind closed doors. I don't have any, but I've compromised by treating a couple of under-bed baskets as if they were drawers. (We don't get as many dust-bunnies here as we did at our old house, so under-bed storage is workable.)

Another KonMari idea that I found useful was sorting by categories, especially with seemingly miscellaneous stuff. Not that we hadn't already done a lot of that, but I appreciated her emphasis on its usefulness. It helps us know not only where things are in the apartment, but also when we need to re-stock.

Finally, Kondo's knack for turning even an underwear drawer into a sort of Bento box array should lead not to obsession with one's undies, but to appreciation and gratitude for what we have. This is something we can share with and model for children. Look--we have socks! They're nice colours! They're clean! They're (mostly) hole-free! Let's take care of them! Even small things arranged carefully can make our days brighter, and that echoes Edith Schaeffer's thoughts on tabletop flowers, sandwich plates for hobos, and writing little notes to cheer people up.

I still don't talk to my shoes. But I'm glad for the help KonMari has given us.

"Yet it was chiefly her body that was tired now; her mind, which had been so weary and fretted in London, had been wonderfully rested by this house that was now her home....[Nadine] stretched out a hand and laid it upon the paneled wall beside her; it was warm in the sun, as though it were alive....This house was maison-dieu [a house of God], and the stripping away of all that was unworthy and the building up of new beauty was in the nature of a crusade.  And the house had agreed and collaborated."  ~~ Elizabeth Goudge, The Herb of Grace (Pilgrim's Inn)

There is nothing new about decluttering

Our local paper has a story today about the latest celebrity declutterer. She's said to be different from (list of other clutter experts) because she doesn't turn it into a spiritual exercise. Two paragraphs later, she's extolled as a "guru" who promotes "healing." Sigh. You can't have it both ways.

(This same expert boasts that she's so paper-free, she owns only two pieces of paper, both official documents.)

Do we use our stuff, or does it use us? It's not a new question (Ecclesiastes 5:13, for one). Does what we want, or what we spend on getting it, or how we store it, cause stress, create hazards, or strain relationships? If this didn't seem like a bigger problem than the occasional Mount Laundry, the newspapers wouldn't be running decluttering stories.

Let's invoke some reality. There are life situations that, by their nature, involve some clutter.  It may not be pathological at all, more just about having a hard time keeping on top of the material stuff when there are other demands. Clutter-free counters are less important than making sure everyone can get at what they need. Small people who can't reach up, or any people who can't reach down, or who need visual reminders to take their vitamins or whatever, take priority over empty spaces.

The bigger problems seem to be the amount of stuff (expensive or cheap, new or thrifted, keepable or trashable) that comes into our homes; making the best use of it while we allow it space in our lives; and then letting go when its value is gone. That last is more of a problem than you'd think. I read an article recently with low-clutter gift suggestions for children, many of them paper (ironically). One was a cardboard playhouse that could easily be recycled when its time was over. Great idea, but at our house a few years ago, give-it-up time would have been never. When everything receives equal emotional investment, decluttering is not an option. (I had a cardboard house as a small child, and remember hours of neighbourhood tea parties and other goings-on inside it; but I wasn't consulted about its ultimate disposal. That may be the difference between parents in 1970 and 2010.)

So maybe the tritest slogan is also the truest: don't spend your energy loving things that can't love you back, or that may even be imprisoning you. (Textbook case: Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, "The Won't-Pick-Up-Toys Cure." Bible case: camels and needles' eyes.) If your stuff is working for you, even if it's a mess, just clean it up when you get time. But if it's moved into neutral or negative, look at it with a sterner eye. You don't owe your things a thing,

In Honour of National Thrift Shop Day: This fall's clothes page

August 17th is National Thrift Shop Day!

I felt like I was planning in circles this time around. I like "dressing up" clothes, but my lifestyle is casual, and often dusty-sweaty (like unloading donated boxes of books). Those realities don't always blend so well in a small wardrobe. I tried making a capsule-within-a-capsule of jeans and t-shirts, but in the end it was easier to list everything together. Some things cross back and forth anyway. I tried a few other approaches, but they were all making me unhappy about what wasn't going to make the cut. Besides that, my half of the shared closet was very messy, and I couldn't figure out why. I don't have forgotten clothes from years ago, or impulse buys with tags still on them. But I pulled everything out just the same, and started re-hanging the definite keepers.

The answer to the second problem turned out to be related to the first. I needed more hangers. Not for the closet, because, it turned out, I had just enough space and just enough hangers to hang up everything that didn't fit in the dresser (see below), minus a few also-rans that are heading back to the thrift store. The real roadblock to my sartorial serenity was a laundry issue.

I do a lot of air-drying over the bathroom shower rod. On hangers, which have to be filched from the closet, which causes shortages and therefore clothes doubled up and hard to see. A-ha moment there: I need to buy some extra hangers just for laundry use, and I also need to not stuff the now-dry tops into the closet where they cause traffic jams.

As for the first problem: I renewed my vows to KonMari, and folded all my t-shirts into one drawer, from tanks to pullovers. I  folded heavy winter things into another drawer, along with the jeans I wear the most. 

Second a-ha moment: what did fit into those spaces is now my working wardrobe until whenever. I suddenly did not have to choose between this thing and that thing just because it wasn't in the plan. I could keep my dressy pants, my worn-but-comfortable sweatshirt dress, and all my purple t-shirts. I stopped being unhappy. 

See?

You can read the rest of the page here.

Do you want a limited special edition?

Two years ago, I posted a quote from Charlotte Mason on the benefits of owning a cherished, worthwhile collection of something, vs. the continual acquisition of mindless "collectibles." For some of us, a desire to "collect them all!" began with our first commercials for breakfast cereal (with toys), and moved on from there.

Buster Baxter (unwrapping a Christmas gift): Cool, it's CyberCod!
Bitzi: I'm sorry, Buster. We can return it.
Buster: (confused) Huh? Why?
Bitzi: Because you already have that one. See? (holds up a figure that looks similar, but decidedly not the same) I found it in your room right after I bought the other one.
Buster: That's TechnoTrout, Mom. He's very different. He has a speckled belly and he doesn't have CyberCod's kung-fu feet. (He demonstrates.)
Bitzi: Oh, thank goodness!
 (Arthur's Perfect Christmas)

In Goodbye, Things, Fumio Sasaki tells about a short-lived craze in Tokyo when the transit system offered a special anniversary edition pass. The card didn't offer any more benefits than a regular pass, but people still lined up for hours trying to get one. Sasaki decided to "pass" on it.

He also gives this very C.M.-resonant piece of advice: "Discard any possessions that you can't discuss with passion." Obviously, there are exceptions to this sparking-joy idea; many things are more functional than passion-provoking. But those things that we choose to keep around us, that we use to help tell our stories--they should have meaning.  And the worst offenders are things we keep because they make us appear trendy or intellectual or rich or cozily domestic. If we let them go, we might have to admit we're not any of those things. Big ouch.

What if we decided to detach, just a little more, from "collect them all?"

What if...we decided to be comfortably ourselves, and started to see the humourous side of our innocent but humbuggish attempts to "be somebody?"

Because each of us is, already, a limited special edition.

Quote for the day: "The mechanics of unhappiness"

"In the same way that your joy does not equal the price of an item you buy, neither do the functions of that item. A down jacket that costs double the price of the one you already have will not offer double the warmth. Your dissatisfaction continues, and you reach out for something else. You know you'll get used to the next thing and become tired of it as well, but you can't help predicting the future based on your present feelings...In the back of your mind you know that you'll never be satisfied, but you keep thinking that maybe this time the brief sense of happiness you feel will be the real thing. These are the mechanics of unhappiness, and they exist no matter how much you spend, no matter how much you own." ~~ Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism, by Fumio Sasaki

Wednesday Hodgepodge: First of the Year

1. It's that time of year again...time for Lake Superior University to present a list of words (or phrases) they'd like to see banished (for over-use, mis-use, or genera uselessness) in 2018. You can read more about the decision making process and word meaning here, but this year's top vote getters are-

unpack, dish (as in dish out the latest rumor), pre-owned, onboarding/offboarding, nothingburger, let that sink in, let me ask you this, impactful, Cofefe, drill down, fake news, hot water heater (hot water doesn't need to be heated), and gig economy

Which of these words/phrases would you most like to see banished from everyday speech and why? Is there a word not on the list you'd like to add?

I don't even recognize some of these! (I do know that Cofefe was only an accidental "word.")

I don't know about hot water heaters, but hot water heating is a logical phrase. As in, some apartments have radiators because they have hot water heating. 

Pre-owned is a euphemism I don't mind. It's nicer than second-hand. Or you could just say new-to-me.

2. What's something you need to get rid of in the new year?

We've already decluttered so much that there isn't much left to work on. Today I read the manga version of Marie Kondo's The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and that did inspire a bit of paper sorting.

3. Where do you feel stuck?

On a writing project.

Plus I also have to do a research paper for a course I'm taking, but I'm not far enough into that yet to feel stuck, more just a little anxious.

4. January is National Soup Month. When did you last have a bowl of soup? Was it made from scratch or from a can? Your favorite canned soup? Your favorite soup to make from scratch on a cold winter's day?

We eat soup semi-regularly. Canned soup is mostly a quick lunch fallback; if it's for dinner, it's probably homemade. Mr. Fixit makes his grandma's chicken soup with a whole chicken. I make slow cooker soups with beans or split peas.

5. Tell us one thing you're looking forward to in 2018.

Celebrating our first year as non-homeowners.

6. Insert your own random thought here.

Niagara Falls is frozen, and I'm a bit chilled myself. It's probably a good time to break out the split peas.

Linked from The Wednesday Hodgepodge at From This Side of the Pond.

Things to do today (photos)

1. Wash, dry, and fold a small load of laundry. Mr. Fixit says his drawer for socks et al has never looked so good (thank you KonMari).

2. Go out with Mr. Fixit to pick up some meat and perogies at EuroFoods, and do whatever other errands we have to. Tomorrow's errand is a flu shot, but I won't think about that.

3. Wait for a package to arrive. (It did.)

5. Make dinner with whatever we get at EuroFoods. Just two of us tonight since Lydia has robotics practice.

6. Finish making the Christmas cards I started last week.

7. Search vainly for a bar cookie recipe from a Walmart magazine that I linked to but that has disappeared.

8. Pre-read a couple of books for our church library.

9. Hand-wash the dress I wore to church and to the Steve Bell/Malcolm Guite concert last night, because I am that kind of fussy about that dress. At least now I know how to pronounce Guite. (It rhymes with night.)

10. Re-read a little of Shepherds Abiding, the first Mitford book I ever read, ten years ago, and still a favourite at Christmas.

Let's talk some more: how I ended up with fewer but better clothes, and had to re-do the page

I had fun with Project 333 this fall, in spite of the fact that I broke all the rules, kept finding new things all season at the thrift store (volunteering is bad for that), pulled out half my summer clothes again in a burst of KonMari, and figured I was finished with tiny wardrobes since I was obviously not very good at sticking to minimalism. The fall/winter page here was also a mess since I kept crossing things out and adding other things.

So I changed my mind and added a just-winter page. The clothes aren't new; but the list is cleaned up and easier to read. Strangely enough, I don't have many more items on it than most respectable "tiny wardrobes."  It may not look like anybody else's version of what people "should" have, but it's working for me.

I don't know how most other people go about "thrifting" wardrobes, but here's what I do. Take what you can use.

I've seen articles online talking about which things you should snap up at thrift stores, and which ones are not usually worth your time. I'd say, make up your own list based on your experiences. I've read that it's impossible to buy used pants (because of fitting issues), and that t-shirts and sweaters are usually worn beyond bothering. But I take a pretty standard (although petite) pants size, and if I see the magic number on a label, it usually fits. As for tops and sweaters...well, you have to look past the poor ones to find something you do like. So figure out your own must-visit categories, those you'll look at only if you have time, and those that are a no-go for you. My quick-looks are the bargain rack, for obvious reasons; shoes, because although I rarely find any that fit, the odd exceptions make a regular look worthwhile; and dresses, because I like them and they're often more interesting than the tops and pants. If I have time, I look at the accessories. Anything else just depends on what I don't have much of; maybe I really need pants, a new purse, or whatever. Is there anything I wouldn't look for at all? I rarely look at athletic clothes, yoga pants and things like that. I also don't spend time looking at very fancy dresses. Jewelry was another section I used to skip, but this fall I've started looking at necklaces again.

The point is, your must-try list will be different from mine. It depends on what you love, what you do, and what you need. And one other "what": what you would like to try, or change. Maybe you have never ever worn jeans, or dresses, or high heels, or anything bright red, and it's just time. Maybe your secret wish is to be Rhoda Morgenstern. Thrift stores are the perfect place to try out new things.

Watch for colours you like but which may be hard to find in the average mall store. One idea I've seen online, but haven't tried, is to buy a too-big t-shirt in an interesting colour, cut the body away from the neck and sleeves, and wear the resulting big loop as an infinity scarf.

The last bit of advice is an obvious one, but...thrift stores vary. Donors, merchandise, and prices vary. I used to visit one store that always had great books, but horrible clothes, because the donors were mostly frugal older people who wore their clothes to shreds. Some stores sort things more carefully than others do. Some places smell better than others. If your only thrifting experiences have been bad ones, remember that better things may be hiding in another neighbourhood, or the next town.

Let's talk minimalism theories (and a bit of clothes stuff)

How to Get Dressed, a book by a show business costumer, says that you should hang every possible piece of your clothing, to keep everything visible. You can even pin small things to muslin-covered hangers.

Japanese organizing expert Marie Kondo's advice is to fold almost everything. No muslin-covered hangers, but you can decorate the few hangers you do use with old hair ties and keychains.

Project 333 and similar capsule wardrobe plans tell you to keep only a limited number of items out for use at one time, and no shopping is allowed during the three-month period except right near the end when you're thinking about the next season. This is supposed to make your getting-dressed decisions easier (here's my hat and my scarf, not plural), and may help you to think less about appearances and more about big ideas. A tiny wardrobe can also be a source of more-with-less creativity; or an opportunity for absolute uniformity (t-shirts and jeans). (One thought I have is that the three-month experiment, like a Whole 30 month, may be most effective if you do it only once or twice or occasionally, and follow the rules exactly, rather than trying to follow it longterm but haphazardly.)

On the other side, Marie Kondo recommends doing a major closet purge once, but then keeping most of the joy-sparking remainder available to wear year-round...because clothes, like Toy Story characters, don't like "going in the box." The final amount is up to you, your needs, and your drawer space. One blogger suggested that this approach is perhaps more honest than storing non-capsule clothes in boxes, because you are not just delaying a decision on what to do with them.

Note that this hasn't addressed issues such as fast fashion, polluted rivers, overseas labour, poverty, and shopping addiction. And we haven't even gotten to the rest of the house, the dishes, books, vacuum cleaners, and guinea pig bedding.

So what's a confused home organizer to do?

Michael Pollan's famous food advice is “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” It's a principle that can be translated into practice. It also opens up discussion. What is "food?" How much is too much? What is "mostly?" What kinds of plants? Where should they come from? But you start with the principle.

So here's an adapted version of Pollan's motto: "Wear clothes. Not too many. Mostly low-impact."

How you hang or fold them is up to you.

KonMari and the Infrequent Sewer (photos)

There have been periods when one or another Squirrel was doing a lot of sewing, or things often needed quick fixes, and it was nice to have a semi-permanent sewing corner. Even before we moved, though, we did some reorganizing and the sewing machine went to live in a box.  

Since we moved, the sewing supplies have taken up the two shelves in the closed part of the cabinet in the photo below. And the sewing machine was still living in the box, in our pantry room. I have pulled it out a couple of times, but I had to pull other things out to get at it, and it wasn't a lot of fun.

Today I decided to get a handle on the sewing stuff. I'll spare you the details, but you can see (in the photo below) that it's reduced from two whole shelves, to two plastic containers and a cardboard box of thread spools. That took up just the bottom shelf nicely. 

If I moved that stuff to the top shelf, would the sewing machine fit in the bottom?

Yes It Did. The cords are inside that red fabric thing to the right, which was otherwise the sewing machine cover.

And the advantage of that to the Infrequent Sewer, is that I no longer have to haul the sewing machine out of the pantry to sew at the dining table, so I am that much more likely to sew.

Totally worth the effort.

Thrifty finds today

Four things for nine dollars...works for me.

Acrylic scarf (I could not pass up those pink and purple zigzags)

Metal basket that is going to hold napkins for now, but which may become a Christmas decoration

No, this is not a strange-looking pumpkin pie; it's a wooden tray with a shallow rim and handles. Second choice for the base of a Christmas decoration, or maybe it will hold baking.

Accordion file, which is going to hold stationery and cards-to-send.

KonMari Closet, or, I'll try anything once (photos)

This wasn't so much a declutter as a reorganization and folding spree.

One thing I didn't like about the way things were was the big plastic bin full of summer clothes. I've never quite trusted it; I had the feeling it made things smell funny. The bin is still there, but now it's holding some other non-clothes stuff (that still needs sorting). About half the summer clothes (like t-shirts) came out and got put with the other clothes; the rest are in the blue fabric bin on the top shelf.

The hanging shelf used to be scarves but is now t-shirts plus winter gloves and hats. 

Bin of pullovers and sweater dresses. I had the dresses hanging up, but decided to fold them since they're really long pullovers.

Basket of scarves. I seemed to have a mess of scarves, so it was nice to corral them. I am donating a few that didn't spark-so-much-joy.

Drawer of folded tops

(I did do the socks etc. etc. too, but no photos--sorry.)

Day...three. (Part One)

Sunday's post about One
Monday's post about Two

As Schoolhouse Rock used to say, three is a magic number. Three Squirrelings. Three meals a day. The number of a current writing project. Faith, hope and love.

Three threes make up Project 333, and by an interesting coincidence we just watched the documentary Minimalism last night. Courtney Carver, the originator of Project 333, appears in the film, talking briefly about what propelled her into a more-with-less lifestyle. I've been trying to follow a Project 333 plan for the past year, so this is a good time to think about what's working, why I'm doing this, and what's ahead.

One of the people interviewed in the documentary said that the problem isn't that our culture isn't too materialistic, it's that it's not materialistic enough. She meant that we are so surrounded with so much stuff that we don't properly appreciate any of it. In the days when children's toys were expensive and scarce, a stuffed rabbit (let's say) became a cherished possession; but now (says one confessing much experience of this particular overload), decorators show us how to hang a hundred stuffies in grape-like bunches from the ceiling. I saw a photo like that yesterday, and it made me wonder where the child fit into that picture, and if he ever really noticed the toys again once they were strung up like that. I wondered if he had one or two held-back "friends" for company down below.

Deliberately limiting the number of clothes we wear is somewhat artificial, a response to a first-world problem. But it's a step towards, maybe, a healthier relationship with "stuff." Janice at The Vivienne Files is starting a no-shop year herself.  There is a lot of freedom in saying "I have enough."

This isn't a no-shop year for me; I'm still filling in some gaps, mostly for the warm weather that will eventually arrive here (said hopefully on a dreary January day). I might even do some thrift-makeover sewing if I find something interesting to work with. But I think it's going to be a year of trying to focus in, of "use it or lose it."

To be continued...