Charlotte Mason was a minimalist decorator?

"It is worth while to remember that space is the most precious and also the most pleasing thing in a house or room; and that even a small room becomes spacious if it is not crowded with useless objects." ~~ Charlotte Mason, Ourselves, p. 177

(Guessing that she was not a fan of Victorian decorating!)

The Intentional Thrifter shops for parts

I bought four things at the thrift store this morning: a wooden organizer box, a set of four cloth placemats, and two personal-planner binders for a dollar apiece, just for their innards. Total, seven Canadian dollars (U.S.$5.42 right now).

Here is the box. Nothing special, just useful. 

Maybe for paper?

Maybe for hot pads? 

The lid could also be useful.

Here are the place mats.

One by itself would look nice with this strawberry plate.

One of the binders was six-ring, but the included paper fits my own planner perfectly. Also included: some Stephen R. Covey planning advice. Just a bonus.

 The other notebook had a special binding system with plastic buttons, so the paper doesn't work in a regular binder. But we did end up with a bunch of loose paper for grocery lists, Scrabble games, and phone messages. Also some sticky page markers.

I can't use these dividers and page protectors, but I'll leave them by the elevator in our building, where people share stuff like that.

And this small pile of stuff is going in the garbage. The pen didn't work, and I didn't need the other hardware and plastic inserts.

But I still got my money's worth.

Wednesday Hodgepodge: Well, that was a quiet night

1. What does/did Halloween look like at your house this year? Did you decorate? Pick pumpkins? Carve pumpkins? Expect trick or treaters? Wear a costume to a party or event? Make a costume? Feel glad you didn't have to come up with a costume? Cook a Halloween themed treat? Eat all the leftover candy?

Mr. Fixit and I went down the road for Chinese food, came back and watched two episodes of Stranger Things. Lydia wore a retro-movie-star costume to high school, but she had to work after that, so no parties. We didn't buy any candy; I bought a package of Jos Louis (sort of Canadian Ding Dongs) for a treat for us instead.

2. What are you waiting for? Elaborate.

Waiting to start a university course the first week of January. The first one I've taken in over twenty-five years. I guess that's long enough to wait?

(Reminds me of the crusty-mannered customs officer a few years ago who couldn't fathom the twenty-five-year gap since I last visited the U.S.)

3. Do you wish you were friendlier, braver, more creative, more athletic, or something else? Explain.

Sure, why not? But everything has its price. When Nesbit's Five Children got their wishes to be beautiful as the day and to have wings, things always went wrong. Then there was Faust...

4. When it comes time to paint are you a do-it-yourselfer or do you hire someone? What was the last paint job completed at your house? What room most needs painting now? How do you feel about wallpaper?

Our apartment is all neutral walls. At our former house, we had some paint, some wallpaper. The girls' rooms got repainted a couple of times, but some rooms never did get updated from their earlier-era paint colours. It just wasn't that important.

5. What is one specific thing you felt gratitude for in the month of October?

Lots of things! I mean, aside from actual Thanksgiving.

Hot water and soap

Inter-library loans
Emily Dickinson poems

 People who write thank-you notes
Doctors who took care of a family member having surgery
Friends from other cities and other countries

People who donate nice things to the thrift store

People who volunteer at the thrift store

 This post is linked from The Wednesday Hodgepodge at From This Side of the Pond.

When you choose less space: it's not all that exciting, and that's okay

Note to potential downsizers: if you've been in one space for awhile, you may be used to certain things a certain way, and you're not sure you're up for a change. Additionally, photos of tiny houses and articles on apartment websites can make you feel like there must be a rare Zen art to finding cute ways to stash things. Figuring out how to cleverly store the laundry soap in a no-storage laundry closet can be as stressful as moving itself.

But it doesn't have to be that hard.

This is our so-easy-I-forgot-to-think-of-that laundry soap storage: on top of the washer.  Nobody's going to photograph it for Buzzfeed or Pinterest. It was just the obvious place to put the detergent bottle.

This is the only real storage we have in the bathroom that Mr. Fixit and I use, which is also the main bathroom: there's a very shallow medicine cabinet, and the space under the sink, which holds two plastic dishpans, which hold anything we'd rather not leave out. You can buy all kinds of shelf things for bathrooms, but we don't have room for them. And this is the point: we don't have that much to store in the bathroom anyway, so it works out.

This is our totally unexciting entrance closet. It has an old Stack-a-Shelf unit for shoes. It has coats. It has a few things on a shelf, and a basket for paper recycling. 

Are you seeing a pattern here? 

We are not in love with having to organize and store stuff. I do not say that out of lack of sympathy for those who are honestly crushed for space. And we do have a very nice storage room slash pantry, which a lot of other apartments we looked at did not have. Without that, we'd have a whole lot more hooks on the wall, vacuum cleaner in the coat closet, etc. etc. So you might think I just don't know what small and cramped is, or I've forgotten what life is like with little children,  and you could be right. (I did live in a studio apartment before I got married. It was usually a mess.)

This is the best advice I can give from a couple of middle-aged Squirrels (and Squirreling), who have gone from smallest to small to pretty good-sized, and back to small again: if at all possible, have a little less stuff than you think you have room to store. Then you will probably find you have a spot for it, or at least that you don't have to go out of your way to devise storage for it. Ten of something requires a special shelf or box; one or two, you can slip in or under something else, or store in the empty space on the washing machine. If you can live with the one or two, you have solved the problem.

Zen not required.

Quote for the day: The beauty in a working home

"Thus I find myself dreaming of the day I can go up to the checkout stand and see [my imaginary] Working Home magazine, with pictures of real people in their gardens, the old wooden tools and the bursting eggplant alongside the real gardeners...showing what life looks like in a real and functional home. There is so much in the rich potential for beauty in made-over and made-do, in homegrown and home-cooked, in mended and patchwork, in home-built and fresh-made, and the art of hybridity--the transformation of an ordinary suburban ranch or an apartment in the Bronx into a place that is full of art, and life." ~~ Sharon Astyk, Making Home

From the archives: Treasured Possessions

First posted May 2013. Based on The Hidden Art of Homemaking, Chapter 5. Edited somewhat.

Heirloom-quality tablecloths, candlesticks, silver spoons, fine bedcovers? I don't relate much to the particular home-making items that Edith Schaeffer recommends we acquire in Chapter 5.  A candlestick wouldn't necessarily make a hotel room "homier" for me (and do hotels allow you to burn candles in the rooms, anyway? I'm thinking it might be a bit dangerous). 

And Edith knew as well as anyone that "lifetime" treasures could easily be lost or broken.  It was her sweaters that got chewed in the opportunity-for-recycling incident she describes in this chapter, and her wedding china that reportedly got broken by the Schaeffers' constant stream of houseguests.  Moths (mice?) and rust corrupt, cigarette sparks make holes, and careless guests break dishes.  It's a bit of a paradox that Edith describes, in such detail, the value of having your own special stuff; but that she could also see possessions as belonging, ultimately, to the Lord; that dishes and rugs could be somewhat expendable in the service of the Kingdom.

I do have a few treasured family items, but they're not the sort of things you'd want to cart around in a suitcase or that you'd use to dress up a temporary space: a piece of red glassware that was my grandmother's, a Psalter in German script that was passed down through her family, some photographs, my mother's earrings, and so on. I don't think those are the "treasured possessions" that Edith was talking about.

"What about me?"

I think she was shooting more for two types of home-related treasures. 

One would be just familiar, everyday (but also beautiful and individual) home stuff that becomes so much a part of your life that you, or your family, can't imagine home without it.  These days, instead of silver spoons, we might think of afghans or scrap quilts, pottery coffee mugs or bowls, a something-a-day calendar (somebody recently mentioned one with daily paintings), personalized pillowcases.  And her point is that if you don't have any homey stuff like that, then you need to get busy and find some, or make some, or let your kids make some.

The second would be seasonal, ritual-type treasures, things like Christmas ornaments or a birthday plate.

 I'm thinking about my grandparents' move to a granny flat, after forty years in one house.  Somehow they managed to make their new living room look something like the old one.  My grandpa still had a special chair, and some of his steam-train memorabilia.  Grandma's coffee table was still topped by a particular millefiore paperweight.

.

Here's the last point: if Jesus said to store up treasures in heaven, not on earth, isn't that a good attitude to have?

Maybe.  But as Edith says...without any material connections, we risk becoming splintered, unsettled.  Our longings for a home on earth may simply reflect our longings for home in heaven, but while we're here, can't we make our homes places that we care for, and where we know we are also cared for?

Saturday yard sales: just one find this weekend

Canada Day weekend is not that great for yard sales, since everybody knows that everybody else will be out of town, if everybody else has a cottage or trailer to go to. We don't, so we stopped at one yard sale on the way to the grocery store. I found four of these bamboo drawer dividers, for fifty cents apiece, brand new.

They freshened up our drawer of cooking tools.

Saturday yard sales: "As seen on T.V.?" (Updated again)

Found for $2: a new-in-box set of Kangaroo Keepers. Commercial: "Do you have a messy purse like this? Buy the Kangaroo Keeper and your life will be perfect!"

Or something like that.

According to several You-tube reviews, the KK doesn't really live up to the commercial; it's not as big as it looks on the box, and its pockets are also small. And yes, as the reviewers note, it does have a bit of a shower curtain smell. Nobody else suggested this, but it seems to me that clear or coloured pockets instead of black ones would better keep small things from being misplaced. Some of our brains function better with a bit of colour-coding.

But for $2, I think I can find some use for these bags. They could work for toiletries, or office supplies, or crochet tools, or as travel pouches (ignoring the pockets). They do pull  closed with drawstrings, although I found you have to pull pretty hard on the larger one, and it still doesn't close completely.  But maybe they could be used for carrying snacks and lunches, inside a larger bag. I'm thinking mini ice packs stuffed into some of the small pockets.

For something where you're storing a bigger piece along with some little pieces or attachments--the KK's might work well. 

And it's probably a better idea than trying to organize your purse with them.

UPDATE:  A way to use the larger organizer: as an in-drawer keeper for hairbrushes and that sort of stuff. I think I'll use the smaller one for some pens, sticky notes, and the little notepad I use to write school "please excuse" notes.

UPDATE #2: I decided to keep my pens in their basket, and use the smaller pouch inside my tote bag. Since it has a clip on it for keys, I was able to hook it onto the bag's zipper pull. (You could also fasten a loop inside the tote bag.) The reviewers complained that the KK's weren't really big enough to organize all the stuff people carry around, and that's true; but even the smaller one is enough to hold a few basics that otherwise have to swim around inside my tote.

So there you go.

Bedroom corner

Who's counting? The problem of minimalism

From a 2013 post: Many of our houses contain several-times-over-enough stuff already to be beautiful, functional, and express our dreams, values, and individuality.  At church we are watching a DVD series with Dallas Willard, and in yesterday's session he stated that humans are "treasuring creatures."  Our "things" are important to us; they give us identity; they give us comfort.  As Edith Schaeffer says, they also give us continuity when housing has to change or life gets difficult.  It's not unnatural to want to have treasured possessions, cherished things...The issue of creative homemaking for us now is often cutting down, cleaning out, detaching ourselves from enough of the "stuff" so that we can cherish the most meaningful, most memorable, most beautiful.  Charlotte Mason talks about using our will to make choices, rather than just accepting whatever default options present themselves; in making our homes more homelike, that would include making conscious choices about the things you want in a room, and what you don't want.

I recently read a book, Scaling Down, which had good suggestions for those who need or want to fit themselves into smaller spaces. It also deals with the issue of moving (a.k.a. uprooting) someone else, such as a senior family member. How do we manage that with empathy, when our ideas of necessary, important, cherished, may not line up with theirs? In fact, almost any attempt to tell someone else what's superfluous can be rightly seen as disrespectful and interfering. Don't love what doesn't love you back, says a popular letting-go cliche, but loving back isn't usually the real issue. Don't base your identity on possessions, says one thoughtful person; it's true that things come and go, moths and dust corrupt, paper crumbles, colours fade, and knives lose their edge. All quite right.  But at the same time, the old, the saved, sometimes the hidden and then rediscovered, gives us a sense of our own history, our story; and we can't get away from that. Near where I live, modern construction was recently halted when a pioneer-era log road was uncovered several feet down. What does it matter, why didn't they just continue the work? Because people still cared about their community's past.

We have thought many times about moving from the Treehouse, probably to a smaller space. When that time comes, we may not take all the vintage Christmas balls with us; but we'll take some of them. We can't take all the books, but we'll take enough; scanned-in and downloaded ones aren't the same.  We have cleared out many of the things that were easy come, easy go, and left what we really use: 80/20, as some put it.

But the old debate continues: what is necessary, and who decides? In some times and places, a pretty ribbon was vanity, a novel was a time waster, a rug in the parlour was excess. Is stuff bad in itself? If some is good or okay, how much is too much? Is it a spiritual question, or an economic one? Is it more liberating to live with almost nothing, or to have more and yet hold onto it lightly?

"...I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me." Philippians 4:12-13, ESV

Something to think about: The Art of Clutter

From Grandpa Squirrel's weekend newspapers: a New York Times article celebrating clutter.

"In accumulating, we honor the art of the potter, sitting at a wheel; we appreciate the art of the writer, sitting at a desk; we cherish the art of the painter, standing in front of an easel. (By this litany ye shall know that I have many books, many paintings, many pots — and many more things I love.)"

It reminded me of this post from two years ago, about humans (and Squirrels) being "treasuring people."

A nice freebie: Joyous Home Fall Issue

Downloaded through Homeschool Freebie of the Day: the fall 2011 issue of Joyous Home, free this week. If you like teatimes and embroidery and other fall / Thanksgiving pretty stuff, don't miss this one.

I made up some of the the "snickerdoodle coffee" mix under "Mixes to Make," because I had all the ingredients and thought it sounded interesting.  I dumped everything into a bowl and then ran it through the food processor to powder it up a bit more (a blender would also work).  You taste the cocoa more than you do the coffee, and there's just a hint of spice from the allspice; so I would maybe call it more "mocha-spice" than "snickerdoodle," but either way it's quite nice.

Grace and Environment (Hidden Art of Homemaking, Chapter 14)

"[Margaret] also was a very tired woman, and her fatigue took the form of being unable to think about anything except food for more than two consecutive minutes....Except, of course, the garden....These fine autumn days were so precious...these lovely days....What in the world could they have for breakfast?"  ~~ Elizabeth Goudge, The Herb of Grace (Pilgrim's Inn)

"Surely, you begin to feel tired, discouraged, irritated, frustrated and hopeless.  Your own energy begins to ebb away.  You decide to put off the rush of getting your article written.  After all, you might as well go out for a walk."  ~~ Edith Schaeffer, "Environment" in The Hidden Art of Homemaking 

"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, 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."  ~~ The Herb of Grace 

"It goes without saying, too, that 'The Environment,' which is you should be an environment which speaks of the wonder of the Creator who made you."  ~~ "Environment"

"[John Adair] jumped up, went to meet David with outstretched hand, faced him squarely with his tawny eyes alight.  'Forgive the impatience of these two musketeers waiting for the third.' The extraordinary warmth of the tone astonished David, the almost blazing kindness in the eyes, the strong grasp of the hand that seemed apologizing for he did not know what...."  ~~ The Herb of Grace

What was it that allowed John Adair to move from a position of scorn and resentment, and to offer this sudden unexpected and undeserved grace to David?

A sudden flash of understanding that David was made "of the same stuff as himself."

(15th century woodcut linked from this page, although I can't find the reference)

Getting all swirly: the writing chapter (Hidden Art of Homemaking)

PART ONE:  A COMPLAINT

Up until this point in Hidden Art I haven't gotten too close to any specific talent or need-to-create that Edith Schaeffer has been describing.

I like to make stuff, but I'm not a decorator.

I cook dinner, but I'm not a chef.

I play the piano, but I don't consider myself much of a musician.

I even draw sometimes, but I am very far from being an artist. I'm satisfied with doodles.

Ah, but now we get to a bit of an "ouch" chapter for me: "Writing: Prose and Poetry."  My so-called training (twenty-plus years ago) was in writing.  I pick up books about writing.  I read biographies of writers. The thing I've never figured out what to do with, myself, is writing.  I'm not a professional writer, although I've occasionally been paid for writing magazine columns, and I've done a number of unpaid projects.  I've had ideas for novels, but they've usually fizzled.  I've often used the excuse, "there are too many bad books out there already, so why would I want to add another one?"  It's been a point of guilt (I should be doing such and such) and frustration (I don't think I really can do such and such), in the same way as Edith describes.  And when she talks about "boo hoo, you couldn't go to the music conservatory" or whatever, "so use your talents to bless those around you," in the other artistic areas, I'm fine with that.  But now she's saying, "use your writing talents to write funny notes for lunchboxes. Or maybe prayers."  I'm not so fine with that.

Emily Carr, "Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky"

Is that the way the artists and musicians feel about her suggestions in the other chapters, that painting a mural on your child's wall is the equivalent of having something hung in the National Gallery?  If you were meant to paint for the National Gallery, if you are Emily Carr or Mary Cassatt, you are not going to feel very fulfilled by little dibs and dabs here and there, occasional sketching jaunts to the park.  If you have the talent and drive and believe God has called you to be a serious artist, then your work deserves more respect than that.  If you have an important or uplifting or hilarious book churning to be born, then you should write it, and writing the Sunday School Christmas play is not the same thing. 

That's not to say that you can't have other responsibilities or jobs.  Lucy Maud Montgomery "scribbled" after hard days working in the post office and then taking care of her old grandmother.  Melissa Wiley wrote a post about how a busy mom finds time to write.  (Melissa said, "If I don’t write my head gets swirly with pent-up words and I am no use to anyone.")  But I think the reason this chapter gets under my skin has something to do with the fact that women artists, musicians, writers, have had a hard time being taken seriously, and taking themselves seriously.  It feels like a bit of betrayal to have Edith Schaeffer telling us that we ought to be satisfied with "just" using our creative talents to feed our families, decorate our homes, illustrate sermons.  Yes, those are very, very important places to use creativity, scatter grace, bless those around us!  But it strikes me that we need to be careful too not to think that our talents should be less...public?...just because we're women.

PART TWO:  A MEMORY

My dad's family...his aunts, grandparents and so on, so mostly before my time...seem to have been a wildly creative bunch.  Unexpectedly so, since most of them were also staunch, staid Scottish Presbyterians;they were hardworking farm people, blacksmiths, housemaids. Several of them were musicians--not professionals, just church musicians, organists, people-with-tuning-forks.  Some were writers, book people, town librarians.  (There's probably a connection with Robert Louis Stevenson, although I'm not sure how that works out.)  One of my great-aunts painted in her spare time with pastels and oils, fulfilling a dream that her (staunch staid Anglican) mother had tried to squelch years before by refusing to let her take art lessons.   My uncle was a florist. I have cousins on that side of the family who are decorators, design jewelery, make furniture (I think they probably blew glass and made candles during the 1970's too).

And there was one particular auntie...she was my great-great-aunt, so I never remember her as anything but old (she looked like Corrie Ten Boom).  But out of all of the relatives, she was known for being the most young-at-heart.  She lived to be ninety-plus, and even then she liked to make people laugh, especially with funny verses.  I don't think she ever wrote a book or got particularly angsty (see above) about her need to make art; she just created anyway.  When she was a young thing of about forty, she wrote a funny poem about an adventure she had delivering furniture with my great-aunt (the painter) and another young lady who became my grandmother (and who expressed her own creativity mostly through quilts).  It started like this:

"Lend me your ears and you will hear
A tale that I shall unfold
How three young maids without any fear
Rode off in a truck quite old.

"T’was a model of 1914, they say
And that I can well understand.
It sure could travel all the way.
But it rattled to beat the band.

"On the outside was 'Cowan’s Maple Buds'
In lettering large and red.
And on the inside-a sewing machine
And springs for an iron bed...."

She enjoyed life, she was well-loved, and the thirty years since she's been gone have been the poorer for not having her around.  Is that a resolution to the problem?--that, sometimes, those things are enough?

PART THREE:  SERVING IN GOD'S KINGDOM

Did you ever hear of Lillias Trotter?  She was a turn-of-the-last-century missionary in Algeria.  Before that, when she was young, she was a very promising painter, a protégé of the artist and critic John Ruskin.  He said that if she concentrated on her art career, she would probably become very famous.  She thought it over,  and decided God was calling her to devote her life to missions instead.  She didn't feel she could could do both.  Her story reminds me (to come back to the Schaeffers) of Jane Stuart Smith, who left a career in opera to work at L'Abri.  Lillias continued to use her art, recording desert landscapes and illustrating her devotional books.  Jane continued to minister with music, in various ways.  Talented women who "drop out" tend to be viewed as if they've betrayed the sisterhood somewhat, as if these underachievers haven't done enough to prove that they're people-not-just-women.  And that's me too, I guess.  I "dropped out" (not that I was doing all that well even "dropping in" in the first place) to do the things I've been doing for the past twenty years. 

The sermon at our church yesterday referred to the verse in Proverbs about ants who store food in summer.  The speaker (a woman!) pointed out that the true wisdom of these ants (or in Leo Lionni's mice) is in knowing what season they're in--not hung up on the past or the future, but living out the tasks that are given them today; not being unprepared for the winter, but making the most of seasons of preparation.  I think of Edith's expoundings on creativity as somewhat like that.  It isn't good  to think either "I could have done" or "maybe someday" to the point where you can't make the most of today.  Even if maybe you have to write in the bathroom or whatever.  But that doesn't stop you from thinking ahead either, maybe to times when life will change, for good or bad; in using and improving the skills you have use for future needs. 

And as for me...I have to go put the squash on for supper.

Linked from the Hidden Art of Homemaking linky for Chapter 9 at Ordo Amoris.

Flowers on the Table, why? (Hidden Art of Homemaking, Chapter 7)

It's at this point in The Hidden Art that we (any readers, but especially "Christian homemakers," since it's aimed at us) feel a bit or a lot overwhelmed. 

A familiar Proverbs-31-lady tension sets in:  not only do we have to "think artistic," but we also have to be creative decorators and make bed trays when people are sick and grow gardens and make candles and do needlepoint, and not just put food on the table, but pretty food, and search out flowers and decorate the table as well.  Flowers on the table, not just on special occasions but as a regular feature, and if we don't have flowers, trotting out to the garden for gourds. And we would never set out a plastic tub of margarine or a plain jar of applesauce or jam, would we?  Hidden art, nothing--it's us who should be hiding.  All this visual "communicating" sounds like hard, hard work; and what if it just burns us out, ends up costing a lot of money, and the people around us don't appreciate our efforts?  Anyway, they've never said they wanted flowers on the table.

I think Edith would say no, no, no, no, no.

This is supposed to be freeing.  Encouraging, not guilt-producing.  Remember the image Edith used of a broken body part in a cast?  We are being allowed to express our hidden-art side.  It's a reminder that we have permission. It is meant to allow movement, freedom, possibilities, especially after a time of feeling immobile, shut in a small space...in any way, physically, emotionally, or spiritually.

If our homes are already overwhelmed with clutter and stuff, or we have shopaholic tendencies, then buying even more candles and flowers or starting a craft-store centerpiece project is NOT a good idea.  What we need to work on, home-wise, might be breathing spaces.  The table and counters free of clutter.  Maybe ONE flower in a vase.

But others may be living with little, maybe in a small apartment or a government townhouse.  A landlord who won't allow paint or nails in the wall.  Not much to look at from the balcony or from the front steps.  Smells and noise coming in from other units, and from outside.  This is the opposite challenge:  starting from "underwhelmed."  And again, a little can be the big equalizer: a couple of flowers in a vase.  Something to contemplate.  Something no landlord can complain about.

And this is the deal with the flowers on the table: we keep hearing that "nobody" eats meals at the table anymore, at least not all together; nobody cooks proper meals, nobody has time; and the idea of sitting and stretching out a mealtime together, well...that's the most difficult of all.  Homeschoolers are usually a little or a lot better at this than most, because we tend to have more people at home; but even homeschooling families can get rushed and preoccupied.

So maybe it's not flowers and candles at all, because maybe you can't get flowers, or your spouse has allergies and the kids might knock over the candles and set the place on fire.  Maybe your creative stretching in the eating space is just nice cloth placemats, or cartoons drawn on a chalkboard over the table.  Maybe it's bright red or pretty blue paper napkins, laid out over the plates--I'm serious!  Sometimes a bit of colour is just what a boring table needs, even if it's from the dollar store.

But think about this: if the table looks a little nicer than usual, and the room is clean and smells good, and the food is set out in a specially pretty or fun or appetizing way (that's chapter 8)...you see and they see that somebody cares. Maybe we will spend a few minutes longer sitting there. Maybe we'll even try talking to each other while we're there.

Maybe that's the why.

Linked from the Ordo Amoris linky for Hidden Art of Homemaking, Chapter 7. (I checked this time! It's the right link!)

The Hidden Art of Homemaking, chapter 5: Interior Decorating and The Friendly Giant

This You-tube video, if you've never seen it, is a clip from the program Clean Sweep. Several years ago when we had a satellite dish, it used to come on right around the time we got home from church on Sundays, and the kids and I would get a quick lunch and watch. You know what happens after they blow the whistle? Everybody gets busy and hauls EVERYTHING in that room out to the yard, for sorting and a whole lot of discarding. Some of it, they junk--the dirty, the useless. Some of it gets sold in a big yard sale. The best stuff gets kept and incorporated into a new room design.



I learned several things from watching this show.

1)  Many of our houses contain several-times-over-enough stuff already to be beautiful, functional, and express our dreams, values, and individuality.  At church we are watching a DVD series with Dallas Willard, and in yesterday's session he stated that humans are "treasuring creatures."  Our "things" are important to us; they give us identity; they give us comfort.  As Edith Schaeffer says, they also give us continuity when housing has to change or life gets difficult.  It's not unnatural to want to have treasured possessions, cherished things.  Sometimes they remind us of people we love, or places we've been, or special times.

What Edith Schaeffer didn't deal with so much, around 1970, was the problem of Too Much.  She didn't talk much about shopping addiction, hoarding, or just getting stuck with a load of somebody else's possessions. The issue of creative homemaking for us now is often cutting down, cleaning out, detaching ourselves from enough of the "stuff" so that we can cherish the most meaningful, most memorable, most beautiful.  Charlotte Mason talks about using our will to make choices, rather than just accepting whatever default options present themselves; in making our homes more homelike, that would include making conscious choices about the things you want in a room, and what you don't want.

2)  If you're letting it get dirty, piled over with junk, even mouse-inhabited (like one Clean Sweep family's "heirloom clock"), then maybe you don't really care about it.

2b)  Honesty time:  abandoned projects and hobbies, clothes that don't fit, mousey clocks, big buying mistakes--let them go.

3)  If you do care about something, then use your newly-cleared-out space to use or display it.  On one episode, the Clean Sweep decorator framed some fabric and glued on treasured but hidden-in-a-box dried rosebuds.  As I recall, the decorators also found ways to display Scout memorabilia (after deciding that it WAS really important to the owner), and odd pieces of inherited furniture (ditto).  That doesn't mean that you have to turn EVERY dried flower into art, or that EVERY ex-Scout should have his/her badges on display (or should even keep them).  That's where individuality happens.

3b)  I don't know if this came up on Clean Sweep, but sometimes, especially with children, "treasures" that were once loved can be outgrown.  A good clue is if the dust on the model horses is now an inch thick.

4)  At least on Clean Sweep, a good carpenter seems to solve a thousand problems.  Once the clutter is out of the house, the re-do usually follows two different streams:  the decorator works with colour and the look of the whole thing, and the organizer usually gets the show's carpenter to build some kind of a wall unit in a family room or dining room, or a work island in a workshop, or a neat loft bed with storage.  Sometimes it's just shelves in a closet, or extending a too-small desk.  This is not to say that all storage problems need to be tackled with a router; only that sometimes the piles get piled because there is no good place to put things, even important things.  Backpacks get dumped if there are no pegs to hang them on. 

Again, even good shelving doesn't solve the problem if (as they say on the show) you're trying to cram twenty-four feet of books into twelve feet of space.  But it does look better than stuff every which way.

5)  The last thing I learned on the show, and on other similar programs:  that little bits of comfort are important.  Not having grown up in houses with huge bedrooms (and not living in one now either), the idea of having a "sitting area" in a master bedroom, or in the corner of some other room such as an office, is one idea that's not intuitive for me.  When I was growing up, we just sat on the couch.  But the de-cluttering and re-do shows do this all the time, and it's not that complicated: usually a chair, a light, a little table, a pillow or throw, maybe a bookshelf nearby or a basket of things to read or write in.  If space allows, maybe a coffee table and another chair for a friend.  Just like The Friendly Giant. (photos here)

Related posts:
What Can We Do? Crafting a Home (Chapter 5)
Treasured Possessions (Chapter 5)
Homemaking thoughts, Home-making blogs (Chapter 5)

Linked from Hidden Art of Homemaking linky for Chapter 5 at Ordo Amoris.  (Link Fixed!)

The Hidden Art of Homemaking, Week Three: Homebodies

This gorgeous sampler pillow was designed and stitched by Charlotte Lyons of HouseWrenStudio.  Can you see the word "homebodies" below the girls?  There's a good closeup here.  Notice what their dresses are made of?  I love it, especially because it kind of reminds me of my three Squirrelings.  (The screenprinted design can be ordered from her Etsy shop.)

(I don't get compensated for showing you this, I just liked it.)

Still life with tomato (The Hidden Art of Homemaking)

The Hidden Art of Homemaking, by Edith Schaeffer: weekly discussion at Ordo Amoris (link fixed!)
Chapter 1: The First Artist

"Not all of the physical beauty of the world is equally spoiled, or equally unspoiled.  But there are fragments of beauty to show the glory of the Creator, the Artist God." ~~Edith Schaeffer

"'Poet' literally means 'maker,' and the profoundly challenging thing about all this is that God is a Poet who writes poems about the inner truth of existence, and literally brings them to life, 'acts them out' in terms of everyday realities."  ~~Ruth Etchells, Unafraid to Be (IVP, 1969) 

God as artist, God as poet.  If we are God's workmanship...then we ourselves are His works of art, His poems, along with the rest of His creation.  And if we are created in His image, then we are also called to celebrate His art, His poetry, in our "everyday realities."  Ann Voskamp says that she began her list of a thousand gifts with some jelly and toast...and if that's where beauty begins, so be it.  We need to look for the fragments...or to create some of our own. 

"The zinnias stayed in the bucket on the counter for several days, the focus of small vignettes she built around them.  A crystal candlestick and a blue-and-white porcelain platter pushed into place beside the bucket demanded that even I give it a glance as I ran past to dart outside.  The next day a row of red tomatoes dotted the sill behind the bucket, crisply graphic trim interrupted by a small pottery bird that had been in the living room the day before.  Like flash cards, these small still-life arrangements were my early lessons about scale, composition, and balance."  ~~ Mothers and Daughters at Home, by Charlotte Lyons

What do we have in our homes that is really beautiful?--I don't mean possessions of great value, but something--as Charlotte Lyons says--that inspires with colour, line, balance?  Is there a still-life arrangement waiting to happen?  Do we need to clear off the books and sewing mess from the table first, or put some of the counter clutter in the cupboard to make room for beauty?  Let's do it.

Linked from Ordo Amoris: Hidden Art Bookclub Begins. (link fixed!) 

Book Review: Toss, Keep, Sell!

Toss, Keep, Sell!: The Suddenly Frugal Guide to Cleaning Out the Clutter and Cashing In, by Leah Ingram.  About $US10 on Amazon.com, in either paperback or Kindle format.  (I borrowed a copy from the library.)

Over the last two or three decades, I have read a lotta, lotta, lotta clutter and organizing books.  Some inspired me to get busy and do something; some were interesting, some were boring.  Some had good ideas, and a lot were the same old stuff.  Recently I've downloaded several free Kindle books about organizing, home management, and clutter, and most of them are the same old stuff.  One of them might grab you at the right moment and become your friend, but really there isn't much new to say about "toss what you don't need, organize the rest."

So I know I've found a keeper when a) I enjoy reading it and b) I actually get a couple of new ideas that c) work.  Someone named Books and Chocolate already reviewed Toss, Keep, Sell! on Amazon.com, and that's pretty much what they said, too.  There are a few ideas I couldn't exactly relate to, like making money reselling Tiffany and Prada stuff that you might have gathering dust (??), but overall I liked her ideas, particularly about re-purposing unused items in other rooms.  Of course we've done that lots of times, but reading the book sparked a couple of new ideas I hadn't thought of before.  Yesterday I did some cleaning out in our dining room--not where we eat all our meals, this is more of a space where we have holiday dinners and sew and do homework in between, so it gets messy.  I cleaned out the buffet, got rid of a couple of old tablecloths and a bunch of polyester napkins that we never use, and realized that I could use the built-in cutlery tray in the top drawer for our good cutlery.

Why I never thought of that, after living here for almost fifteen years, I don't know, but I had always kept the "good" set of cutlery (wedding gift) in a wooden box (wedding gift) on top of the china cabinet.  But the knife holder had broken loose inside the box, and half of the good cutlery had migrated into the everyday drawer in the kitchen anyway because we were short on spoons.  So...short end of the story...the good cutlery, what we don't need for every day, now lives in the buffet.  Which gave me a nice empty wooden box...which was twice the size of the small jewelery box I'd been stuffing my beads and earrings into for years.  So now I have a bigger jewelery box, and Dollygirl has my old box since she didn't have one at all.  Everybody wins, and the top of the china cabinet is suddenly clear too.

The format of the book is room-by-room, which is pretty typical.  But I think what it sets it above the norm are the personal examples and the sum-it-up charts, as well as the up-to-date suggestions such as using Craigslist and E-bay.

So...this is a new addition to my short list of favourite clutter/organization books.  (Others are It's Here...Somewhere, by Alice Fulton, and Don Aslett's For Packrats Only.)

That's one REALLY thrifty lady (Vintage e-book)

Project Gutenberg has a free book that all wanna-be thrifties should check out: Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit Among the "Pennsylvania Germans", by Edith Thomas, published in 1915. It's available in different formats for downloading or reading online; some of the formats don't have images, so you might want to go directly to the HTML version online if you want to see them.

The book isn't a novel, although it's written in story format. It's about a young woman's stay at a Bucks County farm, early in the last century. "Aunt Sarah" gives her niece lots of cooking and homemaking advice, which is interesting; but the part I found more instructive was Chapter VIII, "Uses of an Old-Fashioned Wardrobe," a lesson on recycling clothes, mostly for household uses. Allowing for the fact that Mary's clothes probably had more fabric in them than ours do, and also for the fact that they're all wool, linen and muslin etc., there are still things we can learn from this expert on "what's in your hand." Actually one of the moms in our girls' sewing group was just showing us a crocheted rag-rug-in-progress; some things don't change.

"Aunt Sarah," ecstatically exclaimed Mary, "you are a wizard to plan so many useful things from a trunk of apparently useless rags. What a treasure Uncle has in you. I was fretting about having so little to make my home attractive, but I feel quite elated at the thought of having a carpet and rugs already planned, besides the numerous other things evolved from your fertile brain."

Aunt Sarah loved a joke. She held up an old broadcloth cape. "Here is a fine patch for Ralph Jackson's breeches, should he ever become sedentary and need one."

Mary reddened and looked almost offended and was at a loss for a reply.

(I'm not so sure about the rag rugs with swastikas on them, but maybe that's just me.)