Collective Work

Lately I've been doing pretty well with getting most of my daily tasks done (things like dishes, laundry, making it to work on time, writing, showering, yoga, and keeping up with all the media I let into my life). This is an odd and precarious time for me, so I do everything I can to keep it going. I bribe myself with Nutella. I cook complicated meals that use up all my dishes, then clean the entire kitchen afterwards. I draw little pictures in my journal even though they are laughably crude. It's a generally happy time, marred only by the anxiety that it will end.

I think a number of other people are going through the same thing right now. New Year's Resolutions are fresh, the hustle of the holidays are done, and it's much more appealing to finish inside to-do tasks than deal with going outside to shovel the snow. The best part of me thinks that everyone being productive at the same time will boost our collective self-esteem and happiness, but the truth is that my Google reader has exploded with posts from usually less-than-regular writers. I would be more frustrated, but I know the out-pour will taper off as the months pass. This year I'm just hoping my writing will be part of the trickle that remains.

How to Get Your Life Together in Three Simple Steps

It seems that when things get really  tough, the item "get my life together" always makes it on my to-do list. I would venture that this is the  case for a lot of people. I always feel like if I had my life together, my library books wouldn't be late, my laundry would get done, and I wouldn't constantly be flaking out on my family and friends. "Get my life together" is a cure-all balm for every ail in my life, no matter what stage or situation I'm in. If I had my life together, all my problems would be easily manageable.

I know that this is mostly nonsense. No one really has their life together, but like the model with artfully tousled hair or the Ikea catalog where everything is perfectly lived-in and perfectly neat, I can't help but idealize and sigh.

Wishful thinking was only getting me so far though, so I started to look at the systems in my life that did work, like regular credit checks, DVD organization, and grocery shopping. I know the list is haphazard, but these are the things in my life that work like magic, with low investment of my time and high yields of enjoyment and/or functionality. After a few days of analysis, I've developed a simple three-step process to get your life together.

1. Figure out what you love.
2. Eliminate the junk.
3. Go forth and do.

That's it. That's how you get your life together. Before you start yelling at me though, remember that simple and easy are two different things. Easy requires little work, but unless it was set-up with care, easy things often have disposable results. Simple things require effort, but focused effort with purpose, effort that will yield clean, clear, satisfying results. Before you can easily prepare dinner from scratch, you need to do the simple work of de-cluttering, organizing, and stocking your kitchen. Just because something is simple does not mean it's easy, but when you're establishing a routine or behavior, simple preparation will make future execution wonderfully easy.

Let's look more closely at the three simple steps to getting your life together.


1. Figure out what you love.

If you don't know what it is you want to do with your time, why are you bothering to free it up? Do you want to be with family, leave your dent in the universe, or just be free to enjoy a nice drink and a good book on a lovely day? What are your priorities, and how do they fit with both your goals for yourself and the basic necessities of life?

Having a hard time figuring this out? Look at what you like to linger on. Is it a good meal? A relaxing soak in the tub? Your favorite movies? Time spent with friends? What makes your heart sing? What do you "waste" your time on, but don't regret doing?

For myself, I love to cook, knit, garden, read, watch movies and TV, explore the world, keep in touch with family and friends, and spend time with my husband and our dogs. I don't care much for changing my home's look with the seasons, dancing, sporting events, eating fussy hors d'oeurves, quilting, rock climbing, painting, or spending much time with cats. All of these are valid activities, and can be enjoyable, but some I like, and some I don't like. Most importantly, I know which is which.


2.Get rid of the junk.

Junk is anything that gets in the way of your life. It clutters your home and mind, and hinders you from doing what you love, so it must go. Junk includes actual stuff that you don't use or love, routines that take longer than necessary or accomplish more-than-adequate results, behaviors that stifle your enjoyment of things and activities, and relationships that bog down your day or emotions. It will take time to get rid of all the junk, but you'll feel lighter, happier, and more content with each weight you shed from your life. Best of all, when you start to get rid of junk, you'll learn to recognize it quickly, and so be better equipped to keep it from entering your life in the first place.

It's easy (or at least easier) to identify physical junk, but behavioral and emotional junk is a little harder to root out. Do you hate doing dishes? Loathe chatting with your co-workers? Reluctantly do your grocery shopping? Or maybe things that are useful become junk when they're out of place. Are you tripping over clothes on your floor? Always stubbing your toe on that end-table? Frustrated with that floor fan when you don't use it in the winter? Lastly, and most difficultly, maybe your junk comes in the form of important relationships. Do your parents demand too much of your time? How often do your kids come to you when they're bored or hungry? Are there friends in your address book that you don't enjoy seeing anymore?

Once you've found junk in your life, it's important to eliminate it effectively. Purging paperwork is only helpful when you establish a system to keep it under control in the future.  Picking your clothes up off the floor once won't solve the long-term problem. Perhaps you need to place your hamper differently, or designate a corner of your room for a dirty laundry pile. If cooking's not your thing, embrace that. Buy frozen vegetables, canned sauces, and easy-to-prepare pastas and rice. You need to eat, but you don't need to spend a lot of time throwing a healthy meal together. Come up with standard replies to decline things, events, and activities you'd rather not deal with. If I don't want to say "Hell yeah!" to something, I often say "I don't have room for that, but thank you", "I'd love to, but that's just not my thing", and "I'm sorry, I need to ________ right now, but maybe later". Don't worry about explaining yourself; it's your time and resources that are being requested, so it only matters to you why you don't want to spend them.

If your relationships are what cause you problems, you'll need to get rid of the junk more carefully. Getting your life together isn't a good excuse to be insensitive, and some relationships are unavoidable. Setting clear boundaries, not acknowledging petty or belittling comments, and having a firm start and end time for activities are some good techniques for dealing with family members and work superiors.  Finding a different, better-tempered person  helps for clerks, cashiers, and customer service (it also does wonders if you're polite as well). For some relationships, firmly cutting off all contact may be the best solution, though I recommend you try the previous techniques at first, however, I've had to resort to this method for some more extreme, damaging relationships, and though I wish the person all the best, I entirely believe my life is better without them.

Cutting the junk out of your life doesn't mean those things or activities aren't valid or valuable, and limiting time with people doesn't mean you care for them any less; getting rid of junk is about making room for what you love, so that when you do let something into your home or share your time with some one, you can give your best.

3. Go forth and do.

Once you've figured out what you love, and gotten rid of the junk that's in your way, go out and live your life. You keep your house clean so you can have friends over and let your children play without worry. You've prioritize relationships that matter so you can spend time with those people, even if it just means taking an afternoon to talk about nothing in particular. You've streamlined household chores so you can spend more time creating something you love and want to share with the world. While you may have to repeat the first two steps often ( I know I do), don't become bogged down with dreaming and maintenance; go out and enjoy your life. Getting your life together may be a singular item on your to-do list, but maintaining your life is an everyday affair. Once you've invested in the simple work, take advantage of the easy routines to actually live a life you love.

Lazy Wedding Planning

My sister (very thoughtfully) gave me a wedding planning book for my birthday, as I'm engaged, but the very thoughtful gift is making me think way too much, and now I'm starting to go a bit wedding-crazy. Not in a bridezilla way, but just in an overwhelmed, frustrated kind of way.

So to distract from the frustration, and the fact that my brain is too tired to write a funny post here, I present the weekly wrap-up:

Things I Wrote:
A review of different reusable egg carton options. There are actually a lot more of these than I thought there'd be, but they're kind of hard to find.

Things I Thought Were Great:
A Teavana store opened in my area. I'm in morning cuppa heaven.

Things I Did:
I made my own homemade lotion. The recipe still needs a little tweaking in my opinion, but the resulting lotion bar was perfectly usable in the meantime.

I took this fun picture of the in-laws' dog:

He wants to steal the raw-hide that's right in front of his face (despite appearances, that's not a dildo), but he knows he's being watched. I love watching little doggie brains try to work around problems.

Letting Go

I used to be a pack-rat, and in a horrible way. I would save programs that had my name on them, not because the event was special, but just because the piece of paper had my name on it. When I moved out on my own for real (to an apartment, not just a college dorm), I decided that I wanted to have all my stuff in my house with me. Then I realized how much stuff I had, and spent a month getting rid of a lot of it.

This first round of simplifying and decluttering was easy; there were tons of books I didn't particularly like, clothes I didn't wear or attach sentimental value to, and slips of paper with my name on them that I could get rid of with ease. I got rid of a third of my stuff with no guilt at all, and moved the rest over to my tiny apartment.

Over the next few years I was able to slowly go through a box at a time and downsize my collections. I religiously read unclutterer.com to keep myself motivated and inspired. Occasionally if I had fond memories of something but didn't need it in physical form I would take a picture of it. My Scottie dog sweater from second grade makes me smile, but I get just as much happiness from looking at a picture of it as I do from holding it, so I donated the sweater and kept the picture, which takes up no space at all on my hard drive. This picture taking habit served as a useful crutch, and I was steadily making my way towards a streamlined household that only contained things I loved, used, and could store and care for in a respectful manner.

Then I got evicted. It happened with little warning, when I had no safety net, and for reasons that had very little to do with my qualities as a tenant. My apartment was the first real home I had made for myself, and losing it hurt. A lot. Worse, compounding my problem of having no money, no place to live, and very little time to solve both of these problems, was the fact that I still had boxes of stuff left to evaluate.

With everything happening at once I got rid of stuff. A lot of stuff. I opened all the boxes before I donated them, but that was about it. I panicked, and made a bad situation worse by getting rid of stuff that I used and loved. Moving from a hundred and fifty square feet of apartment to fifty square feet of storage unit and whatever could fit in my car made me freak out and get rid of clothes, books, and project materials that I wasn't really ready to part with.

In an effort to clear out my life's problems, I made a list of everything I needed to live. A tiny wardrobe, a few cooking necessities, and the barest bones of hobby material. Artwork, fun-but-impractical clothing, childhood treasures; none of these things made the list, and so a lot of them got donated. My bright orange coat that made me look like a pumpkin when I wore it was donated, despite the fact that I loved wearing it, and was even designing a leaf hat to enhance the pumpkin look. A juicer that I didn't use on a daily basis was listed on freecycle, even though I was steadily increasing my juicing efforts. A typing table that was tiny but faithfully useful was given away, even though it left me with no place to write.

After the purge, when I had finally settled with my fiance at his parents' house, I started to feel guilty and remorseful. Yes, I got rid of some stuff that I would have gotten rid of anyway, and the fact that I managed to take time to donate or recycle everything brought me some comfort, but the fact of the matter was I'd gotten rid of too much too fast. My anxiety and depression turn this into a worse problem than it actually is, but the crappy situation of losing things that were useful and loved remains.

And here is where this post falls apart, because here is where I am right now. I have a lot less stuff, but now the worry of not having it is replacing the worry of having it. I'm slowly beginning to realize that it was never about the stuff in the first place. I'm worrying because I still really don't have a home, years of work to improve my life was blown to hell in less than a month, and things that enhanced and improved my life are now gone. I can (and do) replace some of the best things on e-bay (let's just say I'm knitting myself a green leaf hat for winter), and the rest I'm starting to realize wasn't that important to begin with. Sure, my Chi hair straightener will cost a lot to replace, but the likely-hood that I'll ever need to do that is small, since I wear my hair short now. And in the case of sentimental objects, I try to remember that releasing them back into the universe to give others joy is a lot better than losing them in a natural disaster, or even than letting them molder away quietly in a box sealed for safekeeping.

If I could do it all over again, I'd definitely do things differently, but I'm living well now with what I have, I'm doing well replacing gnawing guilt with simple regret, and I'm learning to love myself regardless of what I own or what bad decisions I've made. Plus, I'll always have pictures of my favorite dinosaur friends.