Let It Go

So here we go, January arrived several days ago now, and we have a project to complete. We've drawn up the plans for the closet, but the shelf brackets weren't available at any of the local hardware stores and won't be arriving until next week. But there's no time to delay!

If I am going to be serious about this commitment, every day counts! Add in the fact that we've already got 2 weekends pretty booked away (not successful yet with the "saying no" but these were commitments mostly made before the end of 2017). We've got 1 out of town weekend trip planned, and 5 other happenings scheduled for my precious Saturdays. I hope to take a lesson from January as for when to say No.

I had originally planned to declutter as I am putting things into the new closet, but with the bracket delay, I'm starting now. That will not only make for filling the closet faster, but I'll have a chance to give everything a second look once it starts going in.

I figured an easy place to start would be my socks. I know I haven't gone more than a corner into my sock bin in probably 2 years, and just buy new socks when my favorites seem to be very sparing. So I emptied the entire bin onto my bed to really evaluate. Not only did I find long lost mates (who would've thought!), I was really shocked.

While most of these are perfectly good socks, I am going to be honest with myself that I never wear the majority of these. I have my favorite go-to socks...so why not just keep those? I separated all my favorites, holiday socks, and weather-specific ones, and dumped the rest into a box. If I hadn't worn it in the last year, in the box it went. I tossed all my holiday socks in the holiday-decor closet, then opened each pair of socks to check for holes. Here's what made the cut this round:

41.5 pair dumped..... what's left is really more than I need, but as these get worn, I will throw them away until I eventually get to a reasonable number. They won't be lost in the bottom of the bin never to be worn, because these are all of my favorite socks!

After my sock drawer, my underwear drawer (I purged that last year, wish I'd been counting back then because HOLY COW!) and my husband's underwear drawer, we are at 54.5 items gone in our first day.

You can donate all used clothes (socks and underwear included) to be recycled into things like insulation! While part of me feels the squigs donating my used underwear, we are all human, all have them, and I am doing my smallest part to help the planet.
H&M: http://www.hm.com/us/inspiration/ladies/bring-it-on and https://about.hm.com/en/sustainability/get-involved/recycle-your-clothes.html
The North Face: https://www.thenorthface.com/about-us/responsibility/product/clothes-the-loop.html

New Year, New You

Hello 2018, it is nice to see you.

I have 2 resolutions this year, and (of course) every intention to stick to them.

1. (Mostly) complete 1 room of our home for each month of the year. We just moved in September, and our house is basically a blank canvas with a ton on the to-do list.
        To start, we will be doing our master bedroom closet. We asked our builders not to hang shelves so we could personalize the layout and maximize the space. We currently have little piles of clothes all over the place, and are borrowing a small closet from another room, so having this as our first room will clear up a lot of small areas throughout the house. The closet has stacks of boxes in it at the moment, so we will be starting from the ground up, and we are already a few days in to January so its time to get moving.

1a. In the process of completing a room from top to bottom, I want to declutter/minimalize/minimize the items in the room.
        Decluttering/minimalizing/minimizing (DMM from here on out) means something different for everyone. The purpose is to love what you have, and only have what you love. Purge everything else. By doing this 1 room at a time, perhaps I can reach the goal of 2,018 things by the end of 2018. I purged a lot when we moved, and again when we unpacked, but nothing serious, nothing committed. This time I am doing it with the intention of completing the task - to truly have only things I love left. Because here is where I am currently with most every area of my life:

It doesn't matter what I do, this spot, like many others, never stays clear, and it drives. me. crazy. Even when its clean, it still looks like a cluttered mess. 2018 is the year!

2. Make time to focus on myself. 
        This is partly in conjunction with my 1a. resolution. By being serious about my DMM project(s), I will be eliminating the clutter and noise in my life. But I also want to learn that its OK to say no. We do not have to attend every event, or celebration, or night out, or birthday party, or extra-curricular activity. We over-commit sometimes, finding ourselves with 3 scheduled things on 1 precious Saturday, and I find that leaves little time for things I truly want to be doing.

I want to challenge myself to be more like this woman:

I want to be the person that is bored on Saturday night so we play board games, or work a puzzle. I want to be have time to do things unplanned. I want to feel free to do things I want rather than out of obligation. This is the year.

Staticy Balls, Pun Intended

I swore I was going to blog more but I haven't felt like there was much blog-worthy the last few months.

There was poopgate 2016 where the dog liquid-diarreah'd on our living room rug so bad I didn't think it salvageable, so I decided to just get rid of it (the rug, not the dog). The trash wasn't coming for several days because it was the Thanksgiving break, so I rolled it up and put it in the garage, making sure the poop area was the innermost roll. Much to our surprise, someone picked up the rug from our trash, probably thinking they'd found a gem. I mean, I imagine they unrolled it a bit to check it out and decided it was worthy, and tossed it in their truck. Happy holidays to them.

There was also the embarrassment of being THOSE PEOPLE on our flight back from Chicago in December, where the baby cried nonstop until they turned off the seatbelt sign and we could walk with her. In her defense, we had been at the airport for hours, changed gates 6+ times (no kidding), gotten on one plane only to have to get off because of technical problems, had our flight delayed by several hours, and it was way past her bedtime. So glad I will never see any of those people again ever.

Anyway, we've been cloth diapering since the baby was about 2 months old, and one of the MORTAL SINS of cloth diapering is using dryer sheets. We put a clothesline out back around the same time we started, and I ordered some dryer balls just in case I needed to dry the diapers inside at some point. So, phase in the dryer balls, phase out the dryer sheets.

We use the line regularly - I usually wash and hang, and my husband brings them in and tosses them in the dryer. They always smell funny after drying outside, so a few minutes in the dryer with a dryer sheet and the smell is gone. But for the times its rainy or cold, I just dry the clothes inside with the dryer balls. Granted, I have noticed that the clothes still come out semi-staticy, but once I've separated the articles and folded them, I never notice static again. Not on my clothes, or towels, or anything, so I just keep on with the balls. So I wasn't even aware when we ran out of dryer sheets...

About a month ago, Vijay comes home from his grocery shopping trip and that night is like “Why didn’t you add dryer sheets to the list, we are out” and I said Oh, I didn’t even realize we are out, I haven’t used dryer sheets in months. He’s like "What?? You haven’t been using dryer sheets? At all?" I said no, we have the dryer balls so I never use them. He said "But some stuff is still staticy. We've discussed this." I said yeah but normally once I separate it, its not anymore, its just like the initial static. And he said “Please start using dryer sheets on my stuff” lol ok ok he’s not a fan of the dryer balls.

Last night he gets in bed and DEAD serious, says to me “Look I need you to start using dryer sheets, I cannot handle the static. Your dryer balls aren’t working anymore” I said ok I will. He continues “I know you have said your stuff isn’t staticy, but mine still is.” I said okay, I’ll use them for you! Its not that big a deal, I don’t mind. “My clothes are literally so staticy that toilet paper sticks to my leg when I use the bathroom” I busted out laughing, he did not think it was funny. “I’m serious! They may have worked for a while or something but they are not working anymore, please start using dryer sheets”. Could. Not. Stop. Laughing. The image of him trying to get to his butt but the paper sticking to his leg, hilarious! Aaahhh poor guy.

So I don't know if I bought the wrong brand or what, but the dryer balls may have to go. Sorry environment, I tried, but my husbands duty calls. You know what I mean.

With Old Age comes Blogging

I guess now that I'm 30 (tomorrow), and old, I may as well start blogging regularly. Plus I just had a baby so I'm sure she's going to be getting me into shenanigans worth blogging about. I mean, I already had the day I forgot to pack extra clothes and she had a massive blowout while I sat getting my hair cut, and I kept wondering what that awful smell was, so she had to run the rest of my errands with me while naked...her naked, not me. Obvi. Photos for reference.


There was also the early Halloween party where we (so cleverly, I thought) dressed her as a "deflated" football to match zombie Tom Brady and Giselle Bundchen in our epic deflategate costume...and everyone commented on what a cute boy we had. Photo for reference.












Or that time we took her to the children's hospital at a week old and I leaned over to fill out paperwork and farted, courtesy of my recently expelled baby. I don't think the receptionist heard, though - I'm pretty sure the shuffling of pen, paper, purse, etc masked it....who am I kidding, she totally heard. And if she wasn't quite sure she heard what she thought she did, my wide eyes probably gave me away. No photo for reference, you're welcome.

At any rate, I have gone on a crafting spree for the little babe, and she is now outfitted with a warm winter "wrong Indian" poncho, as both grandmothers have hilariously pointed out, for as you may or may not know, my husband is West Indian. Here is the poncho pattern. This is seriously, hands down, the easiest sewing project I've ever done, and I loved how she constantly says, basically, just wing it. I am not the best seamstress (that word is way to professional to apply to my skill level) sewer on the planet so this was nice...if you zoom in you'll actually see the crooked zigzag where I accidentally switched my stitch to the wrong size zigzag and it was drastically obvious. I have since covered it with a diamond piece of felt like the blogger suggests so it really didn't matter, but these pics were my test run so, errors in full view.


And naturally, like the perfect baby she is, she loves it. We took her out in it Wednesday night and at one point she started crying. I thought she might've been hot, so I took it off -- she immediately went silent. It couldn't have been from the poncho though, she was probably just making noise, so I put it back on. She started crying immediately so I took it back off and she went silent. That was really just a coincidence, though, so I put it back on. She started crying so I took it off. Who am I kidding, she completely and utterly hates it. I'm pretty sure its because she can't use her arms while she has it on, but its so adorable that I will make her love it.

It really is pretty cool though. Babies can't wear coats when they're in their carseat, and I've read mommy-blog complaints about how you have to take them OUT of their coat to put them in their carseat and then they lose all the warmth they had in their coat, and vice versa when you take them from their blanket/carseat warmth to put them into their coat. This fixes all of that. And the ducking fabric (in place of the suggested linen) I used has some weight to it so it really is pretty warm. I might have to make one for myself!
 

First World Probs

Are you familiar with first world problems? It's those little things in life that are so irritating, but it's things that are actually just luxuries in first world countries. For example, the dryer door at my boyfriend's house will NOT stay open, so every time I scoop a handful of laundry out of the washer, I have to kick open the dryer door with my knee. EVERY TIME. First world prob. Or the fact that my hand is too small to push both the Alt and L key on the keyboard to lock my computer at work before stepping out...I have to use two hands. UGH! TWO HANDS?! So annoying. Or how about the fact that its impossible to rinse a spoon in the kitchen sink without water spraying everywhere because of the shape of the spoon? Anybody?? 

Let's talk the latest first world problem seriously affecting my life these days. The silverware drawer. Why is it that no matter what I do, the silverware holder shifts toward the back of the drawer?!

Exhibit A:















I'm sure this happens to everyone.....RIGHT?!?!? What are we supposed to do? I mean, it probably happens so much to you that you don't even realize it. We are forever pulling the holder back to the front of the drawer. Every time I think "Maybe if I start closing the drawer slower" proceeded by a gentle shove to shut the drawer. Then before I know it, I'm opening it one day and it needs to be pulled to the front again. I could just leave it where it is -- not let it win -- but then i have to open the drawer completely just to get something out. And if I ignore it, I'll probably open the drawer one day and the silverware will be so far back in the drawer that I won't even be able to see it.
 It's ridiculously irritating. Is my holder not heavy enough? Should I forgo said holder altogether? Should I screw it to the bottom of the drawer?! Omg. FWP.