declutterbug

I was at lunch with a friend last week and she asked me what I'd been writing lately, and did I have any recent publications? Rather sheepishly, I told her that I'd been investing most of my creative energy into writing for blogs. And I haven't had much left over time for writing stories, poetry, or academic articles.

After chatting with her I started wondering about the amount of time I've been spending on the blogs. I mean, I love my blogging community--I've found great friends through this medium--but I'm wondering if I don't need to better balance my blogging efforts with 'real' writing?

So how do you all strike a balance in your lives? Are you so addicted to blogging that nothing else gets done? Or do you discipline yourself in such a way that you can do both?
[Note: I am 'recycling' this post from another blog, as part of my ongoing effort to "save time" :)]

my sweet old kitty, miss tiger lily, is pretty frail and not so interested in eating for the past few days. she lives over at my ex's house and so after getting a "come see tl" e-mail from ki, i went over to hang with my sweet old girl. she seemed happy to see me. how i love that kitty! (i wrote more about this over at my worldwidewen blog. )

as an added bonus, t. came with me and helped me move the video/cd/dvd cabinet to the living room at the place i'm living now. we had to scrunch it in next to my housemates' old tv cart, as they bought a new one and merely relocated the old one. my housemate had said it was fine for me to bring the cabinet over, so that's a good thing. i will be able to get at least 50% of the videos off my floor now. yay! i have a box of cds to deal with as well, but all in good time. i'm wondering if i should go to the store and get another storage box for the extra videos. the only thing is that i don't really have a place to put it.

so, there is motion on the organizing front! woo hoo.

i'll be out of town this weekend, though, so anything i do must be tongiht. tomorrow, my day goes from 6ish AM until 10 PM straight through. i'll probably be able to grab quick food between my practice and the class i teach, but that's about it for breaks. whew.

good luck to all you declutterbugs this week!

i ran a bath but the water is too hot. i was already online and so i thought i'd post while i am waiting for it to cool down a bit.

my room is cluttered. a row of boxes and bags with filing and dance videos live on my floor. i'm sure ther are some other things in there as well, but that's the bulk of it. they are backed up against the TV/bookshelf to allow me a 3ish foot gap between them and my bed so i can get through. the "grouping" of boxes and bags is about 3-4 feet wide by maybe 6-7 feet long and 2-4 feet high. in a 10x12 room, that doesn't leave a lot of space.

how did it get here?

well, i'm supposed to tape the vhs dance tapes for my ex. and due to her roommate's issues they needed to be out of her house. but the vhs/cd/dvd cabinet is still over there and i can't move it myself. i can't put them in the storage unit (5x5) even if there was room because i need them to tape and i also watch them regularly as i use them to prep for the dance classes i teach.

and the filing. the filing cabinet is still over at ki's, too. i cleared room for it but, like the dvd cabinet, i can't move it myself (too heavy and stairs are involved). yes, it's all the stairs' fault! bad stairs!

seriously, though, it's stressful to be in my room. there's no place to put the excess. this makes it hard to clean, too. it's almost impossible to get into the armoire where i keep my socks and pants and sweaters.


i also suffer from a lack of flat spaces. everything is maxed out; if it's a shelf or the top of a piece of furniture, it has books or my hamster cage or whatever. there's no open space. i don't like this, but i've looked through my "decorative" possessions, and there really aren't many. i have don't have tables of items displayed. i have a few photos (3 to be exact), three votive candles and a small bowl of crystal/stones. that's pretty much the extent of my knick knacks. oh, i do have a menorah and a railroad tie backpacker thing my mom got me (and which sits on otherwise unusable space on the TV). other than that, flat surfaces are all used by something utilitarian. hamster food. boom box. lamp. and so on.

i find myself laying out my clothes for the next day on top of the boxes, so they remain flat and relatively unwrinkled.

what to do?

first order of business would seem to be: be home more.

but i wonder if my being home would mean i actually decluttered, or if i'd just feel horribly trapped and not sure what to do next. probably a little of both.

being home is pretty much a pipe dream anyway at this point. i have something every single night from now until who knows when.

to give you an idea: tonight, i was supposed to have dance practice with my foxtrot partner. but i had something i needed to do for work (the boss set up an after-hours activity). not one, but two activities. after work.

the fact that i'm home right now is an anomaly; i typically work 7am to 4 or 5 or even later pm (i am technically off at 3 pm) and then i have either dance, or teaching, or a meeting of some kind.

for financial reasons, i am adding tutoring into the mix. i'll be doing sat prep and college admissions essays with some elite sf students. it will be good work, and it pays well, but it's in sf, which is an hour and 30 to two hours away, depending on the traffic. so i'll have a 3-4 hour extra commute (round trip) 1-2 times a week.

got busy?

yes, yes, i do have some extra busy if you'd like some.

Ok, I'm actually not a very sentimental person, but there are a few soft spots in my life, and one of those involves the gifts that I received from well-wishers during my cancer treatments about 20 years ago. I received dolls, teddy bears, a handmade quilt, etc. I've been in remission forever now, but it's been awfully hard to part with many of these items, even though I am not a doll & teddy bear type of person. Well, I finally got around to decluttering my dolls and I had a pretty remarkable experience. I wrote it up for flylady and she sent it out to her mailing list as a testimonial. Thought it might be of interest to readers of this blog, too. [Note: I have a huge amount of respect for flylady, even if I don't consider myself part of her purple-puddling target audience]:

Dear Flylady:

When I was young my grandma gave me a Madame Alexander doll each year for Christmas and my birthday. I had a lovely cupboard in my room with glass doors where I displayed my dolls. I thought they were so beautiful. Then, when I was 12 I was diagnosed with bone cancer. During the year that I had chemotherapy I received many more dolls from relatives and well-wishers. My cupboard was so full! When I looked at it I felt the love of all the people who had cared for me during my cancer treatments.

As I moved through the years I saved these dolls thinking that I would have a daughter who would love them as much as I had. Well, now I have a 9 year-old daughter who doesn't like dolls! She really wanted the glass-fronted cupboard in her room to store her favorite stuffed animals, trophies and such. So one day I sat with the dolls all around me. I looked at their little shoes, patted their curls, ran my fingers over the lace at the edge of their frilly little dresses--just as I had many, many times over the years. It was my good-bye. I knew I didn't need to save them for my daughter and they needed a new home.

Though these dolls have some collector value, I didn't want to sell them on ebay. I wanted to find a girl who would love them just as I had. I posted a note on my local freecycle group to see if I could find someone that would be a good new owner for these dolls. I had _dozens_ of replies. But one caught my eye. One mother had told me that her daughter would really like some pretty dolls. This mother included a link to her family's homepage in her email message. I clicked on the link and discovered that her daughter was in the middle of cancer treatment. As I read about her story I knew that this was the young girl who would most appreciate my dolls. I contacted her mother and we arranged a pick-up date.

When they arrived I took a few minutes to tell the young girl about my cancer experience. I told her some of the stories about my dolls. She picked her favorite one out of the box and carried it in her arms as they left my home and headed to their car. Wow, was I happy!! Much happier than I ever would have been if I had packed the dolls into a box in the closet. And now I have this absolutely perfect memory to keep in place of the dolls. :)

A while ago I was on several decluttering e-mail lists. Then, well, life happened and I went no-mail because the volume was so high. Then in an effort to declutter my electronic life, I let those groups go. Now, I think it's time for some renewed community and support (both getting and giving) so I signed back up for some of them (including a couple I hadn't known about back when I first found the declutter subculture).

We'll see how things go!

Are you a member of any lists?

Here's a good article on mental clutter!

Enjoy

A warm welcome to another declutterbug blogger, Jana!

Welcome, Jana!

:)

I thought this post was well-written and insightful. Enjoy!

Reincarnation