If you have any great tips on how to ‘thin out’ and get rid of things you don’t need, please share!! It’s on my heart to start getting rid of things, but I don’t know where to start. Some of it I think I’m ready to get rid of, then I’ll re-think it and stow it again for another day. Sometimes it’s for sentimental reasons, sometimes its because I might need it later, sometimes it’s because I might know someone who could use it. Whatever the reason, it seems like a good one at the moment, so I don’t get rid of anything and I’m bursting at the seams! I don’t want to keep all this junk! I’ve lived in this house for almost 16 years, and it’s jam packed!

It’s always been hard for me to determine what should stay and what should go. I suppose I am a partially recovered pack rat. You can never recover completely, I don’t think. That might not be altogether a bad thing though, because it helps me spot needful things that others tend to overlook. For example, my husband has been wanting an anvil for as long as I’ve known him. They are pretty pricey items, so they were way down the list of things to purchase. Well, guess what? I just got a couple of anvils at a yard sale really cheap. Smokin’ deal. Anvils are hard to come by, especially out here where we live. These were old, rusting, and junky, and would have gone unnoticed, or maybe to the junk yard if I hadn’t gotten them. They cleaned up fine. We saved a bundle of money.

That’s just one recent example. I do that frequently with everything; furnishings, tools, clothing, appliances. So, see? I’m good at finding things, but, unfortunately I don’t jar loose with them as easily. I guess I just don’t know what I actually need.

Here’s my dilemma; Let’s use the anvils as an example again. My husband is not using the anvils right now, but he will eventually. He has always wanted one and I have been looking for one for many years. Tthey were very difficult to find, and I probably won’t get another deal like that, so keeping them is justifiable. Right? Right! So many of my things fit into that kind of a scenario. What do I do?

I have been thinking along these lines:

Pitch it:

~if haven’t used it in 6 months (many say 6 weeks but I CAN’T!! lol …yet)

~if have too many of any one item

~if it costs me more to store it than to replace it (yes, I have done that)

~if it will probably need replacing soon anyway

~if I can, use my ‘good’ stuff now (stuff that I already packed for moving and safekeeping) and pitch the stuff I’ve been using in it’s place.

(By “pitch” I mean give it to a friend or freecycle it, or maybe take it to Goodwill. I tend to do that with everything I get rid of unless it’s beyond re-using.)

Please feel free to chime in on this. Any idea is welcome. I need help! I have had a few minimalist folks try to tell me how to do it, and I understand mentally what they’re saying, but they are suggesting that I cut back so radically that I can’t really get my brain around it. Baby steps! Baby steps. Man, I sound like an addict.

My washing machine went out. Reaching into the tub full of water, I pulled out a load of heavy, soggy jeans and went tripping down the street to my neighbors’s house to spin out the water in his machine so I could bring them back home and dry them. And it was my first dirty load. I have about a zillion more to do. Now what?

Talk about ham strung! It says two very important and very different things to me. Number one, when you have a routine, a schedule, losing valued equipment is a bad thing. This is a monumental setback in the life of a stay at home mom, homeschooler, home maker, and the chief cook and bottle washer. I’m not the hard to please type. If I need a hammer and can’t find one, a shoe heel will do. A butter knife, maybe even a fingernail makes a good screwdriver in a pinch. But what can you use instead of a washing machine in a modern home? I went through a moment of panic, followed by some unknown sort of nebulous sadness, followed by a ferocious need to overcome this setback. Conquer at any cost! Never give up! Never surrender!

No, I didn’t conquer anything… yet. I will though. Meantime the laundry is piling up.

The second lesson: we as modern Americans are practically incapable of making it when something like this happens. We are so far out of touch with what it takes to get by that we don’t think we CAN make it without all of the modern conveniences. The truth is, we are ill prepared. We can’t go anyplace if our car breaks down. We can’t pay our bills if the internet connection fails. Perish the thought that we would lose our public water services for any extended time. After chaos and looting and weeping and gnashing of teeth, we’d probably all die of thirst!

What does this mean to me? Plenty! However, I have promised myself that I’d blog three or four times a week, and I can see this being a subject of a blog of it’s own, so I’m going to make this a cliff hanger. To my many ‘ones’ of fans, stay tuned.

To be continued….

It looks like my thirty day challenge sort of went by the wayside. I just wasn’t around much over the Thanksgiving holiday, and I wasn’t on the computer much when I was. I think I’ll modify my original challenge, and rather than a post every day for thirty days, I’ll use Roaming Chile’s suggestion and make it three or four times a week instead for say, ten weeks, and see how that goes. That will help me out a lot on the days where I have extra meetings, or if I am studying, or preaching or something, and can’t squeeze everything in.

It would be silly to add stress to my life right now. It would be silly to add stress to my life at all, especially something self-inflicted, and as totally avoidable as this. I am already having a bit of a hard time managing things some days, why would I add something more? It would make me dread blogging. That would be absolutely counter productive. I want to blog for fun as much as anything, and it wasn’t feeling like fun to me anymore. So allow me to back up and take a deep breath and start over.

3… 2… 1…

On that note, I would like to say that Thanksgiving 2009 was wonderful! My husband had a few extra days off and we spent Thanksgiving day with the family out at the ‘big house’. We had food, food, and more food! It was a long, leisurely, lazy, and refreshing time, almost like a vacation for us. My mother in law, Judy, had the house fixed up so nice and pretty with fall colors and lights and candles that I just wanted to stay on and on. Everything was peaceful and calm. It seems like there’s precious little of that in our day to day life, and I absorbed every wisp of it that I could while we were there. We talked for hours and had a great time. Even the kids enjoyed it without an x-box, and without arguing. That says a lot!

Judy still had leftovers from Thanksgiving, so she called and asked us to come back out for supper on Saturday. This was the second visit we got to have out there with the family this holiday. I almost said no, because I didn’t want to put her to the trouble, but you know, she really liked having us, and I really wanted to go. So, go we did, and I’m glad. Once again we had a wonderful visit. Their house is so cozy and with the weather finally turning cool, and the leaves having fallen, it seemed like just the place to be. It seems like winter has been a long time coming this year. Maybe not, but I was ready for it. I love the cooler months.

My father in law, Jerry, built a fire outside in the fire pit on his front porch to just take the chill off a little. His fire pit looks sort of like the one I found a picture of and posted here. It’s pretty. I really liked it. It kept us all mesmerized. Once the flames would die back a bit, we could still watch the fire through the cut-outs in the sides. We sat and stared into it, and out across the valley for a long time, hours probably, until the wind started to blow too cold to enjoy it any longer. We actually got a rare, and pretty decent cloud burst later on into the evening. I can’t resist rain any better than I can fire, so I went back outside. Next thing you know I had another log or two in the fire and my husband came back out to sit with me and stare into it with me some more. Before we were done, grampa was back, too. We probably shouldn’t have stayed out so long. Grampa told us later that it was way up into the night before his legs ever warmed back up.

Granny, who might have used her smarts a little more than the rest of us, stayed in with the coffee. When we all went back inside, we found she’d saved us a cup or two, and we sat and talked and laughed together. We’ve really had a good time going out there lately and hesitate to leave when the time comes. If you’re reading this, granny and grampa, thanks a bunch! We love you both.

“Oh Lord that lends me life, Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!” ~ William Shakespeare

So, Thanksgiving has passed for 2009, and we’re heading into what is going to be a very different Christmas season for us. I will attempt to post throughout the season about the things we’re doing and not doing this year. Change comes hard for me during a time of such traditions. I’m sure it will be good… different, but good. Maybe this is where some new traditions will begin. Through it all I want the focus to be on Jesus. I want to be mindful of His presence, and to be a light for Him in a place and time where most would forget Him.

“As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” ~ Joshua 24:15

Be blessed this Christmas season. Be a blessing.

Good night. See you soon.

Committing to blog every day is a decent idea, and a noble attempt at, um… something. I forget what it was. Something to do with practicing writing. That would be fine if there was anything noteworthy to write about, I guess. I’m going to have to be more active and interesting for the next month just so I can have something to write about every day. It might help if I remembered to get in here and write before midnight.

My day today? I did my laundry and tidied up a bit. I’d post a recipe of my dinner for the day, but it was oven pizza. I’d like to say please stay tuned, things will be more exciting tomorrow, but all I’m doing is a staff meeting and one last quick trip to the grocery store before Thanksgiving.

Hmmm… Four days in and I’m beginning to realize what a dull writer I am. I guess I should take the craft more seriously. Feel the moment. Be the laundry.

Peering through the dusty beams of sunlight streaming in through the back door glass, I considered the neatly folded, brightly colored piles of freshly laundered clothing standing side by side along the edge of the table, like a row of indian corn. Na, laundry is laundry.

I’m going to bed.

Today was a nice day. I got to hear two really great sermons this morning. Nothing unusual about that at my church, though. We are really blessed. I tell you, my pastors are the greatest! I feel like everyone else is just plain missing out, especially the local folks who don’t attend my church and could. They just don’t know what they’re missing. kingmanfoursquare.com , people. It’s available. Nothing is quite like being there, but take it where you can get it!

We had my husband’s folks in for lunch. We’ve been spending more time together since they moved up here, and it’s been really great, I think. It seems like we’re making up for lost time. We’re going to be joining them for Thanksgiving out at their house this year, too. For most of our married life we’ve lived away from family and spent a lot of our holidays with just us, no extended family, so this is really exciting. I’m planning on a long, lazy day and an evening of leftoverture and maybe a movie.

Then this evening, back to church. I preached tonight. I’m not real pleased with the way it went this time, actually. It felt a little disjointed, but I think I pulled it together in the end. I think I tend to over prepare, that’s what my husband tells me, and that makes it difficult to connect all the points. I’m working on that, but it’s tough. I almost always try to cram too much into one message. My son liked it, though. That was encouraging. I’d like to just ask my pastors out right, but I don’t want to look like I’m fishing for compliments, or seem insecure. Actually, I just want them to tell me where it needs work. If I’m going to learn someone has to correct me.

Now, we’re home, and I’m just about pooped out. I think I’ll hit the hay early tonight. Tomorrow starts a new week and I’d like to get a fresh start, a better start than I had to the last one.

I almost forgot I was blogging again! I make a fresh commitment, and almost blow it within the first twenty four hours. It sort of fits into everything else I’ve done in the past few days.

I have forgotten a lot of things. It seems like about half of what I’ve started this week I left unfinished. I’d be doing something, get sidetracked and start something else, and totally forget to come back and finish what I was doing initially. I’ve been busy all week, but I can’t really pin point any one thing I’ve done.

I forgot to wish an old friend a happy birthday. Perhaps I shouldn’t say ‘old’ and ‘birthday’ to my friend all in one sentence, especially since we’re the same age. After many years, I re-established contact with her on Facebook. Facebook actually is good for something, it would seem. She is a dear friend from high school and I knew her birthday was coming up soon. I’ve thought of her every year on her birthday for over thirty years, and I was determined to wish her a happy one now that I could! Slick forgot.

I forgot to turn the fire off under my iron pan and smoked the house up. I forgot to pay two bills. I forgot to take some ingredients for a holiday dinner to the church where I was preparing it. I forgot and actually left the water running in the kitchen for about five minutes. I forgot where I laid nearly everything I picked up. I forgot to record a TV show I like. i forgot my sunglasses… on my head. I forgot to buy coffee. COFFEE!!! I don’t forget coffee!

So this is the week I committed to post a blog a day. Maybe the fact that I actually remembered before the day was out means that I’ve broken the forgetful streak and can move on. New commitments require some discipline, and retraining your mind is a part of it. It could be the hardest part, I think. I’m good at follow through once my mind is made up, though, so onward with the training.

I have a very dear friend who is constantly challenging herself. She knows she is capable of more than she is doing, so she is constantly expanding her horizons and doing new things. She really is an inspiration to me, because when I look at her and her attitude, her lifestyle, all of a sudden I know I really don’t have any excuses for procrastinating. She’s a wife and a mother of a whole passel of young ‘uns, a housekeeper, gardener, teacher, singer/songwriter, blogger, drummer, chief cook and bottle washer, with her fingers in a few other pies, and does all that and then some while contending with several severe health issues.

In the light of all of that, how can I look at my life and make excuses for not following through on little things that she and I have talked about because I’ve had a long day, or I’m in a bad mood or some such thing. I can’t. I’ve tried. I have ignored her for weeks on end sometimes, but she’s just so darn pushy, and level headed and inspiring like that! I need that kind of inspiration sometimes when life is too busy, or boring, or disorganized.

One of those things we frequently talk about is blogging. Not a big thing. I was trying to develop a habit of blogging, just to practice and hopefully improve at writing. It’s not as though anyone is sitting on the edge of their seat awaiting my next post, or like my life is so exciting that I need to record it for future generations, at least not at this point, but it was something that I enjoyed doing. You never know, maybe something I write will benefit someone down the road, even if it’s only me.

But, I have gotten so lazy about blogging. I had to adjust my schedule some time back, and I just lost my rhythm, I guess. I never got back into it or made a place for it in my life like I intended to. It’s an easy thing to fall away from something and make excuses to put it off a little longer. So she challenged me to start again. Of course she took up that challenge herself, and decided to post one blog every day for thirty days. Well, I’m going to take up your challenge, Loretta. One entry every day for thirty days. I don’t feel ready for this, but I probably wont until I get started, so I am just going to jump in. No rhyme or reason, no theme or flow in the works, just daily entries. I may bore my friends to pieces, but I’m just going to do it anyway.

Someone asked a question in an email group I’m a part of that really made me laugh. The question was, “When did you decide to ‘go green’ ?” Everyone was responding with wistful musings about the day they’d seen the light, and the small beginnings they had before learning about all the ways it can be done. I’m not poking fun at them, and any effort made is a good thing, isn’t it? It’s the temperature of our world, the current of our society that prompted the question. Has the modern generation missed out, or what!? It’s stunning.

I never decided to ‘go green’! It’s not a new concept, just a ’90’s era word, a new gimmick or catch phrase for politicians and mass marketeers. The hippies didn’t invent it in the ’70’s either. LOL! I believe ‘conservationist’ was the phrase that caught on in the ’50’s and ’60’s. Prior to that it was just called ’stewardship’. It’s been a way of life for me all of my life. Recycled things were called ‘leftovers’, which were never wasted. Some were called ‘hand me downs’, or ’second hand’. Excessive living was called ‘wasteful’, or even frivolous, and finding more efficient ways of doing things was just plain smart, or frugal at the very least. Saving energy, or finding renewable resources was what we all did just to save a little money, or to use up something that would otherwise have been wasted leftovers. We were basically living healthier as it’s being defined by the ‘green’ movement of today, because we didn’t add everything that science and big corporations tried to sell to us to our homes or our gardens.

No, it’s not a new idea. It’s just a popular idea in this generation because they are the first generation to have everything in their lives mass produced, packaged and sold to them all neat and clean, never really connecting them to the real things in life. I’m glad to see it happening! It’s just kind of nauseating the way it’s presented as sort of ‘elitist’, a counter-cultural political party, or a radical, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it thing. It’s just basic stuff, isn’t it? It’s a result of a not-so-gradual evolution away from the way the Earth and nature were designed to work, by a world that has suddenly found that mass production and mass distribution to mass markets may not be the answer to all the ills of society that they all thought it was going to be. The fact that they are so far out of touch with real life and living doesn’t mean that everyone is, and I hate to break it to them, but I can be deeply involved in the ‘green’ thing, and still be a conservative, a Christian and someone who believes in creation, as well as intelligent, without their political affiliations and without having some great spiritual revelation.

I’m not saying they are all that way, but they are widely viewed as such, portrayed that way by the media, and in my experience they are generally proud of that association. Pride in one’s life choices is wonderful! I am happy for them, honestly. Now they need to allow the rest of us to live by our convictions as well, even though they are different.

That’s not all I have to say about that, but I have to leave shortly, and I’m out of time.

Thank you Loretta and Gus (Jessica) for motivating me to blog again. It’s been 5 months! Wow!

What a time I’ve had trying to get in and blog!  A few times this week I thought I would come in and sit down to my computer, but something would come up.  Tonight it would appear I have a few minutes.  Unfortunately now my mind is sort of blank!  What was I thinking I’d like to write about?

How about gardening to start?  My garden is not much as gardens go, but I decided to throw a few edibles in with my flowers this year.  It’s the only soil in my yard that has been worked enough to support life, so I poked a few bell pepper plants, some stevia, a tomato and some cilantro in among the ivy and the flowers.  If all goes according to plan I might plant a few more things.  I had every intention of preparing a decent sized area out in the back yard so I could plant more, but I didn’t get it done.  The dirt back there is so poor weeds will barely grow.  It will take quite a bit of work and I just didn’t get to any of it in time.

My husband is getting ready to build a patio just outside my back door, and I’m probably going to grow some things in pots out on it.  The problem is that the temperatures are going to be really getting up there soon, and out here very little grows well when the real heat comes.  Folks around here say that tomatoes do better in containers than they do in the ground during the heat because you can move them around and out of the worst of the heat when you need to, so here’s what I’m thinking.  If I plant a few more tomatoes, maybe some beans and squash in some pots out on the patio about late July or early August they will be easy to move around and protect from the sun while they are small, and by the time they get bigger the weather will cool off a bit and they might do well enough, if there are enough hours of sun left in the day, to actually produce a late season harvest.  It’s worth trying.  Everything else I have tried met with pretty sad results.  Something has to work.  I’ve seen other people around here grow things. It can be done.  I want to have something to show for this growing season.

My neighbor across the street invested a small fortune in his “garden” area.  It’s more of a modified green house.  He made an enclosure covered with shade cloth and installed an overhead misting system and drip irrigation, and brought in load after load of mulch and potting soil and bedding mix and what have you.  He has reasonable success now, but for crying out loud he aught to!  For all that I’d expect State Fair Blue Ribbon quality produce!  For all that I could have probably paid someone else to grow it for me!  LOL!  I poke fun, but I’d probably build myself something like it if I could.  I just like to grow things.

I think growing things in pots on the patio will look nice.  We’ve been in this house for fifteen years and never used the back yard because it is just a dusty, unattractive old dirt lot.  Having a patio will be a great plus, but something green out on it would really help.  We are probably going to put in some grass.  I’ve always wanted grass back there.  We tried several times to get some growing, but we just didn’t have any luck.  There are  seeds, fertilizers and things on the market now that make it where you can practically grow grass on a flat rock I think, so we’ll give it another go.  A few nice pots, grass, maybe a flower bed and we might actually enjoy our back yard!

We’re going to build a shed out back, too.  I’m really excited about that!  That means I can empty my storage unit and bring my stuff home!  When we put the house on the market a couple of years back I took everything I didn’t really need and any extra clutter and packed it to move and hauled it off to storage.  The realtors all say it makes the house show better, so I really emptied it out.  I figured I could live without it until the place sold and we moved, no problem.  Well, then the economy did it’s thing, the housing market did it’s thing, blah, blah, blah… and now just over two years later… here we still sit and I miss my stuff!

It’s going to be like Christmas for me going through it all!  I packed my favorite things first so they’d be well packed and safe.  I bought a few new things just before we started packing and they went.  We packed most of our books, our wall hangings and lots of personal things.  I put keepsakes away, bedding, the boys even packed away some toys!  They probably out grew them by now.  That makes me feel terrible.  They would ask about things and I’d go rummage around and find them and dig them out for the most part, but I’m sure they still have things in there.

It will be a challenge to see if I can get everything back in the house or not.  We were crowded when we started.  That’s part of the reason we needed to get some of the stuff out before we showed it.  Over time I bought duplicates of some of the things I’d stored thinking I wouldn’t need them, but it turned out that I did.  I stored my winter clothes thinking we’d surely be moved before I would need them again.  I have all new school supplies, art stuff, blankets, some dishes and pans.  Pans!  Oh yeah!  I have a huge box of iron pans in storage!  I love my ironware.  It’s almost all I use.  I’ve acquired a cabinet full of iron since I packed my other away.  I’m going to have to build a special place just for my iron I think!  Something very sturdy!

My china and my flatware, my bread machine and my juicer, no telling what else is in storage over there.  I have forgotten what all I had.  Stuff.  Just stuff.  But it’s my stuff and I want it back.  It’s likely going to be quite a job unpacking it but I’m tired of life being on hold “in case we move.”  I’m bringing it home.  When we re-list our house to sell later on I’ll deal with it, but for now I want to live in my house again amidst all of our familiar, cozy stuff (albeit crammed in like pickles in a jar)!

I’m rambling.  I think head for bed and read a while.

I think a repost is in order… Sheesh.

What Can I Say

Funny how a bunch of liberal groups, greenies, so called “Earth Friendly” folks have cabbaged onto some “lifestyle” ideas about recycling, preservation, frugality, and general environmental consciousness as though they were new and different concepts, and somehow exclusive of their political party and of their little corner of the biosphere. What?! You can’t be conservative and conservation minded! Republican and Earth friendly! Religious and a recycler! Forest loving and a disciple of Jesus! Energy conscious and a Christian! Gun toting, meat eater and a tiller of the ground! How gauche!

It may come as news to some, but stewardship wasn’t invented by liberals in the seventies. Sorry. It’s true.