I am apparently well-hydrated and egg-shaped...at least according to Buttercup.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Food for Thought
Bringing up a family should be an adventure, not an anxious discipline in which everybody is constantly graded for performance. - Milton R. Saperstein
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Stuff - Part 2
Stuff...continued...
In my previous post I touched on the following points:
1) We ALL have more stuff than we NEED.
2) Most of us were not raised by parents who had any idea a) how easily stuff was going to be acquired, b) how quickly technology was going to change, c) how shopping would become a MAIN SOURCE of ENTERTAINMENT for people, and d) how easy credit was going to transform our reality and our perception of NEED. Therefore, very few of us were raised with the skills we'd need to manage the onslaught of stuff, the consumer-driven economy, and the overwhelming pressure to acquire we all face. (To those of you who were raised to resist, go hug your parents.)
3) Acquiring things feels good, at first.
So, where does that leave us? What is the point of all this?
Well, let me take a step backwards for a minute and tell you why I'm thinking about this at all. I recently had the opportunity to help out some friends who were in the process of moving. They really needed help packing, so some of us got together to help.
Packing someone else's stuff is really quite interesting, because you have absolutely no emotional attachment to the stuff you're packing. Instead, you consider each and every item based on its intrinsic value, not some emotional value assigned to the item. My friends had a lot of stuff to be packed. Seriously. A lot of stuff. Frankly, I found it overwhelming when I paused to see just how much stuff we were talking about. (Don't worry, they know I feel this way...I told them.) Here is the thing: They were overwhelmed by their stuff, too.
So, as I was packing (and packing and packing), I started thinking about my own life, my friends, our society and our relationship to our stuff. I thought about the causes of our consumption (above) and then I thought about the end result of acquiring all this stuff.
The causes might be interesting, but the end result of having all this stuff is what we're dealing with. Seriously. I'm not a big believer in wallowing in the past trying to come to the roots of a problem. I think you can get lost in the past instead of ever fixing the present. Look back a little, say "hmmm" and move right along.
So, the problem: Too much stuff. The symptoms:
Anxiety: How am I supposed to take care of this stuff? Store this stuff? Pay for this stuff?
Guilt: I don't even like this stuff, but it was a gift. I don't even want this stuff, but X does and doesn't want to let it go. I paid X for this stuff, so I have to keep it. I haven't even paid off this stuff, so how can I possibly get rid of it?
Shame: What if someone sees how much stuff I have? What if someone knows how I can't manage the stuff I have? What if someone becomes aware of the debt I incurred to get this stuff?
(For a little bit of transparency, I confess to being in the "debt for stuff" group. I tend not to have too much stuff, but I have not always paid for my stuff wisely.)
If you're a repeat offender, like I am, what you really need is a new way of thinking about stuff. A new way of understanding the stuff you bring into your house and the stuff you keep in your house. But what? How to change the way you think about stuff, acquire stuff, and manage stuff?
What we really need is a new way of owning our actions. Shame, Guilt, and Anxiety are passive ways of thinking/feeling. As if we're victims of circumstance, victims of our stuff, if you will, rather than co-conspirators. Make no mistake. We did this to ourselves regardless of the outside forces encouraging us and we have the ultimate responsibility for resolving the situation.
What we need to do is change the manner in which we acquire things. All things. Big things. Little things. We need to have a way of being deliberate as we acquire stuff. Notice I'm not telling you not get stuff. Life changes, your needs change, you'll need stuff. Instead, I'm telling you we need to be deliberate about how stuff enters our homes. We need to think it through. But how? Everyone has different circumstances, different wants and needs, and different thresholds for "clutter" (mine, I can tell you, is very low; my sister says hers, in contrast, is very high).
Whatever we do has to be simple and universal. It has to be quick, too. It has to be something you can do wherever you are, whether you're shopping at Target, Nordstrom, Wal-Mart, online, at a garage-sale, or face-to-face with some well-meaning friend or relative trying to gift you with something.
As I was thinking about this, I thought of getting pets. How often we say decline to accept pets, even free pets! And I got it...
What if every single time you think of buying something, accepting something, of keeping something you already own, you acted as if that something were alive, like a pet? Living things need obvious care and maintenance, but so do possessions. At minimum they need to be stored and cleaned. They need a specific home. Each and every item you bring into your home requires a home and maintenance and some will even require "feeding" (ie., ancillary equipment or materials to keep them running). Given these realities, what if you asked yourself these questions every time you consider adding stuff to your household?:
1) Where will this stuff live? Think about it for a second. If you buy that cute little end table because it is such a deal or it is just so beautiful, where EXACTLY will you put it? If you buy that absolutely sublime sweater, will it fit in your sweater drawer? If your brother and sister want you to take Aunt Edna's china, where will you put it?
2) What is involved in caring for this new item? Is it going to need "feeding", special arrangements, a combination of things, just to keep it minimally functional? When Superman and I bought this house, it came with a hot tub and an above-ground pool. Superman was thrilled. So, was I, at first. Then came the maintenance: filters, heaters, chemicals, water testing, covers (oh, and let's not mention gas bills). With our really hard water, it was pretty much impossible to keep our water stable. We were constantly having to test the water and even the pool people were struggling to help us keep it clear and clean. It was a LOT of work.
3) Will you be glad to put energy into care for this stuff? Remember, you'll be spending time caring for this item instead of other items. Back to my pool/hot tub example. We worked our butts off to keep the pool clear and the hot tub clear. All this for a swimming season that barely last three months. I quickly determined I hated the pool. I wasn't grateful for it. I resented the time, energy, and money it took to keep it up. The hot tub? I didn't hate it, but I didn't like it. I resented the time, energy, and money it took to keep up, but not as much, at first.
Can you imagine if you asked yourself these three questions every time you bought something? Think about it. I know it sounds weird, but seriously. When your child (or your spouse) says, Oh, please, can we have a kitten, puppy, rabbit, or whatever? do you just say sure, throw it in the cart? Of course not. You are very clearly able to stop and think about the responsibility for caring for the animal that would be introduced into your home. You make a determination as to whether or not you can care for said living thing and, the vast majority of times, you decline to bring a new pet into your home. Yet, when it comes to more stuff, we don't stop to think of the maintenance involved in adding more stuff to our homes.
And we should.
Every item we bring into our homes should be deliberate. It would make our lives so much richer, because we would have clearly chosen, not just impulsively accepted the stuff in our lives.
Are you consciously accepting the work that bringing MORE into your house will require?
Just because something is a good deal, doesn't mean it has a place in your home. Just because something looks really handy, doesn't mean it will work well in your life. Cute isn't very cute when it is covered with dust or in the back of a closet. Just because you already have something, doesn't mean you need to keep it.
As for Superman and me? We realized we felt burdened by the pool and I realized we were burdened by the hot tub. We sold the pool and six months later we sold the hot tub. Superman agreed immediately to me selling the pool and, after more persuasion, grudgingly said if I found a buyer for the hot tub, he'd agree to it leaving, too. Well, I did (oh, please, did he really think I wouldn't?). And you know what? The second that hot tub left was loaded onto the buyers trailer, he felt a sense of relief that was so strong, he was amazed. He didn't realize how much pressure he was feeling to maintain that thing. (Oh, and we're chipping away at our debt and not incurring any more debt...finally learning life lessons that have vexed us for years.)
(To be continued...Part 3 - the emotional baggage associated with our stuff.)
In my previous post I touched on the following points:
1) We ALL have more stuff than we NEED.
2) Most of us were not raised by parents who had any idea a) how easily stuff was going to be acquired, b) how quickly technology was going to change, c) how shopping would become a MAIN SOURCE of ENTERTAINMENT for people, and d) how easy credit was going to transform our reality and our perception of NEED. Therefore, very few of us were raised with the skills we'd need to manage the onslaught of stuff, the consumer-driven economy, and the overwhelming pressure to acquire we all face. (To those of you who were raised to resist, go hug your parents.)
3) Acquiring things feels good, at first.
So, where does that leave us? What is the point of all this?
Well, let me take a step backwards for a minute and tell you why I'm thinking about this at all. I recently had the opportunity to help out some friends who were in the process of moving. They really needed help packing, so some of us got together to help.
Packing someone else's stuff is really quite interesting, because you have absolutely no emotional attachment to the stuff you're packing. Instead, you consider each and every item based on its intrinsic value, not some emotional value assigned to the item. My friends had a lot of stuff to be packed. Seriously. A lot of stuff. Frankly, I found it overwhelming when I paused to see just how much stuff we were talking about. (Don't worry, they know I feel this way...I told them.) Here is the thing: They were overwhelmed by their stuff, too.
So, as I was packing (and packing and packing), I started thinking about my own life, my friends, our society and our relationship to our stuff. I thought about the causes of our consumption (above) and then I thought about the end result of acquiring all this stuff.
The causes might be interesting, but the end result of having all this stuff is what we're dealing with. Seriously. I'm not a big believer in wallowing in the past trying to come to the roots of a problem. I think you can get lost in the past instead of ever fixing the present. Look back a little, say "hmmm" and move right along.
So, the problem: Too much stuff. The symptoms:
Anxiety: How am I supposed to take care of this stuff? Store this stuff? Pay for this stuff?
Guilt: I don't even like this stuff, but it was a gift. I don't even want this stuff, but X does and doesn't want to let it go. I paid X for this stuff, so I have to keep it. I haven't even paid off this stuff, so how can I possibly get rid of it?
Shame: What if someone sees how much stuff I have? What if someone knows how I can't manage the stuff I have? What if someone becomes aware of the debt I incurred to get this stuff?
(For a little bit of transparency, I confess to being in the "debt for stuff" group. I tend not to have too much stuff, but I have not always paid for my stuff wisely.)
If you're a repeat offender, like I am, what you really need is a new way of thinking about stuff. A new way of understanding the stuff you bring into your house and the stuff you keep in your house. But what? How to change the way you think about stuff, acquire stuff, and manage stuff?
What we really need is a new way of owning our actions. Shame, Guilt, and Anxiety are passive ways of thinking/feeling. As if we're victims of circumstance, victims of our stuff, if you will, rather than co-conspirators. Make no mistake. We did this to ourselves regardless of the outside forces encouraging us and we have the ultimate responsibility for resolving the situation.
What we need to do is change the manner in which we acquire things. All things. Big things. Little things. We need to have a way of being deliberate as we acquire stuff. Notice I'm not telling you not get stuff. Life changes, your needs change, you'll need stuff. Instead, I'm telling you we need to be deliberate about how stuff enters our homes. We need to think it through. But how? Everyone has different circumstances, different wants and needs, and different thresholds for "clutter" (mine, I can tell you, is very low; my sister says hers, in contrast, is very high).
Whatever we do has to be simple and universal. It has to be quick, too. It has to be something you can do wherever you are, whether you're shopping at Target, Nordstrom, Wal-Mart, online, at a garage-sale, or face-to-face with some well-meaning friend or relative trying to gift you with something.
As I was thinking about this, I thought of getting pets. How often we say decline to accept pets, even free pets! And I got it...
What if every single time you think of buying something, accepting something, of keeping something you already own, you acted as if that something were alive, like a pet? Living things need obvious care and maintenance, but so do possessions. At minimum they need to be stored and cleaned. They need a specific home. Each and every item you bring into your home requires a home and maintenance and some will even require "feeding" (ie., ancillary equipment or materials to keep them running). Given these realities, what if you asked yourself these questions every time you consider adding stuff to your household?:
1) Where will this stuff live? Think about it for a second. If you buy that cute little end table because it is such a deal or it is just so beautiful, where EXACTLY will you put it? If you buy that absolutely sublime sweater, will it fit in your sweater drawer? If your brother and sister want you to take Aunt Edna's china, where will you put it?
2) What is involved in caring for this new item? Is it going to need "feeding", special arrangements, a combination of things, just to keep it minimally functional? When Superman and I bought this house, it came with a hot tub and an above-ground pool. Superman was thrilled. So, was I, at first. Then came the maintenance: filters, heaters, chemicals, water testing, covers (oh, and let's not mention gas bills). With our really hard water, it was pretty much impossible to keep our water stable. We were constantly having to test the water and even the pool people were struggling to help us keep it clear and clean. It was a LOT of work.
3) Will you be glad to put energy into care for this stuff? Remember, you'll be spending time caring for this item instead of other items. Back to my pool/hot tub example. We worked our butts off to keep the pool clear and the hot tub clear. All this for a swimming season that barely last three months. I quickly determined I hated the pool. I wasn't grateful for it. I resented the time, energy, and money it took to keep it up. The hot tub? I didn't hate it, but I didn't like it. I resented the time, energy, and money it took to keep up, but not as much, at first.
Can you imagine if you asked yourself these three questions every time you bought something? Think about it. I know it sounds weird, but seriously. When your child (or your spouse) says, Oh, please, can we have a kitten, puppy, rabbit, or whatever? do you just say sure, throw it in the cart? Of course not. You are very clearly able to stop and think about the responsibility for caring for the animal that would be introduced into your home. You make a determination as to whether or not you can care for said living thing and, the vast majority of times, you decline to bring a new pet into your home. Yet, when it comes to more stuff, we don't stop to think of the maintenance involved in adding more stuff to our homes.
And we should.
Every item we bring into our homes should be deliberate. It would make our lives so much richer, because we would have clearly chosen, not just impulsively accepted the stuff in our lives.
Are you consciously accepting the work that bringing MORE into your house will require?
Just because something is a good deal, doesn't mean it has a place in your home. Just because something looks really handy, doesn't mean it will work well in your life. Cute isn't very cute when it is covered with dust or in the back of a closet. Just because you already have something, doesn't mean you need to keep it.
As for Superman and me? We realized we felt burdened by the pool and I realized we were burdened by the hot tub. We sold the pool and six months later we sold the hot tub. Superman agreed immediately to me selling the pool and, after more persuasion, grudgingly said if I found a buyer for the hot tub, he'd agree to it leaving, too. Well, I did (oh, please, did he really think I wouldn't?). And you know what? The second that hot tub left was loaded onto the buyers trailer, he felt a sense of relief that was so strong, he was amazed. He didn't realize how much pressure he was feeling to maintain that thing. (Oh, and we're chipping away at our debt and not incurring any more debt...finally learning life lessons that have vexed us for years.)
(To be continued...Part 3 - the emotional baggage associated with our stuff.)
Monday, July 19, 2010
Stuff…Part One
We ALL have more than we need and, in most cases, that excess is a source of anxiety, not pleasure for us.
(Picture credit: http://360digest.com/wp-content/uploads/Vintage9.jpg)
It is no secret that I'm in the midst of simplifying my life and redefining my priorities. Here I wrote about our now-almost-three year journey of unloading stuff from our lives and here I shared with you the difficulty making the decision to let go of something can be.
The past few weeks have been tremendously helpful to me as they've helped me focus in my feelings on the topic of STUFF. I've talked with friends who've confessed to the inability to get rid of stuff because of the emotions they've attached to the stuff. I talked with friends who feel their anxiety levels rise as soon as they think of dealing with their stuff. I talked with friends who've put blinders on so they no longer see all their stuff. In every case, this stuff that they've brought into their lives has become a source of stress and instead of pleasure.
Let me be very clear here. It doesn't matter if the stuff came from Nordstrom or Wal-Mart or Target or a garage sale or Craigslist or a friend. It doesn't matter if the stuff is worth a lot of money or is virtually worthless. It doesn't matter if it is clothing, farm equipment, scrap-booking stuff, or furniture. The stories I was hearing (and my own experiences) were all the same. Our stuff is creating stress in our daily lives.
So, what gives? What is going on here? My friends are representative of various socio-economic and political positions and with kids of all different ages, yet they all share the same story: I'm over-whelmed when I think of dealing with my stuff. I'm stressed when I try to tackle it. I just can't deal with it.
This is serious stuff. There have been tears, drugs, and guilt.
So, I've been thinking about it. I've been letting it bounce around in my head. I've thought about all I've learned in the past six years, as I've worked so hard to simplify our family's life and I've come to a few conclusions.
First, our parents couldn't have prepared us to deal with this stuff because there wasn't this MUCH stuff when they were raising us. The television your parents had when you were six was probably the same television your parents had when you graduated high school. The princess phone you got when you were 16 still worked well when you were 26. Cell phones, DVDs, CDs, Sony Walkman, personal computers, video game systems, laptops, didn't exist in our parent's era. (CDs were introduced to the public in 1982…the year AFTER I graduated high school.) They had no way to prepare us for the onslaught to come.
What about clothing? It wasn't until the late 70s that real branding of clothing hit the mainstream. Remember Polo shirts, Calvin Klein, etc. Before that, clothes had to last the entire school year, so we changed into play clothes after school. Suddenly, clothes weren't enough…they had to be the right clothes and what was right changed every 3 months.
When I was growing up, "cheap Chinese imports" were a bad thing. Not only were people aware we were destroying our manufacturing base and putting people in our own country out of work, but the quality of the products was, well, terrible. People weren't willing to buy junk just to save a little cash. Whatever they bought, they bought to last. Now, our belongings are disposable and our parents couldn't prepare us for this.
Second, shopping became an end in and of itself. When I was a little girl, shopping was something we did in August for Back-to-School. Other than that, we spun dreams via the Sears Christmas catalog. The rise of the mall gave us "shopping" as a thing to go do for entertainment, rather than something we do when we have a specific need to fill. By the time I was 11 or 12, we were "heading to the mall" to go "shopping". My friends and I were looking for stuff to buy, even if we didn't need anything. 20 years of that has had our society redefining "needs" faster than you can swipe a charge card through a reader.
And third…the rise of easy credit was the final straw. Suddenly, we didn't have to wait for anything. If we wanted it, we could buy it. No cooling off period, no saving until you could buy it. Nope. We just signed our names and that wonderful widget was ours…right then and there. We felt powerful, we felt grown-up, and we felt we had arrived. We liked that feeling, so we kept heading to the mall, buying things we didn't need to keep us feeling cool and powerful…at least until the next widget caught our eyes and before we knew it, we felt like we were falling behind if we weren't joining in.
(to be continued…)
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Dust Bunny?
I guess when the dust bunnies in your house can look right at you...
or just curl up and ignore you...
it might be time to clean.
or just curl up and ignore you...
it might be time to clean.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Shoot Me - River Edition (23 of 52)
Sunday marked the occasion of my dad's birthday. I loaded up the kids, a cooler, and headed out to his new place to help in celebrate. (Wasn't that nice of me? With Superman overseas and Charming on his own, we're not so much of a descending hoard of locusts these days. Now we're more like annoying gnats...you can't really avoid us, but you don't run for cover, either.)
Anyway, Grandpa John and Nana's new house is on the river. Unfortunately, the path to the river is a) in disrepair and b) down a steep incline. That means the kids love it and the adults often take a pass. It was hot on Sunday, though, so I headed down to join the kids. It wasn't easy. Seriously. I descended the last 8 feet on my butt. Once there, however, it was bliss.
See? Here I am.
Did I mention I wasn't dressed for swimming? No? Well, I didn't let that stop me.
As you can see, the kids were having a blast.
What can I say? A day at the lake brings out the goofy in everyone.
Man, I love these kids.
Our neighbors were there, too...Buddy seemed to be having a good time.
In the end, so did Grandpa John and that is what it was all about, right.
The end of a long, fun day.
Head over to Carin's at Forever in Blue Jeans and join Shoot Me. Get yourself in the picture (as you can see, it doesn't have to be many of them!)
Anyway, Grandpa John and Nana's new house is on the river. Unfortunately, the path to the river is a) in disrepair and b) down a steep incline. That means the kids love it and the adults often take a pass. It was hot on Sunday, though, so I headed down to join the kids. It wasn't easy. Seriously. I descended the last 8 feet on my butt. Once there, however, it was bliss.
Did I mention I wasn't dressed for swimming? No? Well, I didn't let that stop me.
As you can see, the kids were having a blast.
What can I say? A day at the lake brings out the goofy in everyone.
Man, I love these kids.
Our neighbors were there, too...Buddy seemed to be having a good time.
In the end, so did Grandpa John and that is what it was all about, right.
The end of a long, fun day.
Head over to Carin's at Forever in Blue Jeans and join Shoot Me. Get yourself in the picture (as you can see, it doesn't have to be many of them!)
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Food for Thought
"If you don’t have time to do it right,
when will you have time to do it over?"
- John Wooden
when will you have time to do it over?"
- John Wooden
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