Oh, Thursday: so many antics to reviews and contemplate

Apparently, a bunch of things have been happening. For example, my husband, my not-BIL, and J. all sent me a link to the WaPo article about the newly appointment board members at the board formerly known as Reedy Creek WTF arrived to learn that there had been a fully noticed meeting recently in which a document was unanimously approved by the outgoing board. And they learned the contents of the document, didn’t like it much and turned it into an opportunity to pay very conservative lawyers who are generally not super effective but definitely do a lot of press. Good times. Definitely an example of FAAFO in an ongoing form. I particularly liked that they actually used the royal clause. Like, for real.

Also, last night after DND turned on on my phone — and let me tell you, your life will be materially better if you turn on DND on your phone and are very selective about who can blow through DND on your phone — there was some sort of flurry of messages from my husband’s family about MIL. I read the messages, and thought about what I was thinking and feeling, and decided to model something that I’ve been trying to get across in other ways. Just Ignore It. It won’t go away, but you don’t have to give it any time or energy while it’s there. As I have noted, my heart is elsewhere. Mostly with children.

What else. Oh, right! Speaking of in-laws, while we were out drinking and dining, I told husband I was thinking about having the contents of the storage unit in Albany delivered to our house. When we’ve had things delivered to the house before, we’ve sorted them and moved them along to the appropriate location, but when they sit in a storage area in another city, nothing happens. We’ve tried to get other people to deal with them, but they aren’t, so I’m like, you know, let’s just do this. I wanted to get a really solid commitment on husband’s part that he wouldn’t second guess me and he wasn’t willing to give it but he _was_ willing to commit to do the sorting so I’m going to call this a win.

Looking back at paragraphs 2 and 3, I remember now the time that paragraph 3 protagonist did exactly what paragraph 2 protagonist just did, with _precisely_ the same reaction all around. If you find yourself severely distressed and in need of help, and like, call the suicide hotline or whatever, and leave voicemail with people or whatever, please turn OFF DND on your phone (I know I just told you your life will be better with DND on, but this is a special case!) so that the people you panicked can call you back! And also, if they resort to the two calls in rapid succession to get through to you and DND is turned off, please answer the phone.

Because if you don’t, some of us are going to make some decisions about what we choose to respond to.

I finished the decluttering book and will try to get a real review posted. It’s a great book very, very, very much worth reading.

ETA: I have not yet posted a review of the book (really, I do intend to), but it did inspire me to refill some containers in the kitchen (flour, turkey red) and while I was doing that, to vacuum the pantry the backstock lives in and while I was doing _that_ to do some editing of the contents of the pantry so that less space is taken up by large mostly empty boxes. I’m sure R. will find this annoying when he goes to make A.’s lunch tomorrow as things have moved from where they were on the floor to the lowest shelf, but I’ll point it out to him and tell him why some of the RKT snacks are now in his Clif Bar box while I’m at it.

I attempted to get the current address for SIL so I could send her flowers (they did a real estate shuffle recently, and I still send the holiday mailer to the main house, but they are not there now). BIL read but did not respond. R. said they were playing pickle ball, so I just found Broward county deeds and figured out the address and then found a florist nearby that would do same-day. The flowers can do all the talking for me. It’s really better that way, I feel.

FURTHERMORE! Cousin-in-law posted an OMG is this really true to FB reposting a list of school shootings. It looked about right (about the right length, lots of familiar schools on it), but I figured let’s nerd this just a bit (not a lot!) and wound the wapo article with the database and commented with the information and the suggestion that she could dump both the thing she reposted and the git hub, alphabetize them and then compare. I thought about doing it myself (I certainly know my way around a csv file, and I found iOS Numbers, so I even have a tool) and then went, nah.

But it does fit in with my theme of Oh You Just Now Noticed.

KC Davis, How to Keep House While Drowning

I decided recently to see what 2023 had to offer in the way of decluttering advice. I do this … at intervals. I find reading decluttering books (and related things like personal organization, time management, etc.) a calming activity and there are usually one or two tips or tricks or new perspectives in any given book, even if it has a lot of problems. Sometimes, a book is _really good_ even if I don’t wind up adopting much of anything from the book.

I’m not the target audience of these books. I’m really not. I’m not the person who tons of clutter including books about clutter. I don’t expect these books to be validating to me, or anything like that. I expect them to be aimed at people who are quite different from me, and to validate how that person experiences life, the world around them, etc., and part of what I get out of reading these books more recently is a deeper understanding of the target audience of these books (at least, in my imagination that is what is happening!).

2023’s take on decluttering is making explicit a theme of decluttering books that has been present more or less as long as this genre of self-help book has existed: mental health support and ways to feel better about oneself and to relate better to oneself, one’s loved ones, one’s stuff, etc. This is wonderful! I could not be more enthused (<— totally serious).

One of my longest standing criticisms of books which aim to help predominantly women feel better about their struggles with small children, cooking, cleaning, household maintenance, etc., is of the frame Self Care as Put Your Own Mask On First, or as, “You can’t take care of other people unless you take care of yourself first.” Obviously, I _want_ people to take care of themselves. Also, I want people to take care of themselves PERIOD. NOT so they can go on to do stuff for other people. It’s _fine_ if they also care for others. Or whatever. Framing it in this _particular_ way feeds in a little too much to the You Are Only Worthy to the Extent You Serve Others thing that results in so many predominantly women self-sacrificing to the point of self-destruction. This book does this in the context of advocating for use of disposable plates, prepasted disposable toothbrushes, etc. I am _NOT_ opposed to the use of these products and I am NOT here to judge anyone who makes use of them (also kinda wishing I’d known about the disposable toothbrushes a while ago!). The author is loving, caring, compassionate, delightful, etc. and really trying hard to get through to people who are paralyzed completely by the need to eat or brush teeth or whatever and to do so in a perfectionistic way with respect to some environmentalist / recycling / wtf thing. The frame arises in this context. It is _probably_ a helpful frame in this context _for the target audience_. I’m not the target audience. This frame gives me hives. IT IS FINE TO USE DISPOSABLE. You don’t need to justify it. You do you. If someone is judging, they should fucking shut up and take out the trash or clean the toilets or do something else equally helpful. Play with the older kid. Take the baby out in a stroller for a walk. Whatever.

I like the author’s insistence that if the thing is worth doing, it is worth doing partially. It is worth doing in a half-assed way. I LOVE that the author’s response to items on the list that she never got around to were _removed from the list_. This is _great stuff_. It is such a powerful depiction of Making Excellent Choices down in the weeds of parenting / home maintenance / wtf that it is actually _difficult_ for me to call to mind anyone who has ever done it better.

It’s clear that the target audience has a lot of beliefs and standards with respect to keeping house. I LOVE that the author moves the target audience firmly in the direction of wash everything together on cold. And also, the introductory section describing the author’s perspectives on what those beliefs and standards might be was aggravating to read. Seriously, as parents now, I hope we all teach our kids to do everything early and badly, and then never go back to “finish the job”, because functionally, it is finished. It is Good Enough.

Davis uses the 9 square from Lean. I’m on the fence about this one. On the one hand, using familiar things from a work context, such as this one, or the idea of opening and closing routines, can help move keeping house from an amorphous, endless series of never done tasks, all of the highest priority (someone we love Cares so we MUST do it for THEM because we LOVE them!) to — or at least in the direction of — meh, it’s good enough. On the other hand, I generally disapprove of sitting down and making lists and applying priority ordering and so forth to the list. I’d much rather people made a list and then started committing to NEVER DOING most of the list. If you can get most of the things off the list, and then do one or two of whatever is left in an 80/20 sort of way (put in 20% of the effort and get 80% of the benefit), in general, things will get to Good Enough and mostly stay in the general neighborhood of Good Enough.

Finally, there were personal hygiene related sections that I had very mixed feelings about. I think this author did a nice job of trying to talk the target audience off the ledge, and given the current excess going on in Shower Routines and Face Care, it’s a helluva ledge. I did very much appreciate that the author brought in someone to provide some commentary on Black hair to supplement the fairly detailed Caucasian hair recovery from being in bed for weeks. It would have been nice to have someone in to advocate for shower once a week, no products at all approach. I mean, it works. It’s great. It solves so many problems. And so few people seem to realize that it actually _can_ work. Given how many routines and products _don’t_ work for people, it seems unfair to not include the Nothing (but water, and that not too often) option.

Next up: sample from Home Therapy

This is another result of the What Does 2023 Have to Offer for Decluttering Advice exercise. I’m reading it on an e-ink kindle (because that’s how I read books) and I’ve already been sent over to the web to do The Intake Form.

https://anitayokota.com/insider-book-access

I read the form and thought about it. Some elements struck me as very humorous, as we have been working slowly through the process of designing and now permitting and collecting bids on our post-K-12 home.

Questions like these three in particular really made me chuckle, as we have obviously dug quite deeply into all of these things for the design of the Future Home.

Tell me about a friend’s home, a home on TV or in a book, a rental home, or a hotel you loved. What were the rooms and the common areas like? How did it make you feel? What details stood out to you?

Now that you are in your current home, do you desire something better or different? If so, what might that be?
What ideas do you have to expand the wellness aspect of your home: for your mental health, for your physical health, for you, and for those with whom you live?

While I was on my iPad, I pulled up the book in the Kindle App, and sure enough, those pictures that are pretty marginally inspiring on the e-ink screen are somewhat better in color in the Kindle App. And yet still very, very, very much none of them are doing it for me.

She’s quite adamant in her Core Desire section that you answer questions like: “What parts of your house or rooms elicit negative feelings? … What feelings do you wish you felt instead in these spaces? Why do you want these things to change?”

I’m like, uh, there’s some stuff in the basement and throughout the house that represents a compromise between each of us — each of us would just as soon get rid of some things but want to keep others and vice versa. What is here is a weird, evolving function of the inputs of the four of us. (Don’t feel sorry for me; I win a lot.) It’s fine. I could elaborate on this theme — I kinda wish the house was in Seattle, for example, instead of where it actually is, but that’s not compatible with R.’s happiness so here we are. I suppose if I had to nail down one thing to change, it would be that I return to doing most of my writing while in the office, instead of sitting in a chair or at the island counter or at the dining room table. I have a really great desk and a really great chair and so probably I should focus on what’s stopping me spending the time in there and getting it to a point where I _do_ spend the time in there. OTOH, it’s a fucking interstitial spot between my bedroom and the walkin closet. Why _should_ I spend time in there, given all this much more fun space I could be hanging out in? This probably means that my office ought to be in different space in the house, but I am just unconvinced I care enough. Also, I do spend a good chunk of time in there for virtual meetings that I don’t want to be randomly participated in by the rest of the family.

*shrug*

I am apparently quite complacent about this whole thing, which is unsurprising, given that I am not the target audience. It’s probably a pretty good way to get people to identify specific, positive (or negative) goals, so kudos to the author for that.

Caption on a kitchen picture: “Tucking your microwave behind a pantry door is a convenience that helps encourage you to cook fresh meals.” Yeah, I don’t understand that either.

OK, finished the sample, does not feel like a book that I’m going to get much out of nor does it feel like I will enjoy it. It is a really interesting exercise in terms of helping people understand what they want, and helping them change their physical home environment to get more of what they want. The specific examples (up through intention trays) however are a little pedestrian.