New Year, New Track... And the long path to it.

We are two weeks into the new year, and I have yet to get myself on track. I don't mean going to the gym, and eating more salads... Although that is also on my list. What I'm talking about is just the normal flow of things. Life day-to-day, when it's not encompassing holiday plans.

Part of the reason for this delay is because I'm house-sitting for my parents. I'm traveling between my apartment and my parents house to take care of two sets of animals, keeping an eye on food between both homes (to see what will expire first), and keeping myself spread out between responsibilities. The other part, which just wrapped up this weekend, is my transition from my seasonal day work to my work and income plans for this coming year.


My work: 

I have made the scary decision to drop my normal day job, in pursuit of work that is musically inclined. I have a Music Degree, and I have performed in this industry for many years. I've also taught music lessons, and provided music for private parties and events. It has been several years since I have done this as a business on my own, but I feel called to work with music again.

Autumn Update (and Kitchen progress)

Things have been really out of control lately... I say that like my life doesn't constantly shift between out of control and just busy. But lately things have been extra chaotic.

Right now I'm working for a corporate company, something I considered expanding on with training and certification beyond my current position, but if I'm being honest it's not really my passion. The smaller store that I was working at was slated to close mid-september, and with all my extra hours, I decided to take a break from everything else until I got through that. Leading up to the close, my hours kept expanding well beyond what I was comfortable with. The week of cleanup, my schedule was all over the place. Luckily, I managed to have a week off from work before transfering to another location. 

My time off coincided with my birthday, and weekend plans out of town with friends of ours. So, more or less it felt like Monday through Thursday off, but that's still nice.  ^_^

Fast forward to Monday morning, and I ended up dealing with some issues that came up with our bank... That lasted the first two days of my days off. So for the last two days, I have been busting my butt to get our kitchen under control.

When I decided to take a break from everything, I told my husband that other than necessary laundry, I was letting everything go. I was getting so stressed out that I was finding myself overwhelmed, anxious, and overall unproductive in my exhaustion. I just needed to "get thru".

Our  situation is a little crazy, because it's not like we have a normal, functioning house that I'm just cleaning up. We don't just have one messy room, or a garage, or an office that got crazy. We have an entire apartment that is completely filled from our wedding gifts, things from college, furniture from friends and thrifting, stuff from my grandparents estate... It's just really gotten out of hand. It feels like a an episode from Hoarders, except that there isn't any excrement or piles of the same item.

I would say that probably 50% of it is paperwork, and most of that is trash. We have a lot of items that we've accrued with the intention of using, and haven't gotten around to actually using. When we first moved in, I bought a small steamer because I used to steam vegetables at my parents house a lot, and it has sat in our cupboard with a sticker from the Salvation Army for nearly three years. That is now in a box, about to be re-donated. 

Anyway, sometimes I find it really hard to share our progress... Because sometimes I'm just organizing drawer. And because lately things have gotten so out of hand with my schedule that I really didn't have the energy to focus on organizing the house. But tomorrow is my first day at a new store, and my hours should be down from what I've been working oh, so here's hoping. 🤞🏼

Update on the space... still not finished, but I am aiming to have it wrapped up this week. Or at the outside by the end of this weekend.

It probably doesn't look like much, but that's because a lot of stuff that was in the back got pulled forward.

This is how the area looks behind our kitchen nook, in the back corner next to the door. Admittedly, I liked having my kitchen items on the baker's rack, but I'm going to be caring for some potted plants this winter. So I decided to use this space to start bringing them in before it gets too cold.

This is the area when you first step into the kitchen, to the right hand side. You can see that I've started a box of donation items - in front on the left. I also still have this step ladder folded down, because I climbed up on top of our pantry shelving and cleared out what was in that box. I sorted all of the coffee that my husband has, based on best by date, and I stored them above the shelving. The food items that had been that box had gone bad, so I tossed them.

I have been moving everything that doesn't belong in the kitchen out of the room, or at least sorted things as I go into piles to be removed. Nothing that doesn't belong in that room will go in there once we are done. We 

I will, of course, share the finished pictures when we are done with this room. Admittedly, this whole project has surprised us both in the amount of time and energy needed to complete our goals. But we are both in agreement, that we don't want to live this way going forward. 

Starting Over

For the last eight months I've been trying to keep things going on my social media platforms. I have multiple blog entries that I started, and never got around to finalizing... So this blog hasn't gotten very far off the ground.

It all started last September, when I finally attempted to start an Etsy Shop. This was not just on a whim, I really thought things through, really considered what my business would stand for as well as what it would provide.

Then I traveled over 600 miles to help settle my grandparents estate after their passing. And Then I got sidelined by just how busy my "part-time" job had kept me from October on. And THEN I made the difficult decision to change directions in the spring. 

Even though I had started my blog in December, I still held out hope that I was going to be able to roll into launching my Etsy business soon. But with everything I had going on with my work hours, and the state of my house, I knew that it wasn't going to be possible.

I say that it was difficult to change directions, because for me it was. I have been wanting to open an Etsy business for years, I have considered a slew of different products that I could make well enough to market them. And this time, beyond just fantasizing, I had spent time creating my own personal brand, considering products I would make with natural elements, and designing a logo for my new store.

I began to promote first on Instagram, and gained small following. I also established an account on Etsy, to make sure that my business name would be available. Stepping away from everything without even launching, made me feel like a flake. I worried it would appear like I didn't care and I wasn't serious. But my schedule had gotten so busy (even since we got married the previous summer) that I had gotten sick at every break we took. 

When we went away for our 1st Anniversary  in July, we stayed at a B&B. My husband, who never gets sick, ended our three-day weekend with a sore throat and congestion. He was better in a matter of days, but I followed him in getting sick and raised the bar to a full-body flu. I did not fully recover from that for a couple weeks.

About the time that I had looked to start my Etsy account, things had started to slow down... Or they felt like they might. And then I went out of town for 10 days to help with the estate, and when I got back my work hours took off. (I was working 50+ hours the week of Thanksgiving, as part-time help!)

When we finally had a break on Christmas Day, I got sick again. I knew heading into the new year that I was not going to have downtime to make any crafts, let alone market them for a business. I decided to focus on my blog.

Unfortunately I didn't have as much time for that as I had hoped either. I started posts and left them in draft. I started other posts, covering other topics I wanted to touch on, and left those in draft too. Eventually, I defaulted to posting a few things on Instagram every so often, so that I would not disappear completely in the constant wave of new updates. And I hoped I wouldn't lose my followers all together.

Now in mid-July, almost a full year later... I'm starting over. I have a new, informed approach. And a new job. 

I have been wanting this blog to be a resource for people who are in my position, to help them become minimalist. But let's be fair, I am not minimalist myself. 

I have a goal of becoming minimalist. I am mentally minimalist. In my head, I can picture a calm open space in my home, and a schedule that feels uncluttered, where I have time to do most of the things I enjoy. I can imagine not wasting my time shopping for things I don't need, or ordering take-out for dinner because I'm too tired to cook.

But I'm not there yet... And it's foolish for me to write a blog as though I already am. I'm not sure what made me approach it that way. I guess because I started with the idea that someone else who felt like me could come here, read it, and know that they are not alone.

I want to write a blog on the subject of going minimalist, from the perspective of someone who has a lot to tackle. Not just some extra stuff, or out-grown baby clothes around the house that can be donated. I, personally, have a lifetime of boxes, a mountain of paperwork, fluff dander from a long-haired cat that gets all over our rugs if we don't vacuum regularly enough, and spaces in my house that I am not fully utilizing because of all of the objects I have to sort through.

But I am also NOT a hoarder...
And I will tell you why.

This is not a skill I was taught. Periodically sorting through my personal items and  donating or getting rid of things was never a regular thing in my life. My parents, in all of their wisdom, did not have the skills to teach me something that they did not know how to do for themselves.

Ever since I was a small child, I have been surrounded with messes of my own creation. My room never had a clear floor, and the space under my bed was always full of random toys, clothing, paper and whatever else. Whenever we would "clean" my room, my mom would collect everything that was on my floor and place it in a bag or box for storage, then she would tell me that "once my room was kept clean, they would bring that box or bag of my stuff back". I don't recall a single box or bag ever coming back to my room.

Our family also went through a bankruptcy when I was very young, like Elementary School age. I don't personally remember it very well, I didn't really understand what was going on and my parents did a good job of sheltering us from most of the anxiety and work they endured when going through that process. But I do know that I was always attached to "things". I always wanted to keep things "just in case". I was always afraid that if I got rid of something I would find out that I needed it, and I wouldn't have the means or capacity to replace it. I suppose that's how it feels to be a child, you don't have much control over your environment.

My family even claims that when I was a kid I told one of my relatives, "I like trash". I'm sure I was referring to the fact that I liked to collect things that other people would toss aside, with a vivid imagination of what I would use it for or turn it into, but that's the only statement that they all remember.

So here I am, in my early thirties, married with no children, owning two cats, in a small two-bedroom apartment that is technically considered a condo as it is one-story with separate entrance access. And everything from childhood through High School, through college and beyond, has followed me into my new home.

At one point we had filled a 20x20 storage unit. Lined with shelves and furniture, with boxes and bins of objects to sort, prior to us moving into our own place. But we decided to move those items into our apartment, since we had an extra room, instead of spending nearly $200 a month to keep it somewhere else where it wasn't being sorted. 

Since then, I have also recieved wedding gifts, inherited heirlooms from my grandparents house, and purchased furniture and other household items. We donated extra furniture that did not work for our space, and we have a few pieces stored with family that we don't yet have room for.

Even though we have donated car loads of clothing and objects, thrown away countless full garbage bags of junk, and reorganized our clutter time and time again, our house is still a mess. I don't consider myself a hoarder, because I don't want it. I would love open space over the piles of paperwork I have to sort, but it's a process. And there are important items hidden in that mess that I would like to find before tossing out the rest.

I am still a consumer, and I do use retail therapy from time to time to make myself feel better, and that does not help the issue. But I have a solution for that too.

So stay tuned, because I am ready to share the nitty and gritty. All of the fun and sour moments, the strides forward and any missteps along the way. I'm turning this blog into a documentary of my journey, not an instructional guide to where I haven't been.

And one day, when someone is in same position that we're in now, they will see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel... once I've made it though.