before and after

another night, another blog post not written because *someone* refuses to go to bed! Sigh, I think we may be entering another bad sleep phase.

But look at my closets!

I wrote about how I'm trying to Zen-ish our home. I'm trying to get rid of all the stuff. The extra stuff: the stuff we don't need, we don't use, the "how did this even get in my house!" stuff.  This vacation both kids are in camp or daycare all day, so I have time to assuage my mommy guilt about that clean.

We live in a tiny home. Not tiny by rural Ethiopia standards, not tiny by New York City standards, but by American standards, very small.  Living space, corner kitchen, two small bedrooms, one office turned into very small bedroom. Three closets. One is full of our clothes. One is full of golf clubs and tools and vacuums and shopping bags and brooms, and the last is full of everything else. Tuesday I cleaned out the everything else closet.

This is what it looked like before (minus, to be honest, about 4 large shopping bags full of tissue paper and gift bags.  Teachers are never short on gift bags!)

I sorted and folded and threw out and re-organized and put away. I found a pair of shoes I'd bought in a too big size for Daniel a year ago and that almost didn't fit him because they were too small.  I found a ridiculous amount of tissue paper. I found a bag of CDs that we've been meaning to sort and get rid of since we moved in (4 years ago!) I found quite a collection of next size up shoes for Lily that I need to remember I have so I don't add more! I found and got rid of the 5 pillow inserts that I've had for 3 years thinking I'm going to make covers for them.

This is what it looks like now:

So much better! Of course, we still have to put the winter coats away in there...

How is your Spring Cleaning going?

Stuff!

My husband is a big George Carlin fan. He used to have a poster of all the dirty words you can't say on TV (or something).  He gave it away when he moved in with me. Ahem.

Anyway, one of Carlin's great bits was about stuff. And how Americans have lots and lots of it.

I thought of it because I just cleaned out a closet and filled over 5 large bags to throw out or give away of stuff, and yet the closet is still full. What is all this stuff?!

Christmas stuff.  Birthday party coming up stuff.  Kids' stuff: Shoes to grow in to. Snow boots they will probably grow out of before next winter. Out of season clothing. Clothing to grow in to. Clothing I can't bear to part with because the kids wore it when they first came home.

Stuff we don't know what to do with now that everything is digital: CDs, DVDs, old computer files. Boxes of college mementos. Boxes of high school mementos. Boxes of grade school mementos. Every time we move or have kids or I just can't stand the state of the closets I go through the boxes and throw out things. The mementos get more carefully curated and the boxes condensed. But still they fill up our (3, only 3) closets. And every week the kids come home with pictures and paintings and cards and notebooks... do I start boxes of mementos for them? Ohmygoodness!

Ever go on vacation for a while and live out of suitcase, then come home and wonder why you own all these things? Ever dig through a box of out of season clothes and wonder why you ever go shopping?  It is just me?

I think of how much stuff we own, and then I think of how much stuff our Ethiopian family owns.  Now, granted, they don't have much need for snow boots. But still. They own less objects and clothing than can be counted on two hands. We own more objects than we really have room for in our small apartment.

So I've been trying to get rid of things. In the past few weeks I've gone through our drawers and closets, our cabinets and cupboards and I've filled bags upon bags of stuff.  I've donated it, left it out on the curb for some enterprising person to make use of (I love the informal NYC recycling system!).  I've brought things to work. I've given things to Lily's day care. Every time I bring a bag out of my house I feel lighter.

I want to get to a Zen (or Zen-ish) place with this stuff. I want to have a Zen-ish home. I once read or heard a rule that everything in your home should be useful or beautiful or both. We're working towards that... but oh boy, do we have a long way to go...

This is the Before. The After is coming soon...

can't sleep...

Every few weeks Lily has a night when she just isn't sleepy.  Tonight is one of those nights, alas, which is why she is wide awake right now one hour past her bedtime, calling out randomly from her darkened room every few minutes.  "Mommy my nose is running!". "Mommy I need lotion!".  Sigh.  Thankfully this is only every few weeks.  Most nights (knocking on every piece of wood handy) she goes down quietly around 7PM. Tonight she might outlast me.

The first time she had a no-sleep evening was one of our first as a family. The very first night she fell asleep nearly instantly the moment I started rocking her.  There was no electricity in our guest house- Ethiopia, like many African nations, has spotty electricity service, especially during the messy rainy season. So it was quite dark.  The first night she passed out from exhaustion- it had been a momentous day, to say the least.  But a couple of nights later, she just couldn't fall asleep. Daniel was sound asleep (God bless that boy, he has been a good sleeper since day one!), and she was tossing and turning. So, we bundled her up and took her out onto the balcony of our room. It was cold; it had been raining all day.  We sat cuddled up in the cold dark, admiring our cheerful smart little baby who was so charming and bright, even though she was supposed to be sleeping. Eventually she started to get sleepy, and we all headed inside to bed.

Tonight I was about to get really angry at Lily for disrupting my evening and refusing to sleep, and then I remembered that first sleepless evening together.  We were so young as family, so new to being parents, that we didn't know to get upset about a not-sleepy baby. We hadn't gone through our rounds of sleep battles. We just wrapped ourselves up in blankets and sat together.  I remembered that night in Ethiopia, and I stopped being angry. I picked her up and wrapped her in her quilt, and we just sat together.


Shhhh.... she's finally asleep.

Good night.