Possessions

Back to the book 7 today, and the topic of possessions.

da da dummmmmm

(and out of curiosity- have any of you read it since I last wrote about it? I saw Jen's post on facebook announcing that a bible study based on the book will be available on Dec 1, and I gotta tell ya friends- that excites me. That excites me quite a bit.)

Moving on.

As I mentioned before, the author Jen Hatmaker, wrote this book about 7 areas of her life where she saw excess. Food, clothes, media, spending, possessions, waste, stress. She made 7 simple choices to pare down each of these areas and to fight back against greed, materialism, and overindulgence.

While possessions wasn't the first item she chose to tackle, it's the first item I chose to tackle. Her chapter began with a count of how many square feet she lives in, and how many closets full of clothes she and her family have, and how many dressers/cabinets/shelves full of things there are everywhere in her house. And it hit me-

my house is no different.

There is stuff....everywhere.

I did 6 loads of laundry over the weekend, and here's the long and short of it- when all of our clothes are clean, we don't have enough room in our closets/dresser drawers to hold them. 

blargh.

The only exception to this would be the closets of the menfolk in my house. There are only so many Star Wars shirts available for purchase in the universe, and while I feel confident that my son has every one of them, they don't fill an entire closet. Nor do the hubs clothes, but what they lack in clothing, they make up for in legos.

Here's an excerpt from the book that I think brilliantly defines us (or at least ME) as consumers:

"I see it (on you, on them, in their house, at Target, on tv). I manufacture a need for it. Then I buy it. I use it a little or not. I store it/shelve it/stack it/stuff it/get tired of it, then wage war against it one day when all my little things are strewn about as escapees from their shelves and drawers.

I could blame Big Marketing for selling me imagined needs. I could point a finger at culture for peer pressuring me into having nicer things. I might implicate modern parenting, which encourages endless purchases for the kids, ensuring they aren't the "have-nots" in a sea of "haves". I could just dismiss it all with a shrug and casual wave of the hand. Oh you know me! Retail therapy!

But if I'm being truthful, this is a sickening cycle of consumerism that I perpetuate constantly. I used to pardon excess from the tension of the gospel by saying, "Oh, it doesn't matter how much you have; it's what you do with it." But that exemption is folding in on itself lately. Plus, let's be honest: what does "it's what you do with it" even mean? Are we really doing something honorable with our stuff other than just consuming it? I'm not sure carting it all off after we're bored with those particular items is a helpful response since we just replace it with more."

And that's why I chose to start with possessions.

That. Right. There.

Jen's words and thoughts felt like my own. I manufacture needs for things, and just like that *snap*, I've bought it.  While some items see a good deal of action, others do not. And wonder of wonders, there are some things that I've bought that are still (gasp) in the box/have tags on them.

Sheesh, MK. Just...sheesh.

While Jen decided that she and her family would give 7 things away every day for a month, I decided to go through each category of 'thing' in our house and purge and cull until what we're left with is actually what we need and use on a regular basis. It wasn't hard to pick which category to go through first because it's something I'm constantly stepping over and picking up and putting away and cramming onto shelves and in baskets, and yes even sometimes kicking under beds.

Books.

We have egads of children's books in every single room of our house, and if I had to guess, I'd say we could easily cover every square inch of this house with a children's book if we needed to, say, make a book floor. And notice, I said children's books. This was the first purge. Tackling my books will be an entirely separate beast altogether. I may or may not have bought this house because of the gorgeous built-ins that run down the hallway because I knew this house could handle me and my enormous book entourage. Ahem.

As I was saying- you literally can't walk 2 feet in our house without seeing a kid's book on a dresser or a bed or the floor, so this seemed like a natural place to start pairing down our stuff. And don't get me wrong- I have nothing against children's books. On the contrary- I love children's books. My mother was a librarian for 30+ years for goodness sakes. I love that my kids love to read and can sit and occupy themselves with a book for quite some time, but when there are bookshelves full, and baskets overflowing, and piles on the floor that are growing....it's time to send some of them on their way.

I tackled this job during naptime because I'm smart. They can't protest to keep something if they're unconscious. I removed every book from the book rack, baskets, and storage ottomans in the living room, I found a stack in the mini, a stack in the master bedroom (and a few on the floor), several in the floor of the man cave and even more strewn about in the dining room. The only room I wasn't able to get books out of was the girls' room because dadblastit I'd forgotten to get them out before they fell asleep and no way no how was I going to chance waking them. (I must also mention that I didn't mess with Oliver's books because he and the hubs had just completed a purge of his bookshelf & removed all the princess books left there by his seesters, and anything that was below his reading level. Thanks, hubs.) I piled what I found on top of the kitchen counter and snapped a photo:

I went through each and every one and asked:

is there a sentimental attachment to this?

is this a book they currently like to read over and over?

is this book too 'young' for the girls now?

and this book-loving momma took those massive piles and turned it into this:

1 stack to be placed on the book rack and 1 shelf of the hallway built-ins, and 1 basket to be returned to its spot on the coffee table.

That's it.

And, well...whatever books were in the nursery because the girls were still snoozing.

This is what my giveaway pile looked like:

I didn't count it, but I'm gonna go with lots. And you know what? After that first purge, I was already breathing easier. Why did that all of a sudden sound gross? Maybe because MM choked on some snot this morning and hubs and I had to clean up what SHE purged. Sorry for that mental image...

Anyway, ridding our house of these things that we weren't really using was quite liberating. Most of them were board books that the kids loved at a younger age, but our youngest is now 2.5, and already has the vocabulary of an 8 year old. She's not going to still for 'see dog run' anymore.

I still have a looooong way to go to make it through every category of 'stuff' in this house (kitchen items, shoes, clothes, dvds, purses), but I'm already breathing easier. We don't need all of this. We don't USE all of this. We have 47 VHS tapes and no working VCR for crying out loud. I actually went through toys one day last week while we were out of school and good gravy did we have a truckload of goodies for the 6-24 month set, none of which live here anymore. The girls toys are actually containerized in two baskets and in their dresser drawers and not covering every square inch of carpet as they had been previously.

Deep breath in.....cleansing breath out.

Feels good to clean out and let go. Feels mighty good.

And so, friends- I toss the question to you now. What are you hanging on to that you don't need/use? Are there things in your house that someone else could be enjoying/getting use from? Take a look around and I bet there's something you could send on its way.

Happy Monday!

a groundbreaking weekend

a little behind on a weekend post, but we've had a crazy busy two last days of school and TODAY starts Thanksgiving vacation. Wa-to-tha-hoo, friends.

My reasons for this post title are three-fold. First, literal groundbreaking took place for our church building on Sunday.

We had a short service followed by lots of picture taking with golden shovels. Can I just say what an awesome day this was? Not only was the weather absolutely gorgeous, but God's presence was so incredibly thick as we remembered His faithfulness over these last 19 months and his protection on  that day.

The second groundbreaking thing that occurred happened on Saturday when I took everything out of the shop/Walter's house and swept it from ceiling to floor for the first time evah. GAH-ROSSSSSSS. Needed to be done though, and now it is! The hubs and I have already had talks of turning it into an actual working space now that it's de-nastified for the most part. Maybe a sewing/crafting shop for me, or just an additional space where we could play games and hang with Walter. I think some carpet is in the future for the room, and maybe another scrubbing of the walls plus some paint. We shall see. For now, here's some before + afters.

And just because I want you to truly understand the level of rank-nasty grossness I was working with, this is what was all over the window...

I know.

Most of what was being stored in there was junk, plain and simple. And so I threw it away. Some of it I listed on a local garage sale site, some of it was donated, and I downsized my Christams decor from 7 large plastic bins to 4. Heck yeah. I didn't even use most of my Christmas decorations last year because I made new stuff. (Another lesson from 7: if you haven't used it in a while OR if you don't think you'll use it again....get.rid.of.it. No more hanging on to stuff we don't need.) 

The third groundbreaking thing that occurred? My high school's new Musical Theatre club performed Hairspray last Thurs-Sun, and after asking my seester & a couple friends if they were free to go with me, and striking out, I remembered that I had a musical lovin' 3 year-old who would probably be jazzed to go with me. And she was. We got dressed up and had a most fun and memorable Mommy/Eliza date watching a musical that we can both sing songs from. Love that one of my kiddos loves what I love. While it's definitely not the first show she's been to at the ripe old age of 3, it's the first show I've taken her to that I didn't direct. And we had a blast.

Kudos to my friends Joey, Alisha, and the entire cast + crew on a fabulous production.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving! We're looking forward to spending time with family, some of which we only see once or twice a year. Later, friends! 

Where Walter Baby lives

It's been exactly two weeks since we first heard that sweet sound. Walter (baby) White is still with us, despite the fact that his favorite place to sleep is inside our car engines. Thank heavens we figured this out quickly and knew to pop the hood first. I know that to a non-pet person, (or a non-cat person) saying that this kitten is the sweetest kitten to ever walk the face of the earth or I'm so glad that God decided to 'place' him magically in our yard or I will personally cut anyone that lays an unkind hand on him may sound a bit premature. 

But you'd be wrong.

Because he's the sweetest kitten to ever walk the face of the earth. I swear it. I can only recall two other such kittens that were handed to my seester and me back in '88. Remember this pic?

Her name was Pearl. My parents gave her to me and handed her brother, Earnest T. Bass (Ernie), to my seester.

Pearl was with us for 9 years, Ernie for 22.

Just typing that evokes beautiful memories.

 And now I have tears in my eyes.

Back to Walter.

As I mentioned in THIS post, he wasn't too keen on getting close to us for the first few days. I told Oliver to be patient and that if we sat outside with him enough, he would eventually come around.

 

What I didn't tell Oliver is that every night after he went to bed, I would head outside to feed Walter. Once I had him distracted with food, I scooped him up and made it my mission to make it clear to him that we were 'friend' and not 'foe'. I loved on him and gave him food. Love, food. Love, food. I repeated this for 4 nights until finally, he came running to me, begging for my hand to rub his face and scratch behind his ears and love him.

4 nights. That's what it took.

Check out the look on my boy's face when Walter climbed into his lap for the first time-

Pure sweetness.

Walter also went from sleeping on a couple of bath towels,

to a cozy cat bed,

to a cozy cat bed inside a little house that hubs built for him.

Now friends, this is the part where I tell you that if I had my way, Walter would be inside our house right now, sleeping in my lap as I type. Hubs is not on board with a pet inside, and that's okay. This is also where I tell you that we've come up with a compromise, and it happened Monday night when the temp dropped below freezing here in Alabama and I nearly lost my mind thinking about poor Walter Baby out in the cold all.night.long.

I don't think I've ever mentioned this on the blog, but we have a little house behind our house in the backyard. The man that built our house was a contractor and used the front of it (which also has a bathroom) as an office. We keep our red/green tubs of Christmas decor in there, along with a few other random boxes of stuff and some yard sale signs. The rear of the building (which has a seperate entrance) is a workshop and houses all of hubs tools and a few pool toys.

I should also mention that while we've lived in our house for 4 years now, we have never ever ever done any cleaning in the little house, so it looks a bit 'horror movie-ish', what with all of the cobwebs and leaves and general nasty that have been collecting out there all these years.

Enter freezing temps, and a cat, and hubs with a broom. After a discussion that, for the sake of time, boiled down to this:

Me: I want the cat inside.

Hubs: No.

It was actually hubs that came up with the brilliant plan of putting him in the little house where he'd be warm and safe and I wouldn't be up all night worrying that he'd freeze.

And so this is where he sleeps.

 We moved his bed out there, along with food,water, a litter box and plenty of blankets and a heater, so it's pretty much a cat hotel. (And yes, that's the 'Leg Magic' you see at the top of that pic that I swore would change my life. Ahem.) My mum even brought him a scratching post yesterday so he has more than just leaves to play with. My plan is this: to de-nasty that space like we should have done when we moved in but didn't because we had more pressing matters to attend to. Like ripping up the 50 year old carpet, and painting over the baby pink walls in the master, and buying appliances. Once we actually rid that place of junk that we've been holding on to (I'm talking to you, Oliver's high chair) there will be plenty of space to actually stick a few chairs out there, and perhaps a rug. Maybe it could become a nice 'mommy retreat' when I need a time-out away from the house. Who knows. I'm just glad that hubs and I were able to find a compromise, and that Walter baby has a warm place to sleep and play. And no, we won't keep him cooped up in the house all the time. It's just that he came to us at a point in the year when it's actually COLD here. Which won't last long.

p.s. I've always been a cat person. Here I am with our cat, TC, at 4 years old. Yes this is a picture of a picture. For the love, someone come teach me how to use this scanner thingy.

7 by Jen Hatmaker

This will be a quick post with more to follow, but I must share this.

I read this book over the weekend and it messed me up in all kinds of ways. I'm planning to do a post about a topic per week here since a good bit of it has to do with the general day-to-day of running a household- what we consume, what we waste, what we eat, what we hold on to, when we rest. Ahem.

I'm bursting at the seams to discuss this book with someone, so please let me know if you've read it. And if you planted a garden. Or started making bread. Or went through your closets. Or unplugged for a day. Or week.

I'd love to know your thoughts. And if you haven't read it, I simply can't give it a high enough recommendation. As it says on the cover, "An experimental mutiny against excess", pretty much sums it up. The author identified 7 areas of excess in her life and spent 4 weeks on each, pairing it down to 7 things. She ate 7 foods, wore 7 pieces of clothing (I know), found 7 ways to be 'green', and so on. I devoured.this.book. Seriously, I couldn't read it fast enough because everything about it intrigued me to no end. So often, I've found myself thinking, "I can do better", and this was the kick in the tail I needed to jumpstart actually doing something about it.

I found myself actually laughing out loud on more than one occasion while reading this, and the next moment I'd be crying. The author's account of this experiment is not only hilarious, but also deep and raw. This wasn't a 'just because' kind of project for her (nor should it be). God actually has things to say about how we live our life in this book called the Bible. Did you know that? Craziness.

More to come on this, and in the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful Tuesday!

p.s. we totally have a cat. He's outside, sort of. More to come on that as well.

How to involve your kids on election day

The last time we elected a President, my oldest child was 3, and clearly not old enough to comprehend what was taking place on that day in November 2007. Now, however, he's 7 and three quarters and smart as a whip, so I wanted him to understand yesterday's significance as much as possible. We talked about the candidates and about our beliefs and about the importance of exciersing our right, as Americans, to VOTE.

I left out the part about wearing red, white, and blue on days such as this, because ya know...it's not mandatory.

Just fun.

I took him with me to vote, and was pleasantly surprised that there was no line. Well, one man and a baby, but I'm pretty sure the babe didn't get a ballot. Several polling places in our area had well over and hour and a half wait, so we were lucky.

My polling location is in a mall, by the way. So you can cast your ballot and buy new boots, all in the same place.

I explained to him that I'd have to color in the circles on my giant scantron-like ballot, and immediately wondered how many scantrons I'd taken tests on in my lifetime. Hundreds? It's pretty much all we used in high school.

I digress...

I completed my ballot, stuck it in the giant scantron machine, and got a sticker.

I have to stray from the topic for just a sec to show you these precious pics from supper last night. We had a dinner guest.

Walter baby sat on the window ledge and watched as we ate, then sang a little 'meow' song with MM at the door.

ohmygoodnessthiscatisthesweetestthingandIlovehim

Moving on...

This is where I really got Oliver involved in what was happening last night.

I copied this map from a friends homework (thanks Anna Claire!) and thought it would be a great way to get O excited about watching the news with me. We grabbed a red and blue crayon...

and watched the numbers start to pour in.

And started filling in that map.

Not only was he interested in the news, and excited each time a new state was announced, but he was sad when he had to go to bed with an unfinished map. Well, I guess the entire country went to bed with an unfinished map since FL was still gray this morning. Anywho, no matter who you vote for, get your kids involved. Let them know what matters to you. Let them know how blessed we are in America to have the right to vote. Make sure they understand the importance of election day.

And make sure they know that no matter who our President is, God is still in control. He's known the outcome of yesterday's election since time began.

***

And now,

on the issue of Walter White-

I couldn't stand the thought of him sleeping outside in the cold, so I placed a few towels at the door, hoping he would dig his way under the top one and have 'covers', if you will.

This is what I found this morning.

Sweet. Precious. Babe.

Because you can

I'm voting today. How bout you?

We call him Walter White

We heard it for the first time at the supper table Wenesday night. A faint, high-pitched sound that could have been coming from one of the girls, had they not been sitting right beside us. With food in their mouths. It just kept going and going until hubs and I found ourselves up on our feet, walking and listening, in the dining room, then into the den. What was that?

And then we saw him.

Sweet little bundle of gray and white fur, poking his head out from under the mini. Hubs put a little tuna in a bowl and took it outside, and while he did scamper away quickly when we got too near, the tuna was gone the next morning.

We've repeated this ritual everyday since then, but he still backs away when we get too close. Saturday morning, I had the brilliant idea of moving the food closer to the window so that I could get this...

I named him Walter White, and if you get the reference then you must be a fan of our fave tv show.

We played outside Saturday evening in the hopes that he'd see what a fun, non-violent family we are.

Hello 80 degrees in November.

But it's my Oliver who is the most determined to get Walter to like us.

He sat like this for quite a while, and just watched.

And waited.

When we arrived home from church yesterday, he was asleep on the picnic table. Again, Oliver watched.

And waited.

And Walter went from this,

to this,

and then this.

Which is definite progress in my book.

I was able to get these with my mega zoom lens.

Pardon my fancy photograpghy jargon.

So...if you live near me and are missing this precious kitty, we have him.

His new name is Walter White, or Walter baby, as the girls like to call him.

And if no one comes a'lookin' for him, well I reckon I'll keep you updted on whether or not Oliver ever gets to pick him up.

Which the poor boy is desperate to do.

We shall see...