A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

I moved into my house in mid-July, which makes it just over six months that I've been living in my own house.

I chose to front-load as much of the home improvements as possible, with the result that I have not done much in those six months other than house stuff. Realistically I'm not sure the next six months will be that much less house-centric, as I can start planting my garden in May. (Everyone warns direly against planting before Mother's Day.)

I had no idea how much difference owning a house makes on an emotional level, as opposed to renting. I don't think it's about possession in a capitalist sense, but more than you can't be kicked out and you have the right to make it what you want.

I used to think people who were constantly going on about their mortgages and remodeling their kitchens were incredibly boring. Now I get it. (But if you find this boring, I am helpfully tagging these posts so if you're a paid member of Dreamwidth, you can blacklist and never see them.) It's a glorious combination of so many of my new and lifelong obsessions: gardening, chicken keeping, homesteading, emergency preparedness, forests, wildlife, cozy places, crafting, arranging, and dollhouses.

It's even worked the miracle of getting me to genuinely enjoy housecleaning.

50s Housewife or Life-Size Dollhouse?. If you can't see Instagram, it's a photo of a sink, with this text:

"Commemorating the occasion of an almost perfectly clean sink, since it may not happen again for another year. I scrubbed the living daylights out of that sucker. I'm 90% sure it's a lot whiter now than when I moved in.

Either I've turned into an incredibly boring middle aged stereotype or I'm still nine years old at heart, living the dream of a little house in the big woods."

Sadly, I still hate washing dishes.

I have been working on the house largely by doing stuff when I feel like doing it RIGHT NOW. This morning I was particularly bugged by the stained sink and the weird toothbrush holder attached to the wall that I don't use, so I scrubbed the hell out of the sink and pried out the toothbrush holder. (Note to self: buy spackle.)

This is also how I cleared an entire terrace of invasive ivy. Every time I walked by it and felt like yanking out some ivy, I yanked out some ivy. It's possibly not the most efficient method, but hey, it gets the job done with zero resentment.

By the same method, this week I hung a Charles Vess calendar over my bed, put together a standing lamp for the living room, organized my largest closet so I can actually find stuff, sorted my DVDs and discovered a bunch of empty cases which I will now toss, filled my new bookcases that I commissioned to fill a weirdly shaped space in the living room, and hauled a ton of empty cardboard boxes up to the deck so I can rip out the tape and labels at my leisure while listening to permaculture podcasts and then have biodegradable cardboard to cover the de-ivied ground so I can dump dirt on top of it and plant with vegetables or native plants.

I have finally reached the point where any further major projects that require other people are too big to do right now. A whole-house generator, solar panels, better lighting beyond lamps I can install myself, deck refinishing, and a wood-burning stove will have to wait.

My next big project is putting in my garden, which I am doing entirely by myself. But I can't plant till May, so I have three months of nothing but prep. This consists of maintaining my compost heap, amending the soil by mixing in compost with the bad soil, and removing the ivy that covers large portions of the land. Goddamn ivy! It's so hard to yank out, and there's so much of it.

But it's also often pretty cold - too cold to want to work outside. So I am returning to my original house project, which is Marie Kondo style decluttering. Here's my original post about the first time I did that, on my LA apartment: Don't Forget to Propitiate the Sandals

Note that this is not about asking whether your hammer sparks joy. The questions are "Is this something I need or am likely to need in the future?" If no, then you go to "Does this spark joy?"

In my case, I have been buying a LOT of stuff because it is useful or will be useful in the future. I have limited storage space, so I need to go through a lot of random non-useful stuff to see if it sparks joy, because if not, I want it gone so I have more room for firewood, chicken feed, garden implements, etc - all of which genuinely spark joy.

Possibly this entry is more about recluttering. But my goal isn't to reduce my stuff, it's to love and enjoy my home, whether that means getting rid of stuff, acquiring new stuff, or rearranging stuff. Which is what "spark joy" is all about.

If you have moral objections to decluttering or do not wish to declutter your own place, please do not share those sentiments in comments. If you're a paid member, you can blacklist the decluttering tag for my DW and never even see these posts.

I am embarking on a new decluttering/home enjoying campaign, as the project had been sidelined and backslid by 1) me breaking my foot, 2) a whole lot of travel, 3) carpet fleas requiring me to move a ton of stuff around while de-fleaing. (The diatomaceous earth worked, but you need a lot of it and it gets everywhere.)

Photos below cut. ( Read more... )

Learning how to fold things so they are in horizontal rows rather than vertical stacks is definitely the point where this tipped over into "hobby." However, it does make stuff WAY easier to find.

These are before-and-after aerial shots of my T-shirt drawer:

KatMari has been quietly continuing behind the scenes, bit by bit, as I transform my apartment into my ideal living space.

I now have a second dollhouse, also tin but this one from the 1950s, next to the first. I unpacked all the little animals I made when I was a kid from Fimo (and a couple from clay) and which have been in boxes for ten years, and gave them a home:

Yes, I am still at it. While in Mariposa I mentioned it to my parents, who watched a few episodes and promptly tidied up some of their stuff, donating clothes and watching videos on how to fold vertically.

As always, please no negativity in comments. Cut for photos of bookcases and cats.

Here is a shot of my kitchen from a month or so ago.



Here is my kitchen today. (Still need a new table and chair. That is way overdue.)



Here is my memoir bookcase, with Jewish, Chinese, and oversize books on top. (Some overflow memoirs are elsewhere.) You can tell when categories change because the alphabet-by-author starts over from the beginning. It goes something like: My Happy Childhood, My Funny Family, I Love My Family, My Fucked-Up Childhood, My Mental Illness, I Loved Someone Who Died, My Exciting Experience, My Exciting Hobby, My Showbiz Career (Dance, Music, Acting, Directing, Writing), I Live Somewhere Cool, My Civilian Wartime Experience, Let Me Tell You About Religion.



Here is my food bookcase, with Japanese books on top. They're ordered more by size than by category, but the categories are How to Cook, I Like to Cook, I Like to Eat, Regional Food Is The Best.

I have been unearthing stuff from boxes that have not been opened in ten years (at least), including a number of beloved childhood toys and porcelain animals that I didn't have anywhere to put. So I decided to get a place to put them, in the form of something I have wanted my entire life and never had, which is a dollhouse. (When I was a kid, and also as an adult, I just kept everything on shelves.)

I bought a 1945 tin dollhouse from a local antique shop, along with most of the original (plastic) furniture. When I inquired about the provenance (i.e., how they knew the date), the owner told me that it had been sold to them by an old lady who had hoped to pass it on to her children/grandchildren, but it wasn't the sort of thing they were interested in. So she sold it in the hope that it would find a home with someone who really wanted it. It did. I set it up, and now it's in my bedroom, delighting me every day.

My real cats are not allowed in my bedroom because they are destructive, rampaging chaos machines. All cats in photos are porcelain only. ( Click for KatMari photos! )

Photos below cut of decluttering in progress, with "helpful" feline assistance from Erin.

I tackled one small bookcase today, and amused myself by arranging the general category (memoirs) into more granular categories, consisting of "I Had a Pretty Cool Life and Mostly Remember it Fondly," "My Traumatizing Childhood/Adulthood," "My Job Is Cooler Than Yours," "My Life is Mostly Ordinary But I Write About It Well," "I Had an Exciting Experience," "I Loved Someone Who Died," and "Meet My Furry Friends."

Please no comments about how you're uninterested in decluttering, you don't want to declutter, or that decluttering, Marie Kondo, or people interested in decluttering are bad and wrong. If this is a topic you dislike or find uninteresting, please scroll past this post or blacklist the decluttering tag.

( Click for KatMari photos! )

I am continuing to be inspired by Marie Kondo. I hadn't started with the intention of a psychological journey, but it really has turned into one: a home that makes me happier, hopefully coupled with a life that makes me happier.

I don't see any contradiction between doing things to improve my own life and doing things to improve the world. When I'm happier, I'm more energetic and more outward-looking, and that means I'm capable of doing more activism and volunteering than when my energy is sucked up by my own problems.

The idea that improving your life in ways that are meaningful and helpful for you, whether that's going into therapy, getting rid of canned pineapple from 20111 and gifts you hate, or anything else, is somehow making the world worse because it's not spending 100% of your time contemplating the abyss, is counterproductive to the real work of activism.

It's such a toxic idea that leads to so much burnout and thus less leftist activism that I sometimes wonder if it's being deliberately encouraged. I know that sounds paranoid but we now know that sort of subtle and targeted spreading of ideas actually happens. Who is it who wants leftists to believe that it's morally wrong to take care of themselves?

And no, I am not throwing out all my books or any items that I actually need. I'm not taking Marie Kondo as a guru, just as a person who has some advice that I find useful and some that I don't. That being said, she never said you should - that's all rumor by wrong osmosis. I like living in a library. I don't like living in a junkyard.

I spoke to some friends about the problem of getting stuff that's still useful or might be wanted by someone who's not me to those people, and discovered that this is something on a lot of people's minds. My solution turned out to be to make use of those social networks of friends-of-friends.

One person has friends and family in El Salvador who can either use stuff themselves, or are involved in charities that can pass it on to people who genuinely want/need it. However, the cost of shipping packages is prohibitive. Her solution was to purchase a shipping container and fill it full of stuff. That's expensive, but she can afford it and it's enough of a saving to make the process worthwhile. Another person has a church which collects and distributes clothing, etc, to people in need.

My stuff is all going to the church, the shipping container, or Goodwill, in that order.

Click on cut for photos of tidying in process, and also a cute cat. ( Read more... )