When you realize you're a hoarder, and what to do about it.

One of my goals is to keep this credenza clean from clutter EVERY DAY.  After a few days it got so much easier!  Making things pretty definitely helps.

My name is Kimberly, and I am a hoarder.  No, I'll never be on the show Hoarders, my house is still liveable. But I'm terrible at getting rid of stuff.  When I moved into our tiny apartment two weeks before Axel was born, I had SIX large boxes of Olivia's baby clothes.  I didn't want to part with any of it.  But thinking that other baby girls weren't going to get any new clothes of their own was just silly!  Me, my mom and my mother-in-law will all be buying that girl clothes, so I didn't need to keep every little piece.  I've gone through her clothes twice and a year later, I have two boxes of her clothes 0-3 months up to 3T. 

Still there are Axel's clothes, baby blankets, CD's, DVDs, CRAFT SUPPLIES!, and weird miscelaneous crap that I'm worried I'll suddenly need very badly if I throw it out. 

Soon after moving into our house, and realizing that having SO MUCH MORE SPACE wasn't as much as I thought, I finally faced the fact that I needed to get serious about throwing away my stuff.  When you start dreaming about someone robbing your garage just so you don't have to deal with it, you know there is a problem. 

The solution (still in progress!)
-A place for everything and everything in it's place.  When I'm cleaning I do what ever I can to make a place for any items I come across, AT THAT MOMENT.  It's worth taking ten minutes to hang a hook or nail so there's a place to hang my camera knowing that next time I go to put my camera away, I wont have to think about where it should go (and I will have an easier time finding it!) 

-Take a picture!  Take a picture of special items I really have no need for.  And then give them to someone who needs it. 

-Be honest with myself.  I had about five half finished blankets.  I had to be honest with myself that I would never find the time to finish them.  I didn't want to throw them away either.  So I put it out on facebook.  My aunt offered to take them, finish them and donate them.  DONE.  Because I didn't need anymore blankets hanging around my house :)

-Trust in the internet.  I had to throw away EIGHT college notebooks.  I was keeping them for reference in my teaching.  I think I used them once in my five years of teaching.  If I need information that isn't in my brain, that's what google and wikipedia are for.  I know enough to know what is good content, but I don't need to memorize the information or hoard it in plastic bins. 

-If I haven't used it, touched it or thought about it in five years (or heck, five months!) I'm probably not going to miss it.  So give it away!

-Try not to be so sentimental.  People don't want to bog you down.  I have gifts from my childhood that don't fit my style now, I don't have space for and no one will know if I give them away.  I have to stop thinking "BUT!  It's from so-and-so!"  Again, take a picture and move on. 

I still have a LONG way to go, but my goal is to have it under control before I have another baby.  The more stuff I get rid of, the easier my house has been to keep clean, and a clean house just gives me peace and makes me happy.

How do you get rid of things???  Also, anyone know the correct protocol for disposing of seminary scriptures?

The Sound of Silence

So, I'm the oldest of six kids, in case you didn't know.  Quiet has never really been my thing.  When I'm cleaning I want some jams! (For cleaning I recommend Michael Jackson station on Pandora)  When I'm laying by the pool I want some Jack Johnson (haven't tanned since I had kids, but it's nice to remember what relaxing was like)  When I'm puttering on the computer I like ambient noise.  There are several ways to get ambient noise.

• Kids playing.
• Windows open with birds chirping
• TV on

VIA

Well I have kids, but one is too little to play and the other is too quiet when she's playing alone.  Up until a couple of days ago its been to cold to open the windows and so?  Lots of TV hours have been logged at this house.

BUT!  I scream.  But, it's only because I hate the quiet, we don't actually watch it.  That's true, we don't.  Not all the time.  Olivia doesn't like to sit still for long.  You know that's not totally true though.  Olivia doesn't know all the words to Doc McStuffins by not watching. 

My mom will read this and I know what her comment will be.  "This coming from the girl who said she didn't want a TV in her home?!?!"  Yep, I said that.  Yep, I still mean it.  But it's one thing to say it and mean it, and it's another thing to do it.  Right?  Because no one is eating brownies any more since we found out they have little nutrition value.  I have a TV and the temptation is there.

I'm working on turning it off more often and now that spring is here and I can open the window and hear yard work being done (side note: that is one thing I love about apartment living.  Yard work is getting done and I don't have to do it!  But I guess I do pay for it, even if indirectly) and that does satisfy my need for ambient noise.

Next winter Axel might be able to play with Olivia a little more, you know, make a little more noise (the good kind.  Both my children are great at screaming, the bad kind).  I guess I just feel lonely with all that quiet around.  Some might say I'm uncomfortable with my own thoughts, but I think the fact that I have a blog shows I'm quite infatuated with my own thoughts. 

So. . . don't really know where I was going with this.  Guess I just wanted to confess.  Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. 

Wedding Rings

I don't wear my wedding ring.  It stopped fitting when I was pregnant with Olivia and I was able to get it back on when she was about 9 months.  Apparently I gain weight in my fingers.  When it finally fit I started wearing it to work again.  And now I'm six months pregnant and it still fits most days, but I haven't worn it regularly since May.  Its too bulky and I scratch Olivia with it too often.

Do people notice?  I don't get hit on when I go to the grocery store (with or without giant baby belly) and most people probably wouldn't expect me to wear it when I jog with Olivia to the park.  But a lot of people make a big deal about it when their ring stops fitting or when its getting cleaned and they can't wear it for a few days. 

Someday I want to get a more simple band that I can wear daily and save my more extravagant ring for special occasions like church an date night.  In the mean time, am I a walking invitation to single men?  (To be fair my husband lost his wedding ring for several months.  He just found it and was excited to prove to his co workers that he was indeed married)

Funny story: A totally drunk guy ended up sitting with us at a bar/restaurant (long story short, we didn't know it was mainly a bar when we went to eat there) when I was only two months pregnant with this baby.  He found out we were Mormon and then asked if we were jack Mormons because I was pregnant and we weren't married.  We tried to convince him that we were (not very hard though, who cares what a drunk person thinks of you?) but our lack of wedding rings ensured him that we were liars and we were not.  That's another thing I don't do, bring my wedding ring on vacation.  I've left too many things in hotel rooms to risk it.

My strange addiction

Isn't there a tv show called "My Strange Addiction"?  Well, to be fair I don't know if you would call what I have an addiction or a symptom.  Probably a symptom, because when I get my condition under control it goes away.

Do you remember that chapter on eating disorders you read were supposed to read in the 9th grade?  It probably covered three different disorders: pica, bulimia and anorexia.  Pica got like one small paragraph and the other two pretty much took like 20 pages each.  Well I have pica (*not formally diagnosed).  I don't even know why it's in that chapter, it's really totally different.  For me, it's caused my a lack of iron and pregnancy.  Actually, I don't know if I have it really, because I don't actually eat the non-nutritive substances (like chalk and dirt).  I want to but I smell them instead.  (okay confession, I always want to eat chalk so the other day I just put a little chalk dust on my tongue.  GROSS!)

Some things that I like to smell:
-laundry soap
-dryer sheets (sometimes I carry them around with me in my pocket)
-my Caress body wash
-generic hand sanitizer, after the alcohol has evaporated
-new power puffs
-my face wash
-dish soap
-the chemical smell when you iron new fabrics

So its pretty much all in the same "soap" category.  There are a few things I the feel of, that I might think about eating but of course I never would, like chalk and foam. 

When ever I would tell my students about this they all thought I was seriously weird.  I probably am. 

I cut my own hair

I have hair.  Most of us do.  Mine is both a blessing and a curse.  Because its fine and I have a lot of it.  Which means that even though one of my sister's pig tails is still thicker than my whole head of hair, if I were to say crimp it, I might be mistaken for the black Spice Girl.  You know, except that I'm blonde.

Via

Seriously one day I crimped my hair and it just kept getting bigger and bigger, and then I went to Jamba Juice and the girl making my smoothie said I looked like a spice girl.  But I digress.

Oh another funny story is one day my students asked if my hair was really soft and I guess I said yeah because then she wanted to touch it.  And then the whole class wanted to touch my hair.  And they kept asking to touch my hair like every day for a few weeks.  Again, off topic.  Sorry.

So because my hair is long and fine and there is a lot, its like the perfect storm for getting tangles.  And over time I've learned something: Once hair tangles, its more likely to tangle again.  So I started cutting out the small little tangles in my hair.  So far none of my hair dressers have noticed.  And if they don't notice probably no one will.

So I guess now you know something really weird about me.  Care to reciprocate?  

Confession

VIA

After years of denial, I'm afraid its time I come out in the open. Not only was I keeping it from everyone I know, I was afraid to even admit it to myself.

The truth is friends, I . . . am a morning person!

Someone said that to me in college, "You're so lucky you're a morning person."  "No, I'm not," and I didn't even know I was lying.  But who was I kidding?  I was the first person to show up at a 7am meeting and I was dressed in a pink skirt with my hair done and I was in a great mood.  All the signs were there.

A few weeks ago I was talking with my students about how excited I was to sleep in until 8 and they informed me that was not sleeping in.  And here's the clincher: In my heart of heart I really feel like sleeping in until 8 is wasting a good part of the day.

I don't leap out of bed at 5:30 am, but once I'm showered and dressed its really not so bad to be up.  Its actually kind of nice.  In an ideal world, I could wake up at 7 in the summer and 8 in the winter.

My name is Kimberly Thomas, and I am a morning person.