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by clumpaday

Worst and Best Things

Clump #69: Unclog bathroom shower drain.

Short and the opposite of sweet: first thing this morning, I finally unclogged the shower drain. Yucko.  I won’t go into disgusting detail or show graphically gross photo documentation of the contents of the bag, below.  You’re welcome.

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Mind-cleansing images … please!   A fine drizzle was coming down most of the day today, same as it was the day I picked up my younger daughter for her fall break over a week ago.  She wasn’t quite ready to go when I arrived, so I told her I would take some pictures of the yellow roses against the dark grey slate of her dormitory.

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With my rain coat hood up and creeping around a college dormitory, I was very aware of looking like a suspicious character … but was counting on my middle-aged, mom-type aura to redeem me.   As I took the pictures, I was hearing Julie Andrews singing “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens …” from the song My Favorite Things, and the movie, The Sound of Music.

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I’d like to add another line to the song:  “Blue light through bottles and speckles on pumpkins …”

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I hope you are surrounded by a few of your favorite things today.

by clumpaday

Kinky Boots

Clump #68: Start blasting through shoe snarl in bedroom.

I’m ashamed to admit that, until yesterday, I still hadn’t confronted the horrible accumulation of old, nasty junk in our bedroom, after having vowed to do so in a (much) earlier post.  But this blog is not about perfection. Otherwise, I would not still be clumping and writing.  Slip-ups are inevitable.  Sometimes the clutter-accumulation phenomenon defies all logic.  Getting back on track without too much judgement or self-recrimination is what I’m focused on, because it keeps the job going.

I saw this plaque at a friend’s house.  I could amend it by saying: Never Let Yesterday Fill Up Today.

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And here they are: soles of beloved souls from many yesterdays:

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One somewhat logical reason to put off going through all this stuff is that most of the shoes and boots belong to my daughters.  We’ve talked about “doing the shoes” many times, even possibly from a distance on Skype. But it finally came to pass on the very rare and precious day when they were both home together.

We discovered that the only item belonging to my younger daughter were these rainbow boots.  She put them in her closet.  What a novel idea!

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My older daughter will keep these funky boots we found at the Goodwill long ago when searching for costume material for a summer theater production of Sweet Charity.  They lived on for Halloween and other funky occasions, and might still be treasured for more.

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Goodbye to Senior Prom shoes.  (Sob)

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Keep:

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Give away:

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I’m hoping someone else will find the Goodwill a sweet charity for their fancy footwear.

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by clumpaday

Departure and Arrival Time

Clump #67:  Take down bus card.

This is one of the smallest clumps to be documented.  But its significance is weighty.  My younger daughter has been away at college for over a year.  I should be well adjusted to the status of empty-nester. But I never quite got around to taking down her last bus card from the refrigerator, reminding me of pick-up and drop off times, her high school senior year home room teacher and room number.  My days are no longer structured within the confines of the comings and goings of yellow buses.  I see them driving around and am reminded that I’m not part of that world any longer … for better and for worse, happier and sadder.

Our refrigerator is relatively uncluttered, so this remnant from days past is not annoying or hurting anyone. It does, however, betray that I’m not fully living in the present.  Time to rip off the bandaid and embrace the now.

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I have spent the last couple of days helping with clumps of other people’s things, sorting out the toy room for our Quaker Meeting’s Fall Festival.  Before:

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And After:

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After so much contact with kids’ toys, that empty-nest thing is feeling pretty good!

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To Do and Don’t List

Clump #65:  Take back shirt and call OPT OUT.

This box is a physical to-do list filled with action-needy things I came across in clearing out the den (formerly the den of doom and gloom).  It would have stopped my momentum to address each of them at the time, so … into the box they went with an “I’ll clump you later.”

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I groaned as I pulled out a bag containing a white golf shirt I’d bought for my husband and needed to return.  I did have the receipt, but here’s what I found when I looked at it:

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Even through the fog of the picture, you can see that if I had found this on the day I started my September challenge, I would have been able to return it in time.  D’oh!  But return it, I did.  To my surprise and delight, the woman at the exchange counter fiddled around for a minute with her register and said, “I can still give you the refund.”  I have nothing to do with SteinMart, but I’ll plug them here for that favor.  Wow, indeed.IMG_2054

I ended up buying my husband another shirt, so it worked out well for all parties involved.  The clerk, another female customer and I had a discussion about whether our respective husbands would wear the color I picked out. The older woman said hers would never wear it, but she wished he would ; the clerk said she forced hers to wear it (along with lavender); I said I’d see what my husband thought and that I might be back to the exchange counter again.

For the record, my husband wore it and looks mahvelous in it.  It’s actually a bit brighter than the picture shows.  Let it be known that my husband is not afraid of wearing edgy golf shirts!

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In the midst of all the paper purging, I, fortuitously, came across a little article in The Philadelphia Inquirer entitled Protect yourself from identity theft.  One of the tips offered to fight this scourge is to call 1-888-5-OPTOUT (1-888-57-8688) to opt out of pre-approved credit cards, “The easiest way for a fraudster to commit identity theft is to fill out pre-approved credit applications we receive in the mail.”  Boy, did I shred a load of those.

I called the number to opt myself out.  The irony is, you have to give your social security number to them in order to do it.  One of the other rules listed in the article: “Shield your Social Security card and numbers.”  I googled around for other people’s experiences, and apparently the number is legit.

Feeling the need to close with a little beauty of the season I recently captured: flowers dying and valiantly still blooming …

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In colors both reserved and flamboyant.

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by clumpaday

Wedding Preparations

Clump #64: Iron wedding costumes for Fall Festival.

Oh yes, it’s that time of year again.  Even though the weather has been a bit of Endless Summer lately, I have to face facts.  Time to get ready for the Fall Festival at our Quaker Meeting …

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Which is like a mini-rehearsal for Christmas in that: it’s the same day/time of the year every year (no surprises there); I tend to (trying not to use the word always) put everything off until the last minute; and I end up tired and frazzled by the time the big day arrives.

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I was having a conversation last year on the day of the festival with a couple of friends, along the lines of, “Next year I will do better!”  In a having-been-put-through-a meat-grinder-feeling haze, I said, “What if I try to make the whole experience easy for myself, first and foremost?” One very wise friend retorted (sarcastically) “Then no one would love you!”  Ha!  Where would the badge of courage be?  The martyr to the cause?  I’ve been thinking about that ever since.  I’m sure it’s a malady especially common to women.  (I just noticed the word malady has the word lady in it!)

So here is my first stab at making festival prep easier for myself (sorry for the fuzzy photo):

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Every year I have costumes to iron for a reenactment of the first wedding held in our meeting house over 200 years ago.  People often wonder how Quakers get married, without priests, ministers, or rabbis. In the same way Quakers believe everyone has a direct connection to God, the wedding couple believe they are married by God.

Within a silent worship, the bride and groom take turns saying aloud, “In the presence of God and before these our family and friends, I take thee (bride/groom’s name) to be my wife/husband, promising with Divine assistance to be unto thee a loving and faithful husband/wife so long as we both shall live.”

My younger daughter is pitching in to play a young man in the wedding party (not enough male volunteers).  I could make a joke here having to do with trans-vest-ite, but that would be highly improper.

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Every year I procrastinate the ironing of the costumes until, often, the morning of the festival.  Today, roughly a week early, I ironed them at a leisurely pace!   Incredible.  I always forget how time-consuming the fabrics are to de-wrinkle.  And look what I found, the fastener of the knickers was missing a safety pin.  It’s something I’d likely overlook in my usual rush … a tiny, crazy-making detail.

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I was able to remember to pack bags of safety pins and bobby pins (can never have too many of these), and stockings in my wear-them-to-the-wedding shoes.  How old are these shoes?  Really, don’t ask.

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This seems like a small, ordinary thing, the accomplishment of a task early and with so much foresight.  But in my world, it’s big enough to make me very, very happy.

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by clumpaday

Let Me Get This Off My Chest

Clump #63: Clear papers and books from family room chest.

Below is the chest I had in mind (or what’s underneath): the repository of previous paper purging projects.  (Alliteration!)  Aack!!  So many homeless items in need of decisions.

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Getting rid of our excess paper, for me, is like the children’s story, The Cat In The Hat Comes Back, by Dr. Seuss.  What can go wrong with such a friendly-looking fellow?  (The Cat representing paper in this analogy.)  Come on into the house!

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For those who don’t remember, the good, hard-working brother and sister of the story are left alone, shoveling snow.  Trouble starts when The Cat takes a bath while eating cake.  Ah, that pretty, benign-looking pink frosting leaves a pink ring around the tub.  No problem, The Cat assures the worried children, he can easily get it off.

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“Do you know how he did it? / WITH MOTHER’S WHITE DRESS! /Now the tub was all clean, /But her dress was a mess!”
Out, out, damn spot!  Oops, that’s a different story.  Since I was a kid, I’ve never lost the “Mother-will-come-home-and-we’ll-be-in trouble” anxiety this tale so effectively creates.

The persistent pink stain went from the tub to the dress, to the wall, to Dad’s shoes, to the carpet, the bed, ….

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Well, I won’t spoil the ending.  My point is that the eradication of long-neglected papers feels as dispiriting and futile as The Cat’s stubborn pink spot removal.  From the study, to the floor, to the chest … each time getting smaller and smaller, but still there.

My very own, personal, paper trail of white.  Will it ever be permanently put out of sight??

And — ah, I can breath again — the after photo.  Mothers and others may now enter our home.

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When (not if) I get down to the end of the papers, I will have to have cake in the tub, with pink icing, to celebrate!

by clumpaday

Perplexing Papers

Clump #62:  Organize stubborn paper before filing or shredding.

The September 30-day, 30-clump, 30-post challenge was deeply rewarding.  I built up a momentum I had been missing in the clumping project and in this blog.  I probably couldn’t have maintained it without the help of my older daughter, who has been a dedicated proof-reader and enthusiastic cheerleader.

Here she is this summer, looking out for rocks and other obstacles in a shallow channel between two lakes in Minnesota.  In the same way, she has saved me from writing collisions like dessert for desert — spell-check wouldn’t have warned me — and poor sentence construction that would have led one to believe we keep my mom outside on a patio.

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So what next?  I would really like to keep the pace going.  Before the September challenge, not blogging felt more natural than blogging; so easy to let it slip.  Now the opposite is true.  So I’ll keep going, without feeling badly when I skip a day here and there.

And now to the clump.  This has been a slog.  I wanted to include a picture of the soul-sucking Dementors from Harry Potter to illustrate its effect on me, but the images were too creepy.  It’s as though all the stubborn paper — not easy to shred, recycle, or file — from other areas of the house spilled (I wanted to say vomited) into a pile in the family room.

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The kitchen table is now filled with small piles of alphabetically arranged statements and other important-looking things, ready for a confab with my husband and a final ruling on what to do with them.  A clump for another day!

Some things are impossible to let go of, like the Christmas card (below) sent to me by an old friend this year; it had been sent to her by my long-deceased sister.  The friend was purging her own paper pile, and thought I’d appreciate the vote of confidence my sister had given to my then-boyfriend, now-husband in the written note.  “I keep my fingers crossed!” she wrote.

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Well, the floor in this room is looking a lot better now!  The clumping continues.  Thank you for being with me in spirit and in print!

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by clumpaday

Going The Distance

Clump #61:  Bulldoze through Paper Mountain.

Cue another movie theme song:  the training song from Rocky.  Like Rocky Balboa, I went the distance!  30 days, 30 clumps, and (almost) 30 posts.

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It’s been a day of intense inner paper pile purging.  The really tough stuff.  I’m not as bruised and bloodied as Rocky, but I did get a mean paper cut.  I very much wanted to end this challenge with a big flourish, but I bit off more than I could chew with this clump.  I started clearing papers from one end of the house and hoped to power through to the other, but piles remain for another day.

So I don’t feel as though I won, however, the distance was maintained. I transformed this:

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To this …

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And this area:

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To this:

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Along the way, I was buoyed by finding some inspirational quotes.

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I have a fear of some of those papers, as silly as that sounds.

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But thanks to this blog, this challenge, and all who have encouraged me, I’m getting there!  Gonna Fly Now.

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by clumpaday

One Day More

Clump #60:  Clear out last corner of — formerly — stuffed study.

Picture legions of people with beautiful voices belting the words of the title of this post, or listen for yourself on Youtube.

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I can’t believe it!  Thirty days is almost here.  I never thought I’d say this, but it went by so quickly.  The 30-day, 30-clump, 30-post challenge was exhausting at first, but I’ve gotten into a groove.  How I appreciate everyone who has stuck by and tuned in.  I’ve felt your support!

If not for the project and the support, items like this would have been on the probably-permanent-procrastinate-to-don’t list: programs from my father’s memorial service.  I kept a few and recycled the rest.

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One day more — one pile more.  Before:

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And After:

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AND … now we have a new room in our house!  We can walk around freely on the floor!  Imagine that!

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Tomorrow I have one huge pile in another section of the house.  It’s going to be a big challenge at the end of the challenge.  “Tomorrow we’ll discover what our God in Heaven has in store …”  With any luck it will be a happier ending than in Les Miserables.
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