No-junk Junk Drawers and beginning to address books

 This green dresser is in our living room. The top right drawer holds masks, snagged pacifiers, one pen and pencil, and Bobby pins that I need to get a tray for. Also a phone stand so the kids don't fight over holding my phone. 

The left side and bottom drawer have some rustic boys' art prints I hope to hang someday. They need a new home, this dresser in the living room isn't suitable for them. The remainder of the dresser is 99% empty. Maybe I should move it out of the living room. 

Ta-da! Beautiful bunch of wasted space. Should I move it somewhere more useful or leave it because it suits this room? (Great find, Bridget!) I have the missing drawer pull but can't find the right sized screw to affix it. 

This China cabinet/book hutch has Henry's text books and other reference books including some theology and catechism books in the drawers and cabinets because they are never used (but H wants to keep) and I doubt the kids will try to get them out. 

On top are magnatiles and duplo Legos out of reach. 

The shelves of the hutch are not where I want them. Honestly books (kids books and school books and Henry's books) are hard for me to manage. I keep books I don't even like because I think they're good for the kids to have access to. 

I need to work more on books. I have them in pockets all over the house and that's not ideal.

This is the main space for grab-able kids books (they also have some in their bedrooms). I rotate them often and keep the extras in our storage unit in Woodbridge. I'd like to greatly pare down even with rotating. These rarely get read even with rotating. 

Functionality over fluff

This is going to be mostly a random posting of photos that I hoped to share with my mom about my simplifying journey. I will probably end up having photos of every space, but I will go slowly over time. 

 

Having The Right "Stuff"

Having the right equipment can make all the difference in approaching cleaning tasks. I discovered that I dislike using washcloths to wash dishes unless the dish had almost no food or gunk on it. I much prefer using a dish scrub brush with bristles to wash dishes. I find that washcloths get gunky and funky and never seem to get free of all the food particles you wipe up.

I also prefer to use microfiber cloths for everything. Everything! From washing tables to wiping windows and toilets to drying my face (not with the same cloths!) 

Finally, my last discovery is that I dislike using Clorox pre-moistened wipes. I much prefer to spray the liquid myself and wipe it up with my microfiber cloth. If I need to toss anything, I would rather use a paper towel. If the wipes were larger or thicker, maybe I would feel differently.

On another note, my schedule has been out of whack-- my fault! I kept the kids awake all day yesterday and didn't do my evening routine or my workout. I did go on a walk and did some nominal lunges.

Aside from yesterday (Monday) and Saturday, though, I have maintained my workout habits each day during afternoon naps. Today I took a step too far, though, and attempted a (very good) pilates workout that was just beyond my reach. I feel faint and miserable at the moment. I shall rehydrate and lay down and take a step back tomorrow for my routine. 

Here's a snippet of my favorite reading of the day from Psalm 145. I am loving these Psalms! Somehow they are my least favorite reading in the Mass, but when I am alone with the Psalms they pack a punch and reach my heart most often of all. I think it is the beauty of the verse as opposed to the prose of most Scripture. 

The LORD is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and of great kindness.
The LORD is good to all
and compassionate toward all his works.

House Blessing Monday

Since following a home cleaning routine for the past three months or so, I have learned tricks and truths I would not have believed before. One is that I can go an entire week on one vacuum and mop session.

FlyLady recommends spending one hour "Blessing" your home by vacuuming (10 minutes), mopping (10 minutes), dusting (10 minutes), wiping mirrors and windows (10 minutes), emptying all trash cans (10 minutes) and changing your bedding (10 minutes).

I spend most of my time vacuuming and mopping, and these definitely take more than 10 minutes, but they don't take a whole hour! It's amazing how little time it takes to complete tasks that you put off for dread of pulling out the vacuum and setting up the mop bucket. Try it out for yourself and set the timer to find out that you can indeed vacuum most of your house in under 15 minutes, upstairs and downstairs, too. 

This house blessing hour is meant to be a superficial clean of only the trafficked areas (don't move the couch, although I always DO pull out the dining room chairs). I have found that it "tides me over" while I spend the majority of my cleaning time (only 20 minutes a day, or so) on the deeper cleaning in one of the prescribed "zones" that are trademark FlyLady system.

I will write more about FlyLady as I blog daily, but for today, my message to myself is that I can actually, shockingly to myself, go for the entire week until I vacuum and mop again on the following Monday's home blessing.

I used to rush to take out the vacuum daily, or at least bi-weekly. Now, I let it go as I move on to the deeper cleaning I would naturally neglect. 

Most surprisingly, after completing my Home Blessing on Mondays, I often get a wild idea to host a party during the week, and end up spoiling the nice effect of my cleaning. Rather than waking up the next morning to do a deep clean, I don't waver from my prior weekly plan, and I put off the vacuum and mopping until my next scheduled House Blessing the next Monday. I will sweep and do a cursory job of picking up noticable particles, but I am amazed to see that the once weekly cleaning actually has tide me over in each instance until the next week. 

There's no need to be a perfectionist or be tyrannized by the drive to vacuum every spec every day. Just let it go and be amazed that your floors can last the whole week. 

For the Scripture for today, may I dazzle you with this blessing of blessings! Fr. John Michael Talbot singing his glorious interpretation of Psalm 62:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAiGAyp22JI

Planning for the busy week

This week has been busier than normal in some ways with the start of the regular Fall schedule in full force. MOPS started this week, and my women's ministry program WWP starts next Friday. For a woman without a job or kids in school, my calendar is filling up!

 Much of last week's/this weekend's activity may just be mental business because I know that this coming week will be a marathon.

Tuesday I am hosting the leadership meeting for WWP (our new Parish Women's Bible Study). I am organizing it and am trying to prepare the content of the leaders meeting as well as set the table for the event.

There is a lot of information to cover but I think I am going to go with just the more needful at this time. The two hour meeting will be full with lunch, up to five kids. and all the information I have not even been able to sift through adequately. The biggest question remains whether or not all of the security clearances will have checked out by Friday. I pray to God that they will! It will not be the best scenario for me to have to fill in with babysitting for the first week. Please, God, don't let that be the case!

For the meeting, I will simply run through specifically what will happen for the first two sessions.  The first session is unique, and the second session is like most of the other sessions. Therefore, both should be covered.

I will also ask the leaders to bring one sweet or savory food dish of whatever they choose variety for the first two weeks, and after that, we will ask others to sign up.  I also would like them to bring coffee makers so we can have quick, hot cups of both decaf and regular coffee.

Anything more than that will be too much, in my opinion. I can slowly ask for help with the other areas as the weeks go on and I am able to see what needs to be done.

I will leave this post alone now, after discussing my planning for WWP leadership team meeting on Tuesday. I plan on devising my shopping list now, and need to wait until Monday to purchase so my croissants are fresh!

On to the Mass Readings for today!

One of my favorite phrases from Scripture is the Psalm for this week, Psalm 95

Come, let us bow down in worship;
let us kneel before the LORD who made us.
For he is our God,
and we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides.

I can truly hear the song playing in my heart from my youth. How lovely. It is self explanatory.

Before Bed Routine problems and solutions

I have been listening to a book on tape about Habits. I don't want to post the name of the book here or people may stumble upon my blog while looking up the popular title. It's not a great book, I don't even find it entertaining, but I cannot not finish it because I hate leaving a book unfinished. What a waste of time and energy, I know.

The outcome of this is that I have learned a few ideas from the author and his "case studies." One is that I am in the habit of going to bed when a certain cue occurs. My "cue" is getting really tired. This serves me well in a sense-- when you go to bed when you feel the urge to go to bed, you can often fall asleep quickly and sleep soundly. 

The problem is that this cue and response habit interferes with my new habit formation goals. I want to stay UP after the girls go to bed to pick up and clean the last dregs of the messy day. This usually involves dinner dishes and clean up, picking up the food left under the table and on the kitchen floor, and retidying the living room toys and books. The last part is simple, I could do it in 5 minutes, and I might, if I didn't also have the dining room and kitchen hanging over me. 

My evening routine is supposed to look like this, according to my new routine goals: 

Before Bed Routine:

• Dishes after dinner
• Girls' Bath/Brush teeth/Books/Bedtime
• Shower for me
• Set out clothes for tomorrow
• Pampering- bath/moisturize/etc.

What happens, though, is usually:

• Eat Dinner
• Maybe bath
• E. bed
• Books w/ A
• A bed
• Juliet Bed after brushing my teeth but usually not even getting around to washing my face (Gasp! Beauty Rule #1!)

According to some principles I've considered from the new book, maybe I should make life a little easier for myself by doing the dishes right away after dinner, rather than lingering and putting E to bed first. She may be crying and tired and not wanting to be set down, but I just need to load everything in the dish washer and pick up bits of food from floors and counters before moving on to baths or anything else. A. is quite a good helper if I can convince her to use her small hand broom or put silverware in the dishwasher. 

I think I will put my new routine in action today. Here's the chain of events. If I don't have greasy dishes to deal with after both girls are in bed, it is easier for me to tidy the living room. After that short period of tidying I may be inspired enough to keep going through the rest of the routine. 

The routine is important to me because your habits are what you default to when things are out of whack. It's your auto-pilot. Don't you want to have a gold-standard auto-pilot? That means you don't have to work or push yourself once you are in the habit, it comes naturally!

I like to go to bed with a nice clean, moisturized face and minty teeth and clean feet and soft, clean pajamas. But it doesn't happen unless I stay up for more than 30 minutes after my kid activities are done. 

I will let you know in a week or so how things are going with the quick after dinner clean up before moving into another room.

Flying through my house

One the most important habits I established lately is my house cleaning routine, in the format promoted by FlyLady. She suggests a light, extremely regular cleaning routine, with a general superficial cleaning once a week for an hour or so, and spend another hour throughout the course of the week on a more ambitious, thorough cleaning of one "zone" of the house.

This week was the kitchen. Last week was the living room and dining room. Next week is the main bathroom. It seems the bathroom zone keeps coming around week after week as time flies by! Last month when I was cleaning that zone, I spent an hour or more over the course of a few days scrubbing mildew from the grout on the bathroom floor with a toothbrush. YES! I did that. I cannot believe the new me.

It feels grand to tackle a problem area that I have noticed for years without ever addressing. The floor in the bathroom really bothered me. This time around, I may work on recaulking the tub. It's one of the tasks I really should request of the landlord. There is mold growing on the caulking and it is stripping away from the wall. Apparently this allows water under the tub which can damage the floor.

I actually have not completed my thorough cleaning of the kitchen for the week, mainly because it is always pretty clean. As I have been cycling through FlyLady about three times now, the daily tasks she assigns are not as applicable to me. Last month, for example, I soaked and scrubbed the stove top and knobs and have rarely used them since, due the extreme heat in August when I loathe turning on any appliance in the kitchen. Therefore, when that task rolled around, I promptly ignore it. I am due, though, for another declutter in that zone. I am considering waiting for my parents to visit later this month, as it will give my mom and I something fun to do.

Oh, yes! I did fix one item that I had been struggling with for the decade I have lived at this house, and countless women have suffered while living here. I sprayed our cabinet lazy susan with WD-40 so that it actually turns and opens with less tension. Not perfect, but much better.

Our handyman/friend also fixed our Kitchen light that I had compromised by letting the plug tubing get too close to the burner. Between that and my brother's hot water kettle that had the same problem, I had been stressed about the more real threat of kitchen fire. Both issues are now resolved and our smoke detector is quite sensitive in the kitchen. These are of great relief to me as a mother of two in a three story house with questionable egress in the case of fire. I do plan on investing in fire safety supplies once I determine exactly what we should have. I am thinking of escape ladders, masks of some sort, and fire-repellant blankets if they exist.

As for my afternoon routine and habit,  I continued the course of working out by utilizing a youtube Pilates video. I really enjoyed the workout. It was varied and I could feel it working and I feel it even this morning, though the soreness is not debilitating. I may even walk over to the gym and cancel my never-used membership. I have put that off far too long.

Yesterday was also my brother's birthday so I made two desserts- a turtle brownie, and a yellow cake with cool whip frosting and pink sugar sprinkles with ten candles on top! We had barbecue chicken with the delicious (seriously delicious) sriracha and garlic barbecue sauce from Trader Joe's and hamburgers on potato roll buns. The girls and I walked to Safeway to buy a balloon bouquet-- most of the balloons made it home. It's a bad idea to go on a long walk with balloons when windy outside.

I will leave you with a reflection on today's Mass readings from Roman's 8:

Brothers and sisters:
We know that all things work for good for those who love God,
who are called according to his purpose. 
For those he foreknew he also predestined
to be conformed to the image of his Son,
so that he might be the firstborn
among many brothers.
And those he predestined he also called;
and those he called he also justified;
and those he justified he also glorified.



This shows me that when God wants and calls a person, he provides all of the necessary work and effort and graces for that person to be conformed to the image of his Son, Jesus, and therefore to be glorified. It starts in our Baptism and ends in our glorification in Heaven with Christ. But it is a process and God both initiates and acts with us and within us to reach the end desired by both God and self-- seeing Christ in our glorified body-- the Beatific Vision.

Habits- you are what you do

My life has changed radically from the time I initially blogged at this address. I was not consistent and you will notice large swaths of time missing from my posts.

Now I am married, have two daughter, and stay at home with them full time. My life has changed, and I have had the opportunity to "remake" myself in certain ways. Key to change is altering my habits. 

I have much to say on this topic in many areas of my life and I intend to blog daily to provide updates on attempts at better habit-formation. While I don't have the time this morning to draft, edit, and publish a blog post, I decided to provide one update on a habit I hope to build upon this month: getting back in shape.

I used to work out by lifting light weights prior to having my first daughter. I have seldom been back to the gym since. I don't intend to return to the gym, and most workouts take too much time for me at the moment. Therefore, I am going to be using youtube videos to usher me back into shape.

I intend to use 10-12 minute high intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts a few days a week, and pilates youtube videos on other days of the week. My aim is to do five days a week. I cannot suffer more than 20 minutes of workout a day, so I will find short videos and try to build up a good repertoire to choose from. I think it will be fun for the girls to participate and watch as well.

So my goals for the month of September and the habits I hope to form are: 1) workout daily or almost daily and 2) blog daily or almost daily even with the most mundane updates on my progress and life work.

This warrants many posts, but I will also be continuing to follow the FlyLady routine modified to my needs. I have already begun this habit almost two months ago and it is well underway although I am not as thorough as I would like to be. I shall provide more insight into how this has changed my life as the months progress and as my home continues to improve. 

Take care, and I will leave you with a portion of today's Mass readings in Luke Chapter 5:

After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon,
"Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch."
Simon said in reply,
"Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing,
but at your command I will lower the nets."
When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish
and their nets were tearing."

To me, this shows that it is always God who gives all bounty and gifts. That's probably not the true message of the passage and I don't claim that it is, but that is my takeaway. We can go about fruitlessly but when we hasten to obey God, everything can change instantaneously.

Blessed are . . . —Matthew 5:3-11

From My Utmost for His Highest July 25th

"When we first read the statements of Jesus, they seem wonderfully simple and unstartling, and they sink unnoticed into our subconscious minds. For instance, the Beatitudes initially seem to be merely soothing and beautiful precepts for overly spiritual and seemingly useless people, but of very little practical use in the rigid, fast-paced workdays of the world in which we live. We soon find, however, that the Beatitudes contain the “dynamite” of the Holy Spirit. And they “explode” when the circumstances of our lives cause them to do so. When the Holy Spirit brings to our remembrance one of the Beatitudes, we say, “What a startling statement that is!” Then we must decide whether or not we will accept the tremendous spiritual upheaval that will be produced in our circumstances if we obey His words. That is the way the Spirit of God works. We do not need to be born again to apply the Sermon on the Mount literally. The literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount is as easy as child’s play. But the interpretation by the Spirit of God as He applies our Lord’s statements to our circumstances is the strict and difficult work of a saint.

The teachings of Jesus are all out of proportion when compared to our natural way of looking at things, and they come to us initially with astonishing discomfort. We gradually have to conform our walk and conversation to the precepts of Jesus Christ as the Holy Spirit applies them to our circumstances. The Sermon on the Mount is not a set of rules and regulations— it is a picture of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is having His unhindered way with us."

Are You "Trying" Hard Enough or Too Hard for your Salvation? Two Perspectives

One of my favorite people in the world is Amy Grant. I have never met her, but I would love to. I have never questioned the message of any of her music, and it has been meaningful and beneficial to me throughout my life. Amy Grant is releasing her first new album in ten years, and I am very excited to gain once again from her wisdom.

Today I listened closely to the lyrics in her new song, "Don't Try So Hard," and I am curious how the Christian community will respond. I know a lot of individuals who strive and stress themselves out in the name of pursuing sainthood. This is where the age old idea of "religious/pharisaical guilt" comes in, trying to appease a demanding, never-satisfied God and continually clear your soul of sin's stains.

Other Christians will tell, much as Amy Grant does in this song, such individuals to simply relax, and that their sins are forgiven by God's past sacrifice for all sins for all time, so "don't try so hard" because God's mercy and grace wash over us and we should just rest and trust in God's mercy.

I think that an overly rigorous approach to sin and proving yourself "just" by your own repentance, confession, and behavior modification is to be avoided, because it reinforces a sense of self-righteousness and working/earning one's spotless state before God. These people should listen to the message of Amy Grant's newest song.

On the other hand, the presumptuous people who forget that Jesus absolutely did try so hard for us to the point of torture and crucifixion, should probably ignore the message of this song and instead read the book of James to kick them into action rather than sitting back and resting on the sacrifice and pain and suffering that Jesus willingly endured on our behalf.

Certainly, an interesting tension exists, because Christ did successfully "try so hard" on our behalf so that we do not have to; in fact we cannot try hard enough. So "trying hard" is a futile and dangerous slippery slope to earning our own salvation. However, we must also imitate our Lord and our God, Jesus Christ, by working hard to show God's mercy and love to others, to root out sin in our own lives, and to grow in the virtues listed in the Beatitudes.

What side are you most inclined to take in hearing this song? I am inclined to support the message of the song, although I know others who will fight tooth and nail that we need to "try harder," but I think that is because they have invested much of their life and time in (trying to) approve themselves in God's eyes, although His greatest pleasure comes from us calling him 'Abba' and placing our hearts in his hand.

Emptying and Filling

"Even the weakest Christian can experience the power of Christ, the Son of God, when he is willing to "let go." But any effort to "hang on" to the least bit of our own power will only diminish the life of Jesus in us. We have to keep letting go, and slowly but surely, the great full life of God will invade us, penetrating every part. Then Jesus will have complete and effective dominion in us, and people will take notice that we have been with Him."
- Oswald Chambers

Mary of Bethany

"...While he was in Bethany,^(F) reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head..."^(G)

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow

Click on image to go to the Amy Winehouse Version of the Song, my fave!

 Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow

Tonight you're mine completely
You give you love so sweetly
Tonight the light of love is in your eyes
But will you love me tomorrow?

Is this a lasting treasure
Or just a moment's pleasure?
Can I believe the magic of your sighs?
Will you still love me tomorrow?

Tonight with words unspoken
You say that I'm the only one
But will my heart be broken
When the night meets the morning sun?

I'd like to know that your love
Is love I can be sure of
So tell me now, and I won't ask again
Will you still love me tomorrow?

(INSTRUMENTAL)

So tell me now, and I won't ask again
Will you still love me tomorrow?
Will you still love me tomorrow?
Will you still love me tomorrow?

I could not disagree more with the underlying philosophy of this beautiful song (which I really enjoy). It stands in stark contrast with the following:

SHAKESPEARE SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Chanel, Who Else?

^{I love THE MESSAGE translation of the Bible. Here's from Amos chapter 5:
 
4} “I can’t stand your religious meetings.
    I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions.
I want nothing to do with your religion projects,
    your pretentious slogans and goals.
I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes,
    your public relations and image making.
I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.
    When was the last time you sang to me?
Do you know what I want?
    I want justice—oceans of it.
I want fairness—rivers of it.
    That’s what I want. That’s all I want.

^25-27 “Didn’t you, dear family of Israel, worship me faithfully for forty years in the wilderness, bringing the sacrifices and offerings I commanded? How is it you’ve stooped to dragging gimcrack statues of your so-called rulers around, hauling the cheap images of all your star-gods here and there? Since you like them so much, you can take them with you when I drive you into exile beyond Damascus.” God’s Message, God-of-the-Angel-Armies.

On Forgiveness

From a blog I found on facebook:

"A good marriage is indeed the union of two good forgivers." --Ruth Bell Graham
 
"So what is forgiveness? Guinness argues that forgiveness is “not a virtue, a merit, or a heroic act…[but] simply treating others as God has treated us and passing on to others what we have received so much more generously than we could ever give.”

Can you really forgive without acknowledging what you’ve been forgiven? Can we really hope to offer grace to others without understanding the grace that we are offered through Jesus Christ? There is a humility and an ownership that comes from recognizing our own shortcomings. If you stop to think about it, you can see that God (the All-Loving, Holy, Creator of the universe) forgiving you is a bigger deal than you forgiving anyone anything. After all, you aren’t holy and you aren’t all-loving. And neither am I. Yet He forgives us. How then can we justify not forgiving others? I love the parable Jesus told about the man who was forgiven some astronomical debt, but proceeded to choke and then imprison a debtor of his own who owed him very little. We may be horrified by the hypocrisy, but we do the same thing. Because we have been forgiven an astronomical debt, and yet we harden our hearts and refuse to forgive. The parable should illuminate our own hypocrisy and point us to our responsibility, as followers of Christ, to forgive.

And it sounds limitless, doesn’t it? That’s because it is. May I be sober-minded and rely on Christ in me, to forgive any and every offense. Clearly, no one could do this in their own strength. It’s laughable. It’s utter nonsense. But as Paul wrote, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13 NIV 1984).

I want to wear a necktie for a plaid-themed party. How? Here's some images

I don't love any of them, but this is how a popular TV show (that I will never watch!) portrays the main characters at a prep school.

I love my house

God, my Personal Trainer: "Drop and give me 10!"

When we need healing, we often go to prayer seeking God's quick action as a physician and surgeon.

However, in my own faith experience, when I go to God in prayer about an area of my life that needs healing and wholeness, God acts much like a fitness trainer at the gym rather than a physician in treating the problem directly.

For example, when my knees hurt from running, a physical fitness instructor tells me to strengthen my quadriceps, hamstrings, ankles and calves. In turn, the strengthening of all of these other muscle groups allows my knees to more properly carry my weight distribution as intended.

When I go to God in prayer for certain issues, it is often true in my life that He speaks to me and grants insight and grace and discipline in other unrelated areas. Once all the other regions of my body are toned, then the broken, bloodied, and disordered bits seem to both heal and be more rightly ordered relative to the rest of my body systems.

When I turn my emotions to God in prayer, He often teaches me about discipline, order, faithfulness, and service in charity. After all of these other areas are strengthened and toned, it seems that somehow my emotional issues are healed.

Of course, healing and growing are cyclical processes, never ending. But it strikes me that the things I pray for often lead God to change me in seemingly unrelated ways I don't immediately equate with an answer to prayer. But like strengthening complementary muscles, the original issue is also treated with God's touch of grace.

Wedding Feast at Cana

"Do not fear Him (God). He is terrible in His greatness, awful in His sublimity, but infinitely merciful. He has made Himself like unto us from love and rejoices with us. He is changing the water into wine that the gladness of the guests may not be cut short. He is expecting new guests, He is calling new ones unceasingly for ever and ever...there they are bringing new wine. do you see they are bringing the vessels.

"Something glowed in Alyosha's heart, something filled it till it ached, tears of rapture rose from his soul... He stretched out his hands, uttered a cry and woke up."

- The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky