Stop the Glorification of Busy

As a college senior I worked two part-time jobs in addition to student teaching.  Hearing fellow students complain about the stress of student teachng without the added workload of the other jobs, I admit I felt superior. When my kids were small I took pride in juggling work, home and volunteer duties.  I wore the bags under my eyes from sleep lost in order to allow more work hours into each day like dark, puffy badges of honor.

Busyness becomes a god we sacrifice far too much to.  Our health, our families, our friendships and our peace of mind all suffer when we continually push ourselves beyond what is reasonable.  We develop tunnel vision looking only towards our goal and missing the blessings that surround us every day.

There is danger in the pride that comes from living life as though we can do it all on our own.  One day we look up and realize that is exactly how we are doing life–alone.

We will be much happier when we slow down,  doing one task at a time and giving it our full attention.  We will find more satisfaction in the work. Then to be truly happy, once that task is finished we should put it away and turn our attention–our full attention–to the people in our lives.

Mama Kat prompt: What were you writing about a year ago?  Something I still need to remind myself!

Making Do

 Barbara Brackman's Material Culture

My Happy Sewing Place

Several years ago I came across these vintage promotional items on the internet.  The button is from WWI, and the booklet came out during the Second World War.  Materials and goods were scarce during wartime, and people drastically altered their lifestyles as a matter of patriotism.  It is easy to romanticize those days, but the sacrifices people made were real.

Times aren’t nearly so bad for me in present day Topeka, KS; still, these images speak to me.  Around the time I stumbled across the images above, we started to go through old photographs to cull pictures for the many “memory board” activities that preceded my son’s high school graduation.  My kids began to point out how many of their childhood photos showed me in clothing I still wear today.  They give me a hard time about the twenty-year-old items in my wardrobe, but it doesn’t bother me.  I don’t care much about fashion as long as I look presentable; and if I am home painting or gardening even presentable becomes negotiable.  Thumbing through those photos, an idea for belt tightening hit me.  While the kids were all three in college or dental school,  I followed the philosophy behind the WWI button:  I am making my old clothes do.

I was able to do this because:

I have always believed in buying quality.  So, what is in my closet is well constructed from reliable, natural fabrics.

I do not follow trends.  I choose things that have simple lines and classic design which keeps them from becoming dated too easily.

I personally don’t place a high value on fashion.  Some people express themselves in what they wear which would make this choice harder.  I express myself in art, writing and decorating my home.  For me clothes are pretty much just functional.

I hate to shop.

For the past five years I have been embracing this lifestyle.  It fits well in my overall life-simplifying plan. I play little games with myself to keep it light-hearted, choosing one garment at a time to wear to death.  As I write this I am wearing the current target, a blue striped Ralph Lauren shirt circa 1991.  The cotton is worn, soft and comfortable, the collar and cuffs gently frayed at their edges.  Its like an old friend I will miss when it is gone…   just as I will eventually miss the peach shirt that steps into replace it or the lavender that will replace the peach.

I wonder about the sense of gratitude I now feel for the literal shirt on my back. With each garment that passes to the rag bag, I feel a sense of satisfaction that it has served its purpose well. Would I even notice my old favorites slipping away, if I had not made the commitment to be conscious about fully using what I have before buying more?  I suspect not.  Five years ago I thought I was making a sacrifice, but instead I find myself content and more aware of simple everyday blessings.  In the end, making do has been no sacrifice at all.

The Spice of Life

Back to school can be a very nostolgic time for mom's of adult children.  I find myself reading posts written as my kids were heading off on fall adventures all over again.  This one conveys the nervous excitement of sending my eldest off to dental school, and the desire to do what I could to be of some use.

Over the course of the next several weeks we will be helping our first born set up her first apartment.  The dental school has made it abundantly clear that their program is meant to be a full-time pursuit, and they don’t anticipate the students will be working jobs concurrently with their studies.  This means her living expenses will be covered by student loans for the next four years.

I hate debt, so the thought of borrowing just to live makes me shudder.  I have been looking for all the ways we can help her limit spending as she establishes her own little home.  After all, we really have more than enough.  So, we have been shuffling furniture, kitchen supplies, sheets and other sundry items her way.

This week I hit the pantry and the spice cabinet to stock her non-perishable items and staples.  As I packed item after item into bags I had to smile at the thought of her using the things.  I mixed spices into old shakers to give her the blends she likes when her dad grills burgers or I make Grandma Susie’s spaghetti sauce.

 I sighed as I filled Boy Scout and Girl Scout tins with flour and sugar, and wondered how those Scouts could be heading out into the world so soon.  Has it been so long since they sold me these tins of popcorn and mints?

The spice cabinet was filled with several sugar sprinkle containers half to a quarter full of the same kinds of sprinkles.  When I worked at the church I had the children decorate holiday cookies for Ronald Mc Donald House, and the project called for many shakers  for all the helping hands.  I suppose last Christmas is the last Christmas for that tradition as well.  So, I combined like sprinkles into single containers, then washed and filled the empties with spices for the new apartment.

So many times in life the new brings with it an ending to the old.  In the pouring and filling of containers, I fought periodic waves of sadness at the passing of what had been.  For the most part, I felt the anticipation and expectation for what was about to come.  After all, I told myself as I measured the oregano and black pepper, change is the spice of life.

Posted on 

It's the Little Things

I was puttering in the kitchen a minute ago when a potted plant outside caught my eye.  The pesky squirrels have been busy gathering walnuts from the tree above and ground near by the plant.  In their frenzy they knocked the plant over.  Annoyed at the interruption I headed outside to set it right.  
As I turned back towards the house I was greeted by the darting and hovering of a tiny hummingbird visiting the patch of impatiens blooming at my feet. Had those squirrels, my arch nemisizes and declared enemies, not bumped into the plant and tipped it over I would not have stepped outside at the precise minute the hummingbird arrived.  I stood quietly for a matter of minutes while the hummingbird tasted the sweetness of each pink flower in the bed, flitted on to sample the plants filling the patio, and then headed out to the garden for a dessert of pumpkin blossom nectar before journeying on to brighten someone else's day.
I have to thank those dog-gone squirrels for helping me shift my focus from the annoyances I see in the distance to all the positive little things that surround me in abundance.

Ten Things of Thankful

Nature

Particularly the hummingbird

And the squirrels--though I recognize that they still believe they have squatters' rights to my garden, and we will tangle again

The anticipation of watching tomatoes grow riper on the vine (slowly) each day

The lesson of patience taught in a garden

Blessed rain that has fallen on our parched earth this week

The deep and restful sleep that can be had during a rainstorm

The tinges of orange beginning to show on the pumpkins

A break in the intense heat and humidity

And the delight found in a plant that unexpectedly blooms in hearts

The Shared Bedroom

There is something to be said for sharing a bedroom with a sibling.  Negotiation skills are forged within limited space.  A person learns to share. Courtesy for another’s needs and feelings emerges in the give and take of how loudly music should be played and what time the lights need to be dimmed.

A shared bedroom is no place to nurse a grudge.  A person can only tolerate a line of masking tape down the center of the room for so long before realizing amends must be made.

Not only does sharing a room with a brother or sister teach a person to consider the feelings of another human being, it also gives ample opportunity to practice asserting your own needs in an appropriate way as well.  You must learn to stand your ground, or at least your floor space, effectively without flaring conflict.

Shared space encourages strong relationships.  Living in close proximity to another person you witness their ups and downs.  You’re given an intimate view of their dreams, successes, and failures as well as how they cope with each.  Before you realize it, you find yourself pulling for the person who has driven you mad for so long.  You feel real empathy for him when he is down and take real joy in his victories.

Our wisdom and our diplomatic prowess develop over time through what we experience in daily living.  One thing I know for sure, when the leaders of the world gather to make decisions that affect us all, I want to be represented by someone who shared a bedroom with a sibling growing up.


Written in 2013.  Even more pertinent today.

The Old Emerson Fan

This ancient Emerson Electric fan was old as dirt when my husband and I bought it for ten dollars at an auction in 1985 the first summer we were married.  He thought he could rewire it and get it working again; I thought it was cute.  When we got it home, we were both surprised to discover that it ran like a top as soon as we plugged it in, and it cooled a room better than the brand new fan we had purchased just days before.  That new fan didn’t survive to make the move to our current home, but the little Emerson still gets used every day in the summer.  It’s a perfect reminder that we don’t actually need fancy or excess in our lives.  Reliability, simplicity, contentment—of these things I am a big fan.

The Quiet Center

Mama Kat

This week Mama Kat asks what is your favorite time of day.  My favorite time is any time I can be quiet and focused, something I wrote about in 2011.

Stylized view of Point Zero in the center of Paris. 

Find your own quiet center and write from that to the world. ~Sarah Orne Jewett

Raising a family it is hard to find quiet anywhere, let alone your own quiet center.  But quiet is essential.  You must spend time in quiet to know what you think and where you stand on issues.  Quiet is required for prayer and strengthening your faith.  And dreams can not take form in a cacophony.

I started this blog in an effort to find my own quiet center, and the writing has helped me do just that.  It is not that I have experienced an epiphany about what lies at my core, but the writing quite literally has helped me put into words what it is that I value most.

My quiet center has three main components.  It is being in the place I love doing what I love with those I love.  I have a greater than average need to be home.  Much as I love to travel, there is no place I have encountered that could ever permanently lure me away from home.  The  Kansas plains, calm and steady, are where I am meant to be.  My little stone house on a quiet little street appeals to me more than the Biltmore Estate ever could.

I find my quiet center in creating… whether chopping vegetables while making dinner for my family, digging in the garden, piddling with an art project or writing here, I need to create.  It makes me happy.

Life is too short to spend with people who you drain you.  I have learned to let go of relationships that do nothing to build me up.  Time is short as it is; I intend to spend as much of mine as possible with the people I love.

May we all find our own quiet center and spend much time there.  We will leave the world a better place if we do.

TToT: Kansas State Flower

Last weekend we traveled to Western Kansas and then to Oklahoma.  Dotting the shoulders of the highways were bunches of sunflowers; not the designer dinner-plate-sized ones seen at the florist, but the smaller ones of my childhood.  In fact, I couldn't remember seeing such plentiful patches of these sunshiny blooms since I was a child.

I had begun to wonder if this resurgence was a natural phenomenon in response to the end of the drought that has plagued the state for the better part of the last decade or if the highway department had a hand in it.  When we crossed the Kansas/Oklahoma state line and the sunflowers disappeared, I felt I had my answer.

Google directed me to an article on KDOT's plan to seed highway shoulders with native flowers and grasses in 2012.  There was a movement at that time to return original prairie plant life to the roadsides.  In this way the state would save money on the maintenance and mowing of grass.  Wildlife habitats would be restored, and though the article didn't mention it, the beauty of the plains would be enhanced.

Reading the article I couldn't help but think how many of our attempts at progress fall short in the end.  I grew up in the era when these very spaces were replanted in grass that was kept groomed and civilized.  The result was a uniform look no matter where you were in the state, and to some degree even the country.  This blandness was retained at a good deal of cost and effort.  

I wonder if the biggest cost could it have been our regional identities.  I knew as a kid that the sunflower was our state flower.  I saw sunflowers along side the roads and scattered in the fields.  It was easy for me to imagine those who came to Kansas before me watching their golden heads turning to follow the sunshine as they soldered on across the plains.

I like the unruly grasses and flowers that bob and sway in the Kansas wind.  The countryside seems softer, more like home than it did when it was manicured and bland.

I take comfort in the knowledge that we don't have to try so hard.  That there is wisdom in the original plan, and nature can most often heal itself if we will just stay out of the way.

TToT

I'm feeling thankful for my home state, for the prairie, the grasses, the flowers, the wind, the wide open spaces, and the chance to be out in them this week.

Kansas View

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/14785921/?claim=2vve2cjquvb">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

Favorite Summer View

On a lazy summer afternoon we drive back roads and study the open spaces of the Kansas countryside.  Somehow my senses become super charged in these spaces.  The grasses pop like individual brush strokes painting the land with golden highlights.  Vision is not interrupted by a single thing before my eye reaches the horizon line. The absolute stillness puts my ears on high alert.  The call of every bird or tiny insect can be heard with an intensity never realized in town.  The air carries the scent of grass and earth.  Even the sunshine has a scent I catch on the breeze.  Standing on a crest looking out over the gently rolling land I feel my heart rate slow, feel stress melt away.  I am reminded once more that though some might say there is nothing here, the opposite is true.  Everything lies in this space.  The answers to all of my questions can be found unadulterated by things and noise here in the Kansas countryside.

Modern Day Mulberry Bush

Throw-back Thursday

Throw-back Thursday from a previous July.  I used to be part of a William Morris Project.  Each week I would tackle a project meant to make my home an expression of what I considered beautiful or useful.

My oldest daughter embroidered a set of dishtowels for me.  There is a towel for each day of the week featuring a graphic for the housekeeping task that was traditionally assigned to that day.

The images are from the 1940s and include a housewife doing what was considered women's work at the time.  A child of the 1960s, I have always been more spontaneous than the old Mulberry Bush song would allow.  My spontaneity is rarely confused with efficiency, however, so over time I have taken a second glance at the wisdom of routine.

I decided to take a look at the lyrics of the children's song Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush to see what else I might be able to adapt to my modern day use.  Below the lyrics are italicized and my thoughts of how I might tweak the original task to fit today's lifestyle are written beneath each stanza.

Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (Traditional)

This is the way we wash our clothes, wash our clothes, wash our clothes.

This is the way we wash our clothes so early Monday morning.

The washing, folding and putting away can pretty much fill an entire day, especially in the summer when using the outdoor clothes line.  Even so, confining the work to Monday freed up an incredible amount of time during the rest of the week.

This is the way we iron our clothes, iron our clothes, iron our clothes.

This is the way we iron our clothes so early Tuesday morning.

Yes, Tuesday will be a good day for ironing.  It shouldn''t take all day, however. So, I can fit in a grocery and dairy run.

 This is the way we scrub the floor, scrub the floor, scrub the floor.  This is the way we scrub the floor, so early Wednesday morning.

I will use Wednesdays for housecleaning.

This is the way we mend our clothes, mend our clothes, mend our clothes.  This is the way we mend our clothes so early Thursday morning.

Can't mend clothes all day.  Can use this day to mend relationships through communications, mend things in need of repair around the house, take the car to the shop and do general upkeep inside and out.

This is the way we sweep the floor, sweep the floor, sweep the floor.  This is the way we sweep the floor so early Friday morning.

Fridays are a good day to make a "clean sweep" of the house putting away things that have collected as clutter during the week and going through the mountains of paper that come into a home. A literal sweeping of the floors is also a very good idea.

This is the way we bake our bread, bake our bread, bake our bread.  This is the way we bake our bread so early Saturday morning.

Saturday is a good day for baking, menu planning, cleaning the frig and all things food related.

This is the way we get dressed up, get dressed up, get dressed up.  This is the way we get dressed up so early Sunday morning.

We have always used our Sundays for church and family.  Still, I need to do a better job of saving Sunday as "a day of rest".  Relaxing mind and body renews the soul and helps ready you to "go round the mulberry bush" all over again next week.

Here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush.  Here we go round the mulberry bush so early in the morning.



When I wrote this piece four summers ago, I was pretty good about maintaining this schedule each week.  Then I changed jobs, my routine was disrupted and I fell out of synch with my daily plan.  I remember how productive I felt having a predictable routine though and I am anxious to get back into some of these habits.

La Cuisine du Professeur (Or The Professor's Kitchen)

finished...

http://www.mamakatslosinit.com

Last Christmas my husband and I went to North Carolina to see our daughter le professeur.  She began a five year PhD program last fall, and is studying to become a French professor.  Early on we discovered she could purchase far more living space than she could rent for a comparable amount. She immersed herself in a crash course on home buying, and took possession of her new condo just days before we arrived for the holiday.  

Her dream for while we were there was to convert the 1980s kitchen into something that looked more like Provence.  We had one week to move everything that could not be transferred in one of her many trips across town in her Honda Civic; celebrate Christmas; set up a new household; and renovate a kitchen.  Seven days....seems a little tight. But le professeur is not faint of heart, and we soon agreed to try.

 (Apologies for the shadowy photos.  My camera died almost as soon as we arrived.  So, I had to use my phone to document the process. It is an interior room with little natural light, and it rained the whole time we were there. The result was shadows any time of day.)

The kitchen came with laminate countertops and laminate, wood trimmed cabinet fronts.  It practically screamed 1983. The upper cabinets on the wall with the sink had worked themselves loose over the years.  My husband was looking at them deciding how he could reinforce them when he realized they were not anchored into studs.  At this le professeur grinned knowing there was no way her father would leave her with improperly hung cabinets.  It took about five minutes to clear that wall.

She chose a shade of gray with just the slightest hint of blue and painted the walls.

The laminate countertops were really simple to remove.  They were replaced with slabs of reclaimed marble that once graced the walls of some public space during the fist half of the twentieth century.  

We googled stone cutters in the area and talked a couple into stopping by to make a few cuts in the marble early one morning before their work day.  It was noisy, but blessedly brief so we didn't make enemies of the neighbors the very week she moved in!

My job was painting the cabinet fronts with a special laminate spray paint by Rustoleum. We added hardware for the visual effect more so than actual use.  

None of us had tiled a wall before.  We watched a YouTube video or two, and le professeur was ready to dive in.  Her father tried to butt in a couple times, but was sent packing.  She tiled the backsplash completely on her own.

The cabinets were replaced by wood shelves.  We needed extremely strong brackets to hold the shelves and the weight of all that would be stored on them. The home improvement stores didn't have anything in stock that could handle the load.  My husband sketched a C shaped bracket that had the right dimensions and would attach to both an upper and lower shelf.  Off he went into the countryside to meet the man who would create exactly what we needed as well as offer tales of government deception, conspiracies and advice for dealing with all that goes bump in the night.  It was really more than he bargained for, but by golly, the brackets are amazing. 

These boards once served as floor joists in some old warehouse.  She chose them for their aged, worn character.

We found a pendant light at the Habitat ReStore, replacing the glass shade with an antique shade that was also at the ReStore.

We set her kitchen items on the countertops and hung things on her walls.  Since we have been  there, she found a Persian carpet runner that she put down the center of the room.

Le professeur got her Provincial kitchen that week, and somehow we finished in time to celebrate New Year's.