April 19, 2015 · 4 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags:

Here’s one of the reasons why there was such a mess in the closet where my kids used to keep their school supplies—that big heap of stuff on the floor was full of old backpacks and sports bags. Rather than throwing the well-worn ones away at the end of the school year, the kids just tossed them back into the closet. Then they sank to the bottom of the heap, never to be seen again.
 

Two rows of old backpacks on brown carpet. 

Of course, as the responsible adult I should have made sure the old stuff was gone when I bought new school supplies every year. Learned my lesson there: Not paying attention to what goes out (or doesn’t) when new stuff comes into the house equals clutter! But all’s well that ends well—the closet is back to life. No more Bermuda Triangle for backpacks here!

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

Last year I bought a crystal necklace that became a favorite string of “worry beads,” as I described in a previous Nurturing Thursday post. Sadly, all my fidgeting with the necklace had its inevitable result this morning when the string broke and the beads started falling all over my desk!
 

Necklace of crystal beads with a broken plastic string. 

The necklace can easily be fixed of course, but having it suddenly fall apart like that was kind of discombobulating. Then I thought that maybe I should look at it as giving me a message that all is well, and there’s no need to worry about anything today!

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

Today’s world is far busier than at any time in the past. Everywhere we look, we’re faced with many choices to make and complicated details to track and organize. It’s no wonder that so many people lead lives of constant stress, always worrying that there’s too much going on and no good ways to keep up with it all. Making wrong choices, losing track of things, and not getting enough done seem inevitable.

Of course, anxiety only makes everything worse; but if we don’t feel in control of our daily lives, then how can we get those worries to go away? And until the worries go away, how can we feel more confident? Many of us struggle with this dilemma. It can be especially challenging for people with disabilities, whose needs are by definition (under the social model of disability) not adequately supported in present-day society.

Autism, in particular, often is associated with anxiety. Definitions of autism generally mention self-calming repetitive behaviors. Many people view such behaviors not as an intrinsic part of their autism, however, but as symptoms of anxiety caused by living in a world that can feel overwhelming and extremely difficult to navigate, with information often coming too fast to process.

I believe that it’s helpful for any of us, whether or not we have a disability, to keep in mind that we do have the power to change our personal environment. Even though we can’t control much of what happens in the world, we can create peaceful, nurturing homes and workspaces that lovingly support us as we go through our days. We can awaken our power by making small positive changes to our routines and surroundings, which reinforce and build on each other as time passes.

When I feel stressed about something I’m trying to do, I stop and ask myself: Does this need to be done now, or at all? Are there more comfortable ways to do it? Should I ask for help instead of trying to do it myself? Sometimes anxiety makes us forget that we have other options; but in reality, there are almost always better alternatives, if we take enough time to discover them. Rather than letting ourselves get overwhelmed, we can step back from the situation for a moment and consider ways to simplify it.
 

April is Autism Acceptance Month. Visit autismacceptancemonth.com for more information.

April 12, 2015 · 4 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags:

On Saturday morning, which was sunny and bright, almost everybody in my subdivision mowed their lawn for the first time this season. While my husband was busy mowing, I dug out some weeds in the flowerbeds. There wasn’t as much spring cleaning to do in the garage this year because we cleaned out a lot of clutter last spring (yay). Still, my husband noticed and got rid of an old extension cord that we never used anymore; and I made the unwelcome discovery that I had not one, but two pairs of gardening gloves in the garage, and that the older pair was totally gross and grimy. I had used them for weeding on a muddy day in 2013, and obviously they never got washed.
 

Old green extension cord and grimy gardening gloves. 

I like to buy new gardening gloves every spring because that gives me a cheerful feeling that a fresh new season is underway, so I shouldn’t even have thought about keeping the old gloves. They only cost a few dollars, after all, and they’re easy to find in the stores. What I probably had in mind was that I might want to use them early in the next season before I got around to buying a new pair, or that if I had a particularly messy gardening task I wouldn’t want the new pair to look old and muddy right away. But all I really accomplished was to make my basket of gardening stuff look weedy!

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

Because I’ve already posted autumn and winter photos of my willow hedge for Nurturing Thursday entries, I decided that a spring photo would be in order for today’s post. It’s dark and rainy here today, with occasional thunderstorms rolling through—but now that I have resolved not to call such days “dreary,” I find that I’m appreciating their damp softness as they gently nurture the earth, and remembering how I loved playing in the rain when I was a child.
 

Willows on a rainy early-spring day, losing their catkins as leaf buds unfold. 

The catkins, heavy with rain, are falling to the wet grass and making space for the leaf buds to unfold. What came to mind as I took this photo was that although we usually think of autumn (fall) as the season when old things fall away before it’s time for new growth, letting go of old things is really an ongoing, year-round process—both in the natural world and in ourselves!

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

Now that this blog is in its fourth year (yay!) I’ve been posting entries on a fairly regular schedule. Usually I write three (optimistically four) posts a week: a Clutter Comedy post every Sunday, a Nurturing Thursday post every Thursday, and one or two articles or stories in between. That’s mostly good because my blog now has more content than it had in past years, and the posts that I write for my two regular feature days flow pretty easily because they’re short and structured.

But if Wednesday evening arrives and I haven’t yet written the miscellaneous early-week post, then I feel as if I’m slacking off because my readers will expect me to stay on my regular schedule. Yes, I know that’s a silly thing to worry about. I never had any plans to make money from my blog, so there’s certainly no reason to think of it as having a production schedule like work; and in reality, I don’t believe I have such a demanding audience.

If I slack off once, though, I might do it again, and then this blog could end up as just another derelict hulk adrift in cyberspace. It’s the slippery slope worry—once you start slipping, there’s just no telling where you might end up!
 

Waterfall over steep, slippery rocks.

(Creative Commons image via flickr)
 

Earlier today, when I didn’t have anything in mind to write, I got those slacking-off feelings and then started giving myself a lecture on how ridiculous it was to worry about staying on a schedule that I had just invented last year for no particular reason. Life in the modern world already has too many randomly imposed expectations, so why add more?

I had just about decided it was time to apply to the Court of Conscience for official permission to slack off, when I realized that everything I had been telling myself would work just fine as a blog entry! So as it turned out, there’s a post for Wednesday after all, and no need to get myself an excuse note just yet.

April 5, 2015 · 4 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags:

This week’s clutter blog comes to you from the depths of the toy and school supplies closet in the room that used to be my kids’ study. Next to a pair of portable intercom devices, which are old enough that the white plastic is turning yellow, I found a tiny phone. Although it plugs into a jack and is usable, I would call it a toy, and a very antiquated one at that.
 

Set of two portable intercom devices and a toy phone. 

I don’t quite remember when my daughter got the tiny blue phone, but it must have been before she had a mobile phone—she certainly wouldn’t have had any interest in it after that! So I’m guessing it sat on the closet shelf without anyone using it ever since we moved into this house. And I’m pretty sure the kids never talked to each other on the intercoms after getting their own phones, either. Time marches on, like it always does; and it certainly marched past this stuff long ago!

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

When my daughter bought her puppy, she got a plain set of metal food and water bowls in a plastic holder. That seemed just fine at the time, and we didn’t think about other possibilities until my husband mentioned that it would be good to have two sets, so that one could be put in the dishwasher while another was left out for the dog. He went to the pet store and bought a colorful placemat with two sets of sturdy ceramic bowls.
 

Ceramic food and water bowls for the dog, on a mat decorated with brightly colored bones. 

The new dog accessories really brightened up the kitchen! Today’s consumer society, even with all its flaws, can be a resource for better nurturing when we buy things that make our surroundings more pleasant. Of course, we need to be careful not to let spending get out of control or let clutter pile up; but within those constraints, buying cheerful little things can go a long way toward improving one’s mood! The old set of bowls is already in the trunk of my car waiting to be taken to the thrift store.

And if you are wondering—yes, that is a small piece of banana on top of the dog food. I often eat a banana in the morning, and Diva Dog decided she likes it, so I usually break off a piece for her. She is definitely a pampered puppy!

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

April 1, 2015 · 4 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

Last night I had a very vivid dream in which I was driving along a narrow country road in the dark of winter. It was a lonely road and I wasn’t sure where I was going. After a while I felt sure that I had gone the wrong way and should be on a different road, so I turned my car around.
 

Car on a lonely road on a winter night.

(Creative Commons image via flickr)
 

When I woke up, it felt like my subconscious mind had sent me some kind of message about changing direction, but it wasn’t entirely clear. I didn’t know whether the dream was telling me that it’s time to change something I am doing in the present, or whether it was reflecting anxiety about possibly making a wrong choice in the future. So I decided to turn it into a blog post and ask for suggestions in the comments.

Readers, have you ever had a wrong-way dream, and what did you feel that it was telling you? How did things turn out afterward? Did you realize that you had made a wrong choice somewhere and then make a change of direction in your real life? Or did you decide that you’d had the dream because of worrying about a future choice you would have to make?

March 29, 2015 · 2 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags:

This week’s task was cleaning up the bookcase in the room that was the kids’ study. Rather than just calling it the kids’ study, I’ve decided to use a past-tense description because that helps me to imagine the beautiful sitting room I’ve been visualizing is already here in the present.

Some of the books are definitely worth keeping, such as a hardcover set of Harry Potter and the delightful Inkheart series by Cornelia Funke. But others, well, not so much. All those paperback teenage novels my daughter read 10 years ago will soon find a new home at the thrift store. And although reading the tongue-twisters in Dr. Seuss’ “Oh Say Can You Say?” was great fun when my kids were little, it should have been given away with the other picture books long ago.
 

Stacks of children's books and other bookcase clutter. 

Oh say can you say—there were books piled on books, in deep dark dusty nooks, random heaps stacked up all over like a lawn with weeds and clover, getting ever fatter till they made a clutter splatter! Cleaning up the bookcase made the fatter clutter splatter better.

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!