The house, that is… I actually wrote this post almost a year ago and kept in in the drafts basket. I thought that New Year’s Day might be as good a day as any to post it, after some updates.

I’ve decided to put our house on an elimination diet. We have eight people, a dog, a cat, a school and several businesses trying to thrive in a very tiny space. We have very generous family and friends, a weakness for a bargain, and a lot of clutter. And I do mean a LOT of clutter. Everywhere you look is a stack or pile of papers, craft materials, papers, mending, papers. And tons of plastic tubs – big, ugly, blue and green plastic tubs – just full of stuff. Much of the stuff is important, beautiful, useful or sentimental. That’s how it got pride of place in a tub. To protect it from the onslaught of daily life.

Many years ago – before I even got married – I was a snob. People, I love. It was plastic I hated. I mean like nothing else I hated plastic. And cigarette smoke. I had actually worked myself up to the point where I refused to buy plastic containers, synthetic fibres, and lamented that food bags weren’t all made from paper products. Yes, I’ve heard about the deforestation problem, but we can grow those back. And bamboo, too – amazing! I even prayed my new husband out of a job because the company engineered plastic extrusion machinery – the kind that makes plastic bread bags. The horror! So here I was with big plans for an all-natural, clean country-living life, all earthy crunchy for my children to be raised in. Paradise!

I have always loved baskets. They’re beautiful. Materials plucked from nature, shorn, pared, softened, bent, and woven into beautiful, useful containers. There is warmth in a basket that plastic just can’t give. I am heartbroken that our local Basketville store has moved away. It had been here for 30 years and just up and left one day. I’m not sure what I’ll do. We’ve done our first basketry art project and the bug has clearly bitten, but we’re not skilled enough yet to produce all that we need. You can buy beautiful baskets online from Basketville and at other places, so that’s a start. I don’t have a Longaberger lady nearby, and I’m not sure I could afford them if there was one. Beautiful quality, maybe at the online auction place… You know the one. Oh, I just peeked and there are actually 4500 auctions right now. Good place to start!

I love good, sturdy wooden furniture and toys. I love paper. I mean LOVE paper. Color me a stationery hound. I love fabrics, beautiful old-fashioned chintzy fabrics. If I were to sum up my style in one picture, it would be a Shaker cupboard with a lacy Victorian angel hanging from the knob, the wall behind it covered in a pretty, old-fashioned floral. That’s my idea of heavenly.

Then life happened… Our first apartment as a married couple was infested with mice. That’s when the first plastic came into my life. I bought containers to keep the little critters out of the food in our pantry. I was terrified of disease and couldn’t afford, on our tiny budget, to keep replacing nearly full boxes and bags of food that had been nibbled and er… fouled by our furry little friends. Shortly after we married, we discovered I was pregnant. Then the plastic really started rolling in. Toys, mostly. Not one wooden toy came to us – all plastic. And the walker, and the playpen. And forget trying to find little all-cotton clothes. I had no resources to find them. I wound up using disposable diapers because I could NOT use a diaper service that wouldn’t guarantee that my baby’s diapers had never touched another bottom. The weight of guilt was heavy.

It got worse… A year later, we were in the Air Force. If you’ve ever been in the military, you know what happened next. EVERYTHING started getting packed into giant plastic bins. They’re lightweight, waterproof (go ahead, ask why we care!), and reusable. They don’t break down when you stack them in storage for a long time. They may sag slightly in the middle over time, but hey, so do we all. The bottom line is that they kept our things safe. I found this out after nearly every piece of my wedding dinner service had been smashed to bits, along with my cake topper and several other precious bits.

For all the wonder of Rubbermaid bins, I hated them. I’d walk by them, bump into them in the closet or shed, faithfully holding all of my accumulated stuff and wish them gone. My eyes would narrow and I’d get that burning in my stomach. I wanted them out, but had to live with them. A bit like a roommate who you can’t stand but keep around because she pays half the rent.

Years later, we landed in our first home. No more moving. Life took off at lightening speed with the arrivals of babies 4, 5, and 6. With those babies, came more plastic toys, synthetic fabrics, more plastic bins from our local discount department store. And clutter… I have a horror of throwing out useful things. I am a hoarder. This is a serious problem, not only for my home, but for my spirit. When the clutter starts to really bother me, I get a new bin to store it in. It’s been a vicious cycle.

And somewhere along the way, I lost touch with my sense of loveliness. I lost the anchor to my design for life. I let go of something that I was passionate about.

This New Year, I’ve finally decided to say “ENOUGH!”, “BASTA”, “NO MORE!” I am putting our home on an elimination diet. It is not going to be pretty, at least not to start with. We’re all going to feel sick, exhausted, sad, frustrated. But in the end we will have a healthier home. There will be fewer places for dust to hide (evil stuff). There will be a visual serenity, simplicity, and warmth about our home.

I am more than a little attention deficient. I have found that clutter really raises the stress level, not just for me, but for everyone in the house. I *need* organization. I *need* a deep sense of Mis en Place in order to function. I get very agitated, distracted, confused, and frustrated when things are a mess. It’s very unsettling. And if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

So I’m trying my best to be ruthless. I keep repeating a phrase from one of my all-time favorite books, Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy. Beautiful, useful, sentimental. Beautiful, useful, sentimental. Actually I think that was William Morris who first suggested that mantra…

Clothing:
Normally, I would donate whatever is too small and still useful, as long as it is not sentimental (like a Christening gown, or a special dress that can go to a younger sister), or store it away for younger siblings (whole other story how I succumbed to hand-me-downs). But drastic times call for drastic measures. It’s all for the tip. Please forgive me this once, but it can take ages for us to remember to drop the donation bags at the St. Vincent de Paul receptacle. What we are decide to save will be packed away at Grandma’s house in – UGH – plastic containers. But at least they are at Grandma’s house. In her attic. Where no one can see. We’ll go and collect the next sizes up for everyone while we’re at it. What hasn’t survived storage will be either thrown away, or be given a bath in my “guaranteed to take the spots off a leopard” preparation (it’s probably just slightly less toxic than uranium). Then we will have an opportunity to re-visit that fashion unit study I did with the children; the one where we discussed color, cut, style, construction techniques, grooming, accessorizing, etc. No, I’m not kidding, we really did do that. And the children loved it. This will lead to a romp through mama’s already slightly thinned stash and sewing lessons. My two older girls are knitters, Catherine is quite accomplished – we can make our SWAP (sewing with a plan) plan. And I can fill in that page in my Home Management book.

***NOTE: It looks as though the SWAP website is not longer in existence . I think we’ll need to remedy that.

Toys:
This is a very difficult area for me. I think it must be for a lot of moms. We’re in the business of giving to our children - making and keeping them happy. Taking away their toys is like that cliché “taking candy from a baby”. Who gives candy to a baby by the way? But I digress. Thinning out toys gives me the same feeling as when a child’s balloon floats away, or when he drops his ice cream on the ground. Seriously, I want to cry just thinking about it.

But toys are overtaking us. With six children, there are a lot of toys for each age level. It’s easy to start with those nasty cheap toys that come as fast-food favours. Then move on to any toy that is missing parts or is broken. Stuffed animals are an area we really, really need help with. There is no way that each child could possibly love on that many stuffed animals. But I know how emotionally attached one can be to stuffies. I slept with a teddy bear til WAY after other people my age had given it up. He got lost on a move overseas and I was heartsick for months afterward.

I want to eliminate the cheap plastic toys and replace them with good, sturdy wooden toys, real die-cast metal toys, truly well-made playthings. I think that this may have to be a much more gradual thinning. I can start by allowing each child a box or basket. Starting with their favourites, they can fill their baskets. When the basket is full, the rest must go.

I’ve also decided to institute a ban on new toys for grandparents, godparents, aunties and uncles. Books, clothes, tools, and consumable items like craft projects are completely acceptable. I made a wish list to send out to help with their shopping. It worked well with the entire family.

Books:
This is a sensitive issue in our house. I’m getting better at letting go. I am OK with making donations to our local library. I know that the books will be cared for and loved. The trouble is that our local library is living in temporary accommodation while the old library is being renovated and expanded. They can’t take the books right now. I could bring them to the neighboring town, or I could freecycle what we don’t want/need. The trouble with freecycle is that folks can’t always come right away to pick up things. That leaves us with a pile of ‘stuff’ by the door, just waiting. The library in the next town seems much the better idea. We just bought two very large, very beautiful wooden cases that were painted to my specifications. They were full up and groaning under the weight of our volumes as soon as Brian had them anchored to the walls. We really need at least one more.

The Stash:
Is any part of this easy? My stash has grown and grown over the years. It seems that I often forget just how limited my time, energy, and ability is now. With six children and serious arthritis to contend with, sewing isn’t the all-consuming activity it used to be. However, it is a beacon of optimism for me. I feel like if I give up planning lots and lots of projects, or buying supplies for them, I’ve given up on feeling better. I *can* teach my girls to sew, which will convert all that gorgeous fabric to useful items. Those things I really decide I won’t use can either be sold on, or dropped off at the local recycled resource center. They’ll take anything! The trouble with that plan is that I always find something new that I just MUST have, and wind up coming home with just as much as I left with. Mouse and Mole had this same problem in “Tidying Up”… (OK, I have six kids, literary references of this sort are inevitable).

Fabrics are not the only things in my stash. Patterns have been a weakness. I need to start with sorting out by gender and size, checking patterns for parts, and ridding myself of patterns I don’t still adore, or that are somehow unusable. The vintage patterns must stay, at least until I have done preservation copies. Then I can re-sell them and make room.

The Paper Monster:
This is a losing battle. Full stop. Our home is a bona fide fire hazard, which turns out to be the solution to the problem. Bonfire! Being a writer, I have tons of notebooks full of ideas for articles, book outlines, research… I’m not kidding, there are notebooks from 15 years ago in here. I have become better at filing these things away. That’s not to say that there is no room for improvement, but I’m better. Brian, on the other hand is physically incapable of throwing out any paper. He needs a full-scale intervention. I think we still have bills from our first year of marriage. That’s not to say that he hasn’t had an occasional purge, but after that unfortunate fireplace incident, they are becoming increasingly less frequent. (Can something be increasingly less?)

When I was in charge of bill-paying, I threw everything out as soon as it was paid. It really does tame the beast. I could get my household financial papers into one small basket. If you get behind on your bills, keep only the most recent one – they pile up quickly. The children are in charge of their own school papers. They are not great about it, but not as bad a mother and dad. They keep everything in their binders – PLASTIC binders. UGH. We have started to make the transition to making “notebooks” for portfolios. Instead of plastic binders, we will be switching to recycled cardboard binders. The plastic ones will be freecycled, or *gulp* tossed out.

Plastic Food Containers:
Simple… They’ll be replaced with tins! Much prettier, in fact far too pretty to be shut away behind cupboard doors! Well, I guess we found the one thing that is easy, then. Haven’t we?

What doesn’t get thrown out, recycled or freecycled must be contained; and attractively contained. What refuses to be contained in a reasonable manner, must go.

So what do you say? Are you with me? I mean, you’re not going to leave me to do this by myself, are you?

“Space is space and stuff is stuff. You can have stuff, or you can have space. But you can’t have both.” ~ Mouse

Posted: 01|1|08 at 7:05 pm. Filed under: from our hearth and home.
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