I’ve been looking for ideas

about how to unclutter here. Not much help out there. Oh there’s an abundance of ideas about if you haven’t used something in a year to pitch it, but not much that fits my situation.

I’m not afraid to toss stuff, I’m afraid of neat & tidy. And afraid isn’t the right word really. I get stressed in neat & tidy, well, that’s closer anyway.

All these people assume a few things, some of them dead wrong. You never read books on your bookshelf. (Well why keep them if you don’t?) Except for reference and some nostalgia, I agree, but I DO read the books on my shelf.

That you only keep notebooks because they contain your old school or meeting notes. Well, no. I use notebooks to file recipes, receipts, garden plans, story ideas, yada yada.

Maybe I’m running full tilt into old ladydom. I don’t have all my music, lit, and do all my writing on a computer or smart phone. I still use, read and store ideas, etc on PAPER, not surprisingly for a second generation bookseller (mother) and book collector’s (dad) kid. I’m a paper freak. I’m also of an age, I admit it. I don’t have a smart phone, will probably have to get one and resent it, but there it is. I really don’t want to carry a computer around with me all day.

Anyway, back to my original point, there doesn’t seem to be much advice out there that suits me. I found one post on pinterest that fit, out of dozens. I have a whole folder full of these “tips” and I read them and delete them, mostly.

It’s very frustrating; I’d really like some help. But most of these folks assume that 1)I’m adverse to purging things (not true) 2)that I have not recently culled my clothes (not true), medicine cabinet (not true), pantry (not true), games (not true) etc. I purge categories of stuff fairly often, and regularly. I tossed an entire box of cassette tapes tonight. So my problem isn’t getting rid of stuff.

1. I have WAY too much stuff
2. I have BAD habits
3. I get anxious/stressed/my PTSD acts up when it’s tidy!

Neat & tidy feels nice, but unsafe. And there’s no pinterest posts, or very few, that I can use from where I actually am as above and with the addition that I have no problem culling things!

The world needs a pinterest post on decluttering when you have anxiety issues. I may write such a thing, at some point, but I have to get past mine before I’ll go dispensing advice!

Being Self-Sufficient & Not

It’s getting colder, thankfully, the furnace is finally fixed! We’ve been using the woodstove, a thing we’ve decided we’ll do much more of this winter. For one thing, it helps deal with the various downed wood on the property. For another, it uses the resources we’ve already paid for, like firewood, instead of incurring a bill with the local propane company.

We’ve wintered here without a furnace before and it isn’t fun to come into an absolutely frigid house, but it can be done.

I have for the first time put root veggies (carrots) in wet sand to store them overwinter. We’ll see how that goes. Being able to buy organic and then storing them without refrigeration sounds like the best of all possible worlds to me. Along that line, I found a Mother Earth News article (of course) about this. You can find that here;

http://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/how-to-store-fresh-vegetables-zmaz04djzsel.aspx#axzz3Gn2iYEhy

Also, I’m making bread again. Making our bread all by itself saves us about $5 a week as we like hard crusted, “gourmet” type bread, not the supersoft cheap stuff. It ends up being about 2 loaves in a week. This time I cut up the end of the last loaf, to prepare it to become breadcrumbs.

I’ve been using a lot of breadcrumbs lately. I made stuffed mushrooms Sunday morning for both the political party my neighbor had and my writing group. Last week, I made a crustless quiche, why I’ve never heard of this technique before I don’t know, but I doubt I’ll ever make a quiche, at least for us, with a crust again! You just brush the inside of your quiche dish with olive oil, then spread a layer of breadcrumbs on that. Then add your quiche batter and bake. It was great, took WAY less time than a pie crust, was made with ingredients I almost always have at hand. Not to mention that it probably uses way less fat than traditional crusts too.

Otherwise, I did something I never thought I’d do. I gave up about cleaning the house. Last week I started to get really depressed, the house was a mess and no matter how much time I spent on it, it seemed it was still a mess. Or, I clean it up and then mess it up again. I finally asked 3 people to help. All of them know about my house, indeed two of them are neighbors. The other is one of my bosses (!). But I asked for help. I’m not getting it done on my own, I’m doing the same thing I’ve always done, fits and starts and forward & back.

I’ve had it. I’m stuck already. I asked for help, and thankfully, all 3 of them responded that they’d help. This is sort of scary for me, but I don’t really know what else to do. Professional help isn’t possible, it will make me panic AND we can’t afford it, so that’s out. And I’ve tried almost everything else I can think of, short of getting a dumpster, and that’s out for much the same reason the professional organizer is.

So, I swallowed my pride and asked for help where I needed it and otherwise, we’re working at being more self-sufficient.