Intersections!

I find myself these days watching and reading things related to:

• Permaculture
• Minimalism
• RV or van living

Permaculture started because David Holmgren was wondering what the interrelationships were between three things:

1. landscape architecture
2. ecology
3. agriculture

After discovering that, it occurred to me that I’m not really interested only in any of the 3 things I first listed, but the intersections between THEM.

So, I made the chart below in an effort to understand what it was they have in common and what they do NOT!

	Permaculture	Minimalism	RV/Van LIving
Mobile?	No	Possibly	Yes                         An emphasis of this life
Less Stuff?	Possibly             More reuse/eco friendly and multi- uses	Yes                         An emphasis of this life	Yes               Mandated by space limitations
DIY Food?	Yes                   An emphasis of this life	Possibly	No                     Space limitations again
Less Commercial reliance?	Yes	Yes	Yes
Fewer Support Systems?	Possibly	Possibly	Possibly
Lower Costs?	Possibly	Possibly	Possibly

What does this mean, exactly? I guess I’m ready to become a hippy of some sort. As usual, the first step is to continue to get rid of a lot of “things.” And, considering the discussions we’ve been having about aging in place, it seems more likely we’ll end up permaculturists with a possible minimalist bent?

I don’t know of course, but it has been an interesting exploration, trying to find what it is that all of these have which appeals to me so!

Photo by Tania Malréchauffé on Unsplash

So

This is Monday, the day I’m supposed to do 6 areas of my house (it’s 5 Tues – Fri). I don’t know if I’ll make it back into this, but the chaos created by the oncoming winter, DH’s injury, visitors, etc. means that I need some kind of plan.

And since I spent a long time devising that one, I think I’ll try and pick it up again.

We’ll see how it works?

One thing really did come of the 90 challenge I set myself and that was the end (apparently) of the panic attacks. If that’s true? I can’t tell you what a relief it is!

J

Not All Revolutions Need Guns

Some are just heralded by phone calls.

Today my life programming got turned on its head. This has happened to me once before, with DH and my therapist. But I thought, “Both of them have a huge amount of time and energy invested in my well being,” and although what happened was revolutionary,  I couldn’t ignore it, but it didn’t cause a sesimic shift.

Today just might.

At one point or the other we had 4 neighbors here, raking, etc. and keeping DH company.

One neighbor’s son split and restacked the 8′ wood pile which had fallen last winter. His dad dismantled the rack and told me what I needed to buy so it could be used again. I was offered cabbage salad (good, even though cabbage is NOT my fave). And, and….

One neighbor asked me to call and asked how I was and I said, “Near tears.” and it wasn’t because anything was bad, it was because there had been people here, almost all day, doing things for us.

Frankly, yes, I was worried how we’d get through winter with DH partially disabled. He’s fine, he stopped taking anything that wasn’t over the counter when he left the hospital > a week ago now, but he’s not his normal self, yet.

And here were all these people, raking, helping me move boxes, splitting and stacking wood, etc.

A part of me went numb. That same part had the past two days been looking for the “gotcha,” the catch, because there had to be one, right?

Except there isn’t.

We’ve been here for 25 years+. I try hard to be the neighbor I’d want to have. And I realized today that I discount all of that, because I do it without thinking about it most of the time. But I guess it does count.

The echo from my past is several things:

“No one who really gets to know you will want to admit it.”

“No man will ever love you.”

“Whenever anyone is nice to you, they’re just being polite.”

etc. etc. ad nauseum.

 

And today cried BULLSHIT to all of that!!!

Not all revolutions have guns.

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

I changed the image, this one seems to work much better!

The Plan

The plan now is not just a mini-split and general culling; it’s a final culling, mini-split prep and a major reorganization.

I have been in contact with my friend authors whose books I still have and asked if they’d like copies of their books? And explained. So far 3 of 3 have said yes. Nice!

I made a list of the various things set aside for people that need to be mailed. Many of them are ready to go, tomorrow. Two sets were mailed today: some books sent out for resale and other books sent as a donation to a conference organizer.

But there are other packages too: many of them. Art work going to family, heirlooms to same, I figure there’s about 8 more packages I’ll mail away in the next week or so. That will help. Will it solve the problem? No, of course not. But it’s a step in the right direction.

I made a 2nd list of things waiting to be hung up: mostly art work, of course.

We figure that we’ll take pictures, maybe, to document the big steps in the culling. Then maybe do the same for the reorganization/rehab. We may have access to a tiny grant. Not enough to do a lot with, but it should be enough to replace the ramp outside one door — the current version isn’t wide enough  for a wheelchair or walker and it doesn’t have hand rails.

Last night, I went to sleep thinking about free resources we could tap into: aging councils, AARP, Home Depot’s kitchen designers, etc.

So, this blog will still for the immediate future be about culling stuff, but then is slated to make a major shift.

Also, an announcement I’ve been putting off for some time. The memoir has sold. If/when I have a publication release date, I’ll post it here.

But in the meantime, this blog is going to go into high gear and then change directions!

 

 

(I have no idea where I got the image from. I’ve used it before. it is NOT mine!)

Decisions, decisions!

Things got complicated here.

Life got in the way of my plans, but also goaded them on. My plans were for the summer to remove 1/2 of all the stuff here, right?

I didn’t make that goal. But now I really need to, one way or the other. We have decided that we’re going to live in the main part of our house, and turn the areas where we currently sleep and work into storage and other auxilary space. It makes a lot more sense for aging in place; it also will be easier to use the mini-split by itself to heat/cool this place, etc. It will be more economical as well.

This requires a huge shuffle of furniture and stuff. It will also require a huge cull of the same. We talked this morning about what moves where. What the obvious culls are. About getting  estimates for moving the kitchen plumbing, etc. We intend to sell what we can of the excess stuff to pay for this, or just pay down the debt, either will put us in a better place in the future.

I have become completely fascinated by self-sufficiency videos. I’m not chasing the idea that if we don’t grow it, we don’t use it. But one video I watched talked about turning a house into a place producing what you need, instead of being a place where you consume what you need — and get somewhere else. I found another where a retired first-generation geek has automated his house in various unique ways. Many of the videos I’ve found are of people in Texas, California, etc. and we don’t have weather which enables us to use some ideas they do, but there ARE things we can do, sanely.  Consolidating our living space is a big way we can cut down what we own, what we “need,” and use.

It’s remarkably easy to think you need socks when you can only find one pair, because the others are in another part of the house, waiting to be washed or whatever.

Consolidating our living space won’t automatically solve all our disorganization problems, but it likely will help quite a bit!

The minisplit may be put off until spring 2020, but the beginning of the consolidation won’t.

 

I Did This Thing…

I made myself a 90 day challenge. Starting 7/1 and ending the end of September. I wanted to try and clean the house, every day, to some extent or the other. I wanted to try and use the fact that I know that it takes 90 days to create habits or change them.

Well, it worked, and it didn’t. It worked in that I got used to cleaning every day and these days I seem to be able to do it without panic attacks. Removing the panic attacks was my personal, unstated goal.

I was inconsistent. There are days where I never assigned the tasks to do, where I didn’t do anything on the lists, etc. Sometimes there are several days. I didn’t let myself let it go. I didn’t beat myself up when life got in the way, either. I just pushed on the next time I could.

So, I wrote (nearly a week late) the summary, for myself of the effort. I will do a more detailed one later, but in general, I’m not unhappy with what I did. My stated goal was to clean the house almost entirely. My unstated goal was to habitualize the cleaning so that I could clean WITHOUT panic attacks.

And that seems to have worked!

You can find my summary post here.

Progress! But . . .

I sold more than 30 boxes of books at the book sale last weekend. Great! I’m getting rid of books and other items, daily. Also great!

But the progress is still not really discernible, which is NOT great.

I have taken boxes of books and stuff to the dump’s swap shop. I have boxed up items for future flea markets. I have gone through all the boxes in various stacks and removed the obvious culls, labelled and then restacked tidily, the remainder. Does it look better? Yes.

But it’s still a mess.

And it isn’t that I’m so tired of owning all this stuff, it’s that I’m tired of spending all my time dealing with stuff or ignoring the mess.

I want to do other things. I have acquired some new work gigs, which are going to obviously take some time. The memoir probably needs revision and I’m in the midst of an edit of that manuscript anyway. And so on. All I need is a month of 100 hour days, and we’re all set!

The biggest issue of course really is the PTSD. If I push much harder than I am, I’m pretty sure it will jump down my throat.  Panic attacks are not fun. These days they seem to show up in the middle of the night most of the time. I’d really like to avoid that, if at all possible.

And aside from just pitching everything in a dumpster, there is no other solution. It takes time, that’s all.