Month: January 2015

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Decluttering with Nikki

For a while now I’ve been offering my services as a Professional Organizer. At least, that’s what I introduce myself as. In truth, I think Professional Declutterer is more accurate. Because to me it’s not about how you organize the things you have, it’s about getting rid of the things you don’t need.
My sister Nikki asked for my help with a couple big boxes of cables. She’s not a super techie person, so she didn’t know what half of the stuff she had was even for. I once worked for a computer cable manufacturer and as a result I’m pretty good at looking at a box of cords and telling you what everything does.

Nikki had five boxes and bags of various sizes full of old electronics and peripherals. We started sorting and found several categories for immediately removal:

Phones1) Old cell phones
I can accept an argument for a person having at most two cell phones. One phone that they use, and one feature phone that’s kept fully charged in case of emergencies. That’s more than most people need, but it’s defensible. My sister had five old cell phones, including a Blackberry she doesn’t remember ever owning. Many cell phone providers take old phones to be wiped and repurposed for organizations that deal with domestic violence victims. The phones are included in bags that victims can take in case they need a safe and private way to call the police. Nikki and I put together her collection of old phones and chargers for donation.

2) Orphan Chargers
The good and terrible thing about chargers is that they are usually generic. This means you can sometimes charge your phone or camera at a friend’s house if need be, but it also means that once a charger is separated from the intended device there is no way to know what it’s for. Nikki had a large collection of chargers, many identical, and none identifiable. Over the course of the morning we were able to pair a few up, but many were left without a match. It can be difficult to part with such items, since for all you know you still have the things they charge. My solution was to have Nikki label a gallon zip-top bag with the words “Orphan Chargers” and the date. If she ever needs a charger she knows where to look, and if she comes across the bag again in five years and has never opened it, she’ll know it’s time to let them go.

3) Duplicates
There are explanations for how my sister ended up with three routers. There are reasons why she owned eleven coaxial cables. We all end up with duplicates from time to time, and we all have our reasons. The important thing is periodically taking stock and asking a simple question: how many extras will I ever really need? Nikki was already using the best of the three routers for her wireless network, and the other two were so old that they’d likely be obsolete by the time her current one broke. Most things that require coaxial cables come with coaxial cables, so we picked the best two just in case. We went through each duplicate cord and picked the best of the bunch to keep. Nikki has a cord-chewing cat, so some duplicates are reasonable.

4) Boxes
As we were separating the wheat from the chaff in her electronics, I also found that she had a lot of unnecessary boxes. Old box clutter is pretty easy to acquire, since anyone who’s ever had to return something knows not to get rid of the box right away. However once your manufacturer’s warrantee has expired (usually one year after purchase), the box is only worth what it’s worth to you. Some boxes are so perfectly fitted that it’s worth keeping them around just so you can properly pack the item next time you move. Some boxes are easily repurposed for storage of other items. But a box for the box’s sake is just clutter. Every time I saw an old electronics box I asked Nikki the same question: “Have you had this for more than a year?” The answer was always yes, and the box always went away.Cables in Bags

By the end of the day Nikki’s five boxes and bags were down to a single box, with cables organized by function (computer cables in one bag, TV cables in another, etc). But we didn’t stop there. We also fixed up and cleared away unnecessary parts of her TV setup and downsized her remotes. But the real gem of the day for me came when we were taking a lunch break. I asked her a question that had been bugging me for the last half hour.

“Why do you have a shelf of VHS tapes if you don’t own a VCR?”

It honestly hadn’t occurred to her. She’d had most of them for a very long time, probably going back to a time when she did have a VCR hooked up to her TV. We pulled them off the shelf and she gave them away without protest. If anything, she seemed upset that she even had some of them.

“Why do I own The Core?” she asked.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” I told her, “But I was wondering that myself.”

One of the things I’ve struggled with in trying to build my personal decluttering business is explaining to people why they might need outside help to get rid of their own belongings. I think Nikki is a great example of that. Sometimes we own things for so long, we become blind to them. Sometimes we’re so use to our lives as we’ve built them, we don’t stop to think about how we’ve changed over time. In the hours I’ve spent helping people clear out their homes, I’ve realized that the majority of the time is spent saying goodbye to the people they used to be, and the things that used to matter.

I said Nikki gave away her movies without protest, but that’s not entirely true. She did briefly resist giving away a copy of The Boy Who Could Fly, a drama from 1986. “We used to watch it all the time,” she told me. I couldn’t remember it at all. She started to describe it and realized she didn’t remember much of it either. She shrugged it off and it went in the give-away pile with all the other things. Nikki has been making some big and wonderful changes in her life over the last few years. She needs room in her home for the person she is now and the person she is becoming.

Everything else is just something that used to be important to the person she used to be.

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Sit Up Straight, Part One

I have atrocious posture. I’ve slouched since junior high, I imagine as the combined result of growing both upwards and outwards in puberty – two directions that make many young girls uncomfortable. I knew I hunched, I knew it was bad for me, and I did nothing to change it.

About a year ago my neck began to hurt. A lot. It was a lie-on-the-floor-of-your-office-in-the-middle-of-the-day kind of pain. I thought it was stress. Things had been tough at work, and I wondered if maybe it was getting to me. Turning to the left hurt for awhile, then I developed a sort of constant, dull ache. Soon I could barely move at all. I went to the doctor.

After examining me and asking zero questions about my stress level, she told me my neck pain was caused by my posture, and probably aggravated by the way I sat at my computer at work. She prescribed a book called “Treat Your Own Neck,” a title that my boyfriend found hilariously passive-aggressive coming from a doctor. The book walked you through a series of exercises meant to treat and prevent neck pain. I had my reservations, but she also gave me some muscle relaxers to take in the evening, so I thought I’d give her the benefit of the doubt.

I only took the pills twice. By the third day of exercises my pain was almost completely gone. I kept up my exercises and tried to look up from the keyboard more often, but eventually I stopped doing both. My neck didn’t hurt anymore. I decided that maybe it was the stress, it was just that the stress made my posture worse than usual.

Skip ahead about eight or nine months. I went to GeekGirlCon with a few of my friends. We were all cosplaying, and I was dressed as Jeannie from I Dream of Jeannie. My friend Kristina is a vlogger, and she was making a video about life in costume. Our friend Joe followed us around the convention shooting video as we walked. I didn’t think much of it. He was looking for candid shots, after all. A few days after the convention the video went up. It was a fun video but I couldn’t enjoy it. I was too distracted. I couldn’t stand the sight of me.

Unhappy JeannieMy costume looked great. My wig looked great. But I was walking around looking like my 90-year-old grandmother the year before she passed away. How is it I never noticed? I saw my posture every morning in the mirror, yet I never knew how bad it had gotten. I tried to blame it on the heavy wig. I tried to blame it on convention fatigue. But I knew I was just making excuses. I didn’t want it to be true. I looked so bad. And so unhappy. And I knew the truth right away: I always looked like that.

I’m not sure what all needs to be done (I’d welcome your suggestions), but I need to do something. I’m going to start by reviewing my old class papers from Alexander Technique, which I think will help. I’m considering doing an online typing course to teach myself to look up from the keys. I certainly need to stop putting my hair in clips (because of my car’s headrest, hair clips make hunching while driving mandatory).

This post is both backstory and blackmail. Like when I did the Clean Eating Challenge last fall, I want a bunch of people to bug me if I flake out on this. Certainly it will take more than a week, it may take months or years, but I should at least check back in about a month from now. Let’s say February 16th.

Here’s to changing how I walk in the world. Here’s hoping it’s not too late.

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Spinning My Wheels

I like to think of myself as a highly productive person, and by many measures I am. I don’t waste time very often. Even my break time is spent productively, reading books or watching movies I believe are in some way important. I learn constantly, I work constantly, I produce constantly.

But sometimes I find that for all of my production I am not actually producing anything of note. I write every day, but can go days or even weeks without working on a specific book or play. I read everyday, but still only manage a few pages at a time. The truly awful thing is that sometimes I’ll even manage to rest in an unproductive way. I’ll listen to an intense podcast while on lunch break and end up going through the motions of taking a break yet feeling no restorative effects.

These are not constants of course, but when my incredible productivity hasn’t produced anything for several days or weeks, I can feel it. I feel it every time I sit down, every time I get home. I stare at my computer with a sense of hopelessness. I realize that I’m about to expend effort and achieve no satisfying result. Even though the majority of my work both at home and in the office is self-generated and self-managed, somehow I’ve managed to make it unfulfilling.

I know what I ought to do in such times. I ought to take a break – a real break. I ought to stop all my normal routines and just waste time for a day or two. I ought to do a full reset. Turn it off and on again like a malfunctioning computer.

I don’t take vacations like I should. I think it’s because I know that even if I had a day where I truly took a break from everything else, I would still think. I would still know all the things I am not doing. I would still know all the things I want to be doing. And I would grow impatient with my vacation. I would want to get to work on something – anything – to feel like I’m being productive. I must learn, I must work, I must produce. It is my natural resting state.

In the end, the thing I struggle with is learning to let go of possibilities, and forgiving myself for not going after them. There are so many things in the world that fascinate me, so many things I want to do and know, that I will always have to say no to what I want more often than I get to say yes. I make lists all the time. I make lists of languages to learn, books to read, TV shows to watch, skills to acquire. I’m constantly re-writing my goals in hopes of one day figuring out how I’m going to accomplish them all in the one short life I have available. This means sometimes I fall so much in love with the the What and How of doing that I forget about the Why.

Snow on Trees landscapeI booked a vacation for February. I’m going to Holden Village, a retreat community three hours out of town that you can only get to by boat. I’m told that the winter community is small, and there’s a good chance that my aversion to cold will keep me bundled up in my own room the whole week. They cook all the meals and there’s no access to the internet. Hopefully it will be the kind of reset I’m looking for, and a chance to forgive myself for only having 24 hours in a day. At very least, I’ll have plenty of free time to make more lists.

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Too Many Mugs

My boyfriend and I have too many mugs. Seriously. Way too many mugs. Even if both of us drank two cups of coffee in the morning we would have too many mugs. We don’t drink coffee at all. Even if we had dinner parties with coffee and desert we would have too many mugs. We don’t have dinner parties.

For the most part the mugs get used when I’m sick and needing to drink a lot of tea. Occasionally my boyfriend will eat ice cream out of a mug. And that’s it. That’s our total mug usage. So how did we get this way?

MugsGrowing up, my parents always had an amazingly eclectic mug collection. They are both coffee drinkers and often had coffee-drinking guests, so it made since. They had mugs from NPR pledge drives and Mother’s and Father’s Days past. They had Mary Engelbreit mugs and Disneyland mugs. I associated those mugs with a well-established home. After all, it must have taken them years to amass such a fine collection. So when I went to the church garage sale when I was about 13, I bought a bunch of mugs. I figured I had to start sometime, and the mugs at the garage sale were so cheap. I must have picked up 10 mugs on the assumption that in five years I would need them.

I didn’t stop at mugs. Inspired by that time our video store was going out of business and my mom and I picked up dozens of VHS tapes for a dollar each, I slowly acquired over 400 DVDs. A well-established home had a large video collection, after all. There’s more. I have posters and candles and more fabric than I imagine I’ll ever use, all in deference to my future self and her established home. She would be so glad to have such a vast movie collection to pull from. She would be overjoyed at being able to pick from cupboard full of mugs every morning.

I wasn’t totally wrong. My future self would have been overjoyed at all of these things – if my future self had turned out exactly like my parents. At thirteen, this wasn’t an insane prediction. I love my parents and they have a wonderful life and home. I loved growing up in that home and will probably throw a joint fit with my sister if they ever try to sell it. And there are ways in which I still want to be like them. But having their home, their family, their stuff – it may not be one of them.

My thirteen-year-old self was planning for the house she loved growing up in, because she figured she’d be raising her own little thirteen-year-olds in it. Even back then I considered staying childless, but the house/husband/kids track was just as real an option. As that option drifts further from my mind, I realize that my home needs to cater to the person I am right now, not the person I may one day want to be. The person I am now doesn’t need so many mugs. She’d rather get her movies off Nexflix – it loads faster than the DVD player anyway. Someday I may change my mind and want the house and the family and the thirteen-year-old girls. But I don’t need to prepare for that just in case. I am confident I will be able to find more mugs. Maybe my parents will give me some.