Again.

We are snowed in.

Again.

I should not complain. I reminded Mikey earlier that lots of people would love nothing more to be at home with their families for a few days with nowhere to go, plenty of groceries, some Dexter via netflix, and a little bit of new yarn.

I have spent the last 24 hours continuing to get our photos under control, which is a HUGE part of my organization resolution. I’ve been taking pictures since I was seven years old, spent two years studying photography, and as a general rule got doubles of every roll of film I processed. Mikey also brought a couple of boxes of photos from his life into our marriage, so as you can imagine, we live under quite an avalanche. I feel like there is always an annoying little pile of photos sitting around at any given time – prints people have given us or things that used to live on the fridge or in a frame and got replaced… when I was younger I was diligent with immediately putting photos into albums, but then the number of albums got overwhelming and I went digital and… oof.

Sometime last year I got sick of having 13 or so photos albums of varying sizes, some falling apart, and I emptied them out and put everything into four shoebox-sized storage boxes. There they have been sitting waiting for the next step. During the last snow-in I did a quick purge, which resulted in hundreds of photos and negatives getting thrown in a tub for repurposing or recycling. I was left with two and a half photo storage boxes full of prints, three albums, and four years worth of (organized) digital photos that I needed to be choosy with and have some prints made to get caught up. Last night I sat down with a free shipping code for Snapfish (free shipping for orders over $20.00 – MYVAL20, good through tomorrow) and three hours later had ordered 828 prints. Not too bad, spread over four years and including the first 15 months of Hazel’s life. This afternoon I (again) sat down at the computer and did some album research. I know exactly what I want – almost. I am trying to decide between 8.5 x 11 or 12 x 12 albums. As soon as I can make up my mind I’ll order several 3-ring albums, full page protectors, and photo pages. I am so, so, so sick of having everything scattered around. Most of our photos in storage boxes. Some photos in their own albums (wedding, honeymoon, trip to Jamaica). 12 x 12 envelopes full of mementos waiting for a home. An unfinished wedding scrapbook(!). I need everything to be streamlined into chronological albums so we can actually look at them and enjoy them. Photos, flyers, everything.

After that I dragged out the remaining 2.5 boxes of prints and sorted them, tossing even more. Now I’m left with a box full of photos from Mikey’s shows (which he’ll sort through and put in an album with flyers and other keepsakes), all of our really old photos (which will stay stored in one small box), and photos of our life together, which will get weeded out even more and then added to the prints that are on their way. I’ll get them all in order, add in mementos, put them all into a few like-albums, and then I WILL NOT GET BEHIND. Now that Snapfish and Flickr are connected, there is no reason at all to get behind in printing. I only upload my favorites to Flickr, so at the end of every month or two I’ll go through them and make some prints – no sorting through huge raw files and uploading them to a printer’s website. It’ll take ten or fifteen minutes.

It feels really good to be making huge progress on this project. I hate having a bajillion photos, which is problematic since I love TAKING a bajillion photos. I hate that we don’t enjoy our favorites because they are mixed in with tons that we are not even going to miss. I hate that as soon as someone gives us a pile of prints or I come across a scrap of this or that that I want to keep, it all gets shoved in an envelope or into a pile instead of the five minutes it would take to stick it into a waiting album page. I want all of us, especially Hazel and future babyfrates, to be able to enjoy looking back through our life via tidy photo album / scrapbook hybrids. So I’m all over it.

New Year’s Resolution: week five

Listening: old-school Sesame Street songs
(I am) Reading: if I can have a bath and a glass of wine tonight, I’m starting The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
(Hazel is) Reading: The Butter Battle Book
Working on: blue & gold blanket; trying to learn how to crochet a hat and getting MAD; knitting a wee scarf for Hazel instead

This week’s organization resolution is making me giddy. Filling up bags of stuff to take out of your home and never bring back is one kind of purging-thrill, but majorly condensing stuff that you ARE keeping around forever is a much more satisfying task, but harder to do. We know lots of people who, for space-saving reasons mostly, get rid of all of their CD jewel cases and keep the liner notes and cds in binders or wallets (the current issue of DIY magazine has a really cool photo-framing idea using empty jewel cases). This is a great idea if you are That Kind of Person – we aren’t. The album art is a huge part of the deal to us and we just can’t get rid of all of it.

BUT.

We don’t care about DVD packaging. We own somewhere around 150 movies and documentaries (as it turns out, eep) and it never occured to us to store them in a more condensed way. We’ve only ever really gotten rid of DVDs when we got married and condensed our collections, and I think we’ve put a few on swaptree. For the most part, though, all of the movies/etc. that we own are in our possession because we watch them over and over and over (we don’t have cable – we do Netflix, so all we do is watch stuff on DVD from there or our collection or stream it).

And… I HATE having shelves and shelves of DVDs – they are ugly, they take up lots of space, and I just hate them. Did I say that? I hate them. I’d never entertained the idea of getting rid of the packaging because I think CD wallets and binders are even worse. And let’s face it – I’ve got more pressing organizational needs than DVDs (…you should see my fabric.) We’ve built up quite the collection over the years because we usually buy them used for a few dollars or in the $3.00 bins at BigLots (does anyone else love Spellbound like I do? Capote? Maria Full of Grace? The Squid and the Whale? – all in the $3 bins at BigLots)… so movie-buying is like a treasure hunt.

Anyway – I had a revelation the other day that hit me like a ton of bricks. It’s definitely not ingenious, but I’ve just never thought of it before because, well, you know – fabric, all that. I bought a set of boxes like these and some packs of single protective CD sleeves, and will make some alphabet tab dividers to fit. As soon as we got home from picking up these things we attacked our DVD collection with gusto. A few things got to stay in their packaging: the few TV series that we feel the need to own and watch and rewatch and rewatch, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Wes Anderson, Tim Burton, and some music stuff. The rest got filed into the boxes and then gutted and sorted into bags for recycling.

So, so, SO satisfying for my OCD and aesthetic brain. *sigh*

Was it good for you?

In other news… we keep running into people that we know, or used to know. It took awhile for this to happen. I was beginning to feel so weird about living here because we’d go run a whole afternoon full of errands and not recognize a soul. Now it happens all the time and all is right with the universe.

Today’s parenting freakout is about whether or not to turn Hazel’s carseat. I knew this day would come but every time I tried to think about it my brain would scream no, not yet, for the love of god just STOP. She has a Graco Safeseat and since she’s such a peanut it will fit her for quite awhile longer, but we were about to buy a new seat so she could face forward. And then I started reading, and now I think we should keep her rear-facing for as long as we can, but I still think we should buy a new seat so she’s not so reclined and so she’s sitting up a bit higher and can look around more. I hate trying to decide these very hard things. Even if I’ve committed to rear-facing in my mind and Mikey is on board… WHAT THE HELL SEAT DO WE BUY??? This isn’t the kind of things you can just… go buy. Or I can’t. Right now I am thinking the Britax Marathon, but I just don’t know. Thankfully she DOES still fit in her infant seat and I’m quite sure she’ll outgrow it in length before weight, so we don’t have to decide right now, but I do think her car trips would be more fun if she was in a “big kid” seat. I have to eternally protect AND entertain / comfort this precious little gal.

Her imagination is developing so quickly all of a sudden – it’s amazing. Watching her learn to smile and laugh and sit up and play and crawl scoot and walk (with assistance of course) were all amazing, but watching her learn to pretend… well, I simply can’t handle it. I need more of these creatures in my life.

Listening: Neil Young
(I am) Reading: I informed Mikey that tonight I WILL take a bath and read an actual BOOK for awhile – probably The Happiest Toddler on the Block – I need to get through it so I can move on to my fun reading
(Hazel is) Reading: Big Red Barn
Working on: blue & gold blanket; fat quarters for a fabric exchange; Hazel’s valentine
Thanks to: Delightful Divas for the blog feature!

I never really got the hang of thrifting in Toronto. I tried, and it just didn’t take. It felt incompatible with living in the city. Now OBVIOUSLY there is not an ounce of truth to that statement, but I just couldn’t get it to work. Any time I would go in a value village or a goodwill there were too many people so I left. Random thrift shops that I’d pop into were usually the way too expensive kind. I didn’t live in a good neighborhood for picking any trash other than my neighbors’ (which I totally did from time to time), and my brain just could not wrap around the notion of church rummage sales in a city because to me, they are such a small town, country thing. I never went to a single one. I would have had to drive half an hour or more to the burbs to hit up yardsales – which I always meant to do but just felt like a huge hassle. On top of all of that, I wanted as little stuff as possible to have to haul back across the border at whatever point in time we decided to leave.

NOW. This is not to say that I have nothing to show for my three and a half years in Canada – I had some great freestore finds and a couple of noteworhty trash finds. I dug through dollar bins of vintage headscarves in subzero weather in Kensington Market. I have a little pile of amazing vintage fabrics that I am saving for Hazel clothing when she’s a little older (so it’ll last longer? so she can run around in it because it’s flowy? I don’t know why)… but I found those in the country last summer. I had my moments, but by and large it was unsuccessful.

And now we are three weeks into my thrifting-every-week resolution and I have struck gold every single week. I love small town thrift shops and goodwills and the thought of springtime rummage sales and yard sailing make me want to run out and buy a pickup truck rightnowrightnow. I have spent less than $25.00 and have come home with things we’ll need when we have our own place (trash-picked furniture, an awesome lamp, some decorative/organizational stuff, old Pyrex for dimes and quarters – we need that right??) and a pile of books for Hazel (a quarter or two each) and craft supplies (several yards of vintage embroidered ribbon for $1.75, ’70s afghan patterns for 35 cents each) and a pristine vintage suitcase ($4.99) packed with clothing and linens for a major repurposing undertaking ($1.29 per pound)… that I am afraid will have to remain a secret for quite a while. And I used a birthday craft store giftcard to buy spraypaint for it alllll… bwahahaha. Not really. But there is nothing that I will not spraypaint.

Why is it so different here? Is it because people have more space to hoard their stuff away for 30 or 40 years before they finally donate it? Because people come and go less? Is it because West Virginia (and I suppose other small town places) are behind the times in general? I never really realized how true that is until we moved away and watched everyone back home discover bubble tea and moccasins and… whatever the reason, man does it feel good to find junk that makes my heart all skippy. I inherited this gene from my grandpa I am sure, the yardsale king himself.

There is also Gabe’s of course – one of the top five reasons I could never live in Canada forever (kidding… kind of). The oasis in the desert of full-priced nonsense, where I can find the perfect bird lampshade for my $3.00 thrift shop lamp, and instead of whatever ridiculous price Urban Outfitters had marked, I pay $3.99. Yes thank you.

I haven’t even checked to see if this lamp works yet. A trip to Lowe’s might be in order. But oh, it’s so happy happy.

(…and there is my third-week-of-the-year destash – a bag to Goodwill equal to the size of the bag I brought home, hmm.)

I also feel the need to mention that I am stripping Hazel’s diapers for the first time. Fifteen months and my first diaper-stripping… not too shabby, but annoying enough that I bought some recommended soap that apparently eliminates the need to ever have to strip your diapers because it doesn’t leave any residue like detergents. I have always assumed that 7th Generation was fine to use on them, but after six months in the same 12 diapers (which are synthetic, not natural cotton or bamboo, so they don’t rinse as well) I can tell they are getting a little bit of detergent buildup. They smell clean when they are clean but not as soon as they are wet, and they aren’t absorbing as well. So after several evenings of researching diaper-stripping-methods I am going at them full-force (and my hands are suffering – should have used rubber gloves), and hopefully the new soap will have arrived by the time I need to do a load of diaper laundry. It might be in vain anyway, because we will still use 7th Generation detergent on everything else so the residue left in the washer from regular laundry might cancel out the nice, fancy powder soap.

Listening: Gillian Welch & David Rawlings
(I am) Reading: The Case for Make Believe, new DIY magazine, The Happiest Toddler on the Block (a swaptree swap – I really liked the sleep suggestions in his happiest baby book… it’s hard to find non-cry-it-out advice and I was feeling a little desperate last week)
(Hazel is) Reading: a pile of thrifted books, including stuff about trains, trucks, the alphabet, and houses all around the world
Working on: blue & gold blanket; some Etsy stuff; some Hazel stuff

Bag of housewares destash to Angie… packed up last week but not actually delivered until this week, obviously!

Bag of Christmas decorations and clothing to goodwill.

I’m also counting the little trash-picked tables as last week’s thrifting even though it happened one day early, since I couldn’t go anywhere and craigslist was meh. Angie might take one of them, and I’ll post revamp photos of the other when it is finished. Today I’ll look through goodwill when we drop off that stuff. I did a major first glance photo purge during The Snow In, putting hundreds and hundreds and hundreds into a tub (I have a project in mind for some of them). I’ll go through what’s left more slowly, comparing and keeping our favorites. We never looked at our old photos when they were stored in photo storage boxes, but if we just had two or three albums of college-and-before photos that are our favorites, I would probably actually pull them off the shelf and look at them from time to time. I’m sure Mikey would enjoy all his old band/show photos a lot more if they were in some kind of order and all in one place.

This is easy, right?

Hazel just went down for her afternoon nap, so I am taking a break from my most loathed part of packing: the very end. When there are odds and ends sitting about that you might still need, like scissors and scotch tape and Hazel’s baby journal in case something fantastic happens, and you have lots of empty wire baskets and other small storage to deal with, and you still have to take shelves off of the walls and figure out how to not lose all the hardware, and you inevitably have no choice but to just start putting un-like objects all together in the abnormally-shaped boxes that you have been passing over for weeks and weeks in favor of the “better” boxes.

My grandpa built a bookcase for me when I moved into my first apartment – it’s the perfect size for schlepping from place to place during these years. I have four – FOUR – sets of brackets for the shelves, because I have misplaced them in almost every single move since then. They are always somewhere logical, like the toolbox, but I end up going out to spend a few cents each on new ones at Lowe’s before I figure out where I put the others. Right now all of our bookcase and CD tower brackets/pegs are in a ziploc baggie right beside me on my sewing-table-turned-computer-desk. Mikey is going to freak if misplace it and he can’t shelve his books immediately upon settling into N.O.H. – the closest Ikea to where we are going is over an hour away, so we couldn’t just go get more. I have been trying to plan where to put the baggie when there is nothing else to go in it, and I think my purse seems like the most logical place for this move. I will not take it out of my purse until it’s actually time to put them back in their home.

Since we will be out this evening and tomorrow night, too, I think I will pack up some of Hazel’s books and toys to save some of my sanity – I need to put like things in a box at least once today.

Week 45 – the end. One last big haul of stuff to the freestore. Our television and microwave and probably some other stuff will be added to this tomorrow… any last minute “I don’t even want to deal with this” stuff.

The end is near.

Listening: Iron & Wine
(Hazel is) Reading: Russell the Sheep
Packing progress: I am at 107 boxes, a page full of totes and various other containers, I don’t even know how many Toronto Stars, and over five rolls of packing tape.

The past two weeks and the current week – one more to go!

Bag of stuff to the freestore.

Box of stuff to the freestore.

Purged the grubbiest of Mikey’s white tshirts. I think I will sit on the couch right now and cut the fronts and backs into strips for a future braided rug. I have been nonstopnonstopnonstop all day.

Listening: Billy Bragg & Wilco
(Hazel is) Reading: 10 Little Penguins
Working on: craft show stuff
Packing progress: three boxes, two huge plastic totes of clothes, cleaned out about half of our wee office, cleaned and photographed stuff for sale flyer

To catch up, the last two weeks of organization resolution stuff: weeks 41 & 42…

Two heaps of stuff to the freestore.

I’ve pretty much cleaned out every last little nook and cranny I can think of – the milk crate shoved in the top of the coat closet that was full of extension cords, lightbulbs, and other random household stuff… the cabinet under the sink that catches everything that doesn’t belong anywhere else… the couple of boxes of odds and ends in our storage room downstairs (which I cleaned out the week before we left).

I still need to do something for this week, so it and the next few might have to be a stretch.

Hazey just crashed for an early nap, having had a fever of 99.6 – 100.7 for the past 24 hours. It’s going down now, and she’s not acting sick, so I’m trying not to freak out and assuring myself that it’s just teething, which I’m 99% sure it is. My mom came down with the flu the day after we left, though, and then my dad immediately caught it, so 1% of me is worrying. Aside from clinging me and begging me to make her feel better, she is playing and smiling and eating and otherwise normal. Sleeping through the entire night with a baby attached to my boob made for a very. long. night. I have to say. Even if she does have the flu I am sure she’ll be fine (I know babies younger than her who’ve had it), but it would just be so sad if her first illness ever was the swine flu. I keep laying my cheek and cool washcloths against her hot little body and willing it to cool off. It’s hurting my heart even though she doesn’t mind too much :)

Listening: Tim O’Brien in my head
Hazel is reading: Rocker Babies Wear Jeans
Working on: about go to attach bails to a finished batch of pendants!
Packing progress: scheduled our phones & internet to be disconnected :)

New year’s resolution, week 38: bag-o-stuff to the freestore. Mostly clothing.

Thing I’ve been trying to do forever that I finally did: made labels for all of my dry food jars. Being the label loving freak of nature that I am, I have obsessed for years (literally) about how to label all of my dry food without: a.) having to make new labels in pen that doesn’t match if I switch foods in a jar, and b.) without running out of the same kind of label when I have additions to my pantry (not that I have a pantry – my kitchen itself is the size of a pantry – but someday). All the obvious solutions (black Sharpie on plain white label) seemed too boring. I found these packs of chalkboard labels at the dollar store downstairs (where else??) and bought eight more stickers than I needed, so I have some extras. Now I think the pear looks so nice that I might just use chalkboard paint and stencil a pear on every single one… but that will be an After We Move and After Christmas is Over project.

This is Used Book Sale Week for all the little colleges that are a part of the U of T, and this morning we went to our favorite. I wanted to stock up on some things for repurposing, but when I saw Mikey’s giant pile I thought “what am I doing? I don’t want MORE books to move home”… so I just bought an embroidery book and a quilting book (about an old WV co-op!), and a few things for Hazel. There isn’t much I’d rather spend my money on than used books, I gotta say. I was super happy to find a copy of The Butter Battle Book in great condition – I almost bought it for Hazel last week but couldn’t justify the Canadian price, even with a giftcard. It is, after all, the ultimate child’s guide to pacifism :)

Oh, and thanks to SouthSweetHome for featuring me in her penguin treasury! Little does she even know of the severe love I have for penguins…

Last night while I was trying to fall asleep I was dozing off and thinking about all of the pregnant gals I know, and about what people I know call (or have called) their babies when they are in utero. Various kinds of nuts and beans, “squishy”, “nubs”, “the tadpole”, etc… every kind of cute fetus name you can think of. I started feeling bad that the rest of our babies aren’t going to have an in-utero nickname that makes people laugh as hard as “The Canadian” did, and then a lightbulb came on and I laughed out loud, making Hazel stir around grumpily in her sleep. Maybe at this time next year I’ll be pregnant with little baby _______. I’m laughing again just thinking about it. But you gotta wait for it :)

Listening: The Magnetic Fields
(I am) Reading: The Blue Cotton Gown (okay, so I haven’t actually read any of it in days, but I WILL because it’s so good)
(Hazel is) Reading: her new (yes, new, at a used booksale – how do I know? it’s a board book, so you can tell) copy of Goodnight Moon… in fact, she held it in front of her face, sandwiched between her body and mine, and “read” it very loudly on the walk home while she rode cozily in her Ergo, much to the delight of everyone walking towards us.
Working on: ephemera packs – but seriously, I’m almost done
Packing progress: um… got some newspapers from the lobby today?

We have this shoebox-sized wooden box that we bought in the Outer Banks on our honeymoon, and it’s home to assorted votives, tealights, incense in all different forms, things required for burning them, and essential oils. As you can imagine, it smells divine. On a whim yesterday morning, I threw away some leaked oil and other junk, and sent some crappy dollar store incense to the freestore (you never know – some dollar store incense is really awesome). For the record, if Jan Iafrate outlives us she has already claimed ownership of The Box.

Then I got out our toolbox to see if I had nails small enough to reattach the broken latch to the wooden box (I don’t), and I did the same with it. Mikey bought it for me for our first married Christmas. Clearly, I am the fixer / hanger / assembler in this relationship.

Now, things that I should do while the girl naps: box up some excess kitchen stuff to give to my SIL, taking care of next week’s project; work on etsy shop photos; stuff all of the diapers that are freshly washed and dried and put them away; clean the kitchen.

What I might do instead: make Hazel some skirts that she doesn’t even need; watch an episode of Millenium and crochet. I’ve been watching far too much of that show, because as I read about the killing of this Yale grad student I can’t help but think of all these conspiracy theories. Hmm…

Listening: Hazey’s “naptime mix” from Aunt Janet
Reading: this
Unnecessary purchase of of the day: a small Max and two wild things for a Christmas gift for Hazel – I spotted them two weeks ago and have worried daily they are just going to disappear, so today I bought the trio… so much for all handmade gifts for Hazel. I already knew I’d break the pledge for her, though, because I don’t know how to make a wagon… which I am going to buy for her if I make enough crafting money on Etsy and at a show this fall (…ahem).

I spent Labor Day gathering every single finished piece of Etsy product from various crafting nooks, crannies, and surfaces. A really embarrassing amount of stuff has slipped through the cracks since Hazel’s birth – stuff left over from craft shows that never got added to the mix, things I made to restock something that was low and I just never got around to putting it through the final “get it ready to pop in the mail” process and so it just sat there. I got all of that together, went through everything and pulled out stuff I’m sick of so I can make up some packages of stuff to sell on the cheap, and then took a final inventory of everythinggggg. So I’ve spent the week working on spreadsheets, rephotographing, and trying to get my old pre-baby system back in place. This is definitely the most majorly organizational thing I’ve done since the beginning of the year when I made this resolution, and it’s going to be such a big help when it comes time to move / settle in at home.

Yesterday morning I went to Michael’s to look for brown yarn for the EBP Blanket, and they didn’t have it. I have enough colors to last me until I go home next and can stock up there, so I’m not worried about a halt to my progress – I’ll just have lots of middles awaiting a brown edge. I did, however, leave with one of those humongo paper punches in the shape of a tag. I’ve been wanting one for awhile to make gift tags out of trashed paper and cardboard, and they were majorly on sale so I bought one. Let me just say that I’m only just now regaining feeling in one of my fingers, because I punched about 800 tags as soon as I got home and I think the repetitive motion temporarily damaged some nerves. Now I want more shapes because the possibilities are endless, and I’m wondering if I should invest in a die-cutter (or ask santa to bring me one). I think I’m going to be seeing my huge ephemera collection going out the door very speedily. Luckily all the school used book sales are coming up so I can bring in backup troops :)

Today we went to the vegetarian food festival on the harbor with some friends, and I ate so much food that I could have gone to bed as soon as we arrived home at Hazel’s bedtime. Oof. I came home with a jar of coconut spread, which sounds weird but god in heaven… who ever thought I, who really can’t stand much that is coconut, would inhale two samples of coconut spread and then splurge on a jar? And where can I get this delectable treat once we are back in West Virginia? Or how do I make my own? Wouldn’t I have to use approximately 200 coconuts to make one jar?

Listening: Nick Drake kind of day…
Square count: stalled at 31 until my finger recovers from its crafting casualty