My friend Karin wrote a post on her reading and interpretation of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. You should read it because she, like me, took a big break from blogging and is honestly more back than I am. What’s funny is she also just wrote a post of a home tour of her house/hallway/federal prison and I could do similar about the halfway house/roach hotel/apartment that we are living in right now during the build of the dirt. Anyhow, her post on tidying up reinforced my need to review and edit my closet. Something I’ve wanted to do since Z and I moved in a month and a half ago and was also reinforced by Z having to move a clothes pile off the (permanent) ironing board that serves as my dresser since we moved in so it wouldn’t fall over in the middle of the night under the weight of my clothes and angst. Classy. Z and I are now sharing a closet and admittedly, I am 80% of that space while he maintains a capsule wardrobe without even trying. He’s so hip. My ski jacket sits next to tee shirts next to my favorite pants and blingy holiday sweaters and all wrinkled as they fall out of the closet when I try to pull them down even though I ironed them. I iron. Don’t judge. The slightly damp laundry hanging in the bedroom doorway mocking me and falling on the floor regularly as the merest breath of air/full sized human scoots by. Saturday I spent the day, yes, like 5 hours, doing laundry, ironing, organizing and editing both for my and the Goodwill’s benefit. Three bags delivered by 4 pm along with a load off my mind. It’s stunning how many clothes I have when I take a look at them.I had thought I probably needed a bunch of new clothes. I’ve decided I really don’t-only a few new shirts and a pair or two of shoes. Sunday I spent an hour reorganizing the pantry (my suburban pantry?) and finding random cans of canellini beans behind sugar, four pouches of Temptations cat treats (enough for a year) and a ridiculous amount of snacks in the treat basket. I organized it all and made room for Betty in there. Now I just have to bring myself to get her down from her perch and give her a Lysol wipe. I can’t say that this reduction of things will cause existential lightness of being or not but the other night Z caught me smiling as I walked past the closet and asked why. That–is magical.
*in case you are curious–the cardinal in the featured post photo is singing for me most mornings when I come into work. He reminds me of lots of things, including my Grandma James. I try to catch him in a photo all the time but he’s shy and I am unskilled.
Even if you move because you chose it, like building a new house where you get to pick #allthethings from the sidewalk pavers to the sink shapes to the placement of a secret hidden phone jack that they force you to have, it is hard. Everything from cleaning out the last home you chose, and deciding what can fit into the tiny halfway house/apartment that you also chose and that feels like it is a soul and joy sucking roach. Oh, no, that’s a regular roach. It’s just hard. It makes you plain tired and leaves you wondering what you were thinking. So many choices. Everyday, the average American sees something like 15,000 pieces of branding. How do I keep the best possible ones for me? How do I discard all the soul and life suckers and keep the joy?
Seven years ago I wrote my first post. I don’t have any idea what drove me to write it. I remember struggling through setting up a blog on the Blogger (Google) platform and wondering why it was hard and if I was out of my league. I didn’t ask Z (computer genius) for help with it. We were living in an apartment and I had a really old desktop computer and zero experience. Looking back I think that it was for myself. At some point I realized I had a terrible memory and hate to journal. Blogging would help me to remember and typing is easier than pen to paper. I never thought of myself as a writer or anything else. In our pre-marital counseling they suggested that we might find a hobby together-so we decided one of those could be cooking. A blog is a great way to recount that and our other adventures. At some point Z was developing a massive WordPress multisite installation and switched me over. I was mad because I thought it was a lot harder and I’d have to learn again. It’s worked out though and I’ve used that experience on other projects for work. I find that I am usually up to it if I put enough common sense into it and use Google when I can’t figure things out on my own.
My Urban Pantry 
