Things, Memories, and Sparking Joy

I once read that there's a whole contingency of people who cannot get rid of an object that a memory is attached to. I don't remember where I read this or in what context, but the idea is that if an object disappears from a person's possession that they are worried that the memory that is attached to an object will disappear with it. Because of this, they keep the object as a reminder of the memory and cherish it with a certain amount of sentimental fondness. 

I am not wired with this particular characteristic. 

I don't know if it's because I moved a fair amount growing up or because I have an innate urge to offload things that I'm not using and that are taking up space, but I have no problem purging a closet or room and getting rid of things I no longer use or need. Haven't worn this dress in years? Gone. Not ever going to whip together anything out of this cookbook? Thank you, next. Scent of this candle I was gifted too overpowering and it's never going to get lit? Let's not keep that light buried in a basket. With only a few notable exceptions, I will offload pretty much any "thing" that isn't getting used. 

With this in mind, you would have thought I would have jumped all in on the Marie Kondo phase that went bananas during Covid. Purging all of the things, organizing all of the remaining things, and only keeping those things that "spark joy". But I didn't. I remember during 2020 my social media feeds were filled with people who were spending their newfound free time when their life slowed down by looking around and realizing that they didn't want or need all of the stuff that they'd accumulated. They sang the praises of the KonMari method and were feeling the freedom of getting rid of piles of stuff. 

That wasn't me. I was in the "How many different ways can I bake bread?" trend of that same era. You don't have time to purge things if you're drowning your stress as a parent who is supervising the remote learning of two young kids - one of whom is neuro-spicy - in carb-laden homemade comforts. My family does not share in the same zeal for the release of the things that I do, and so it was breads and brownies and cookies and King Arthur Baking Challenges instead. Had I attempted to have my two elementary-aged children thank all of their stuffed animals for their service and release them from their shackles, I would have had a mutiny on my hands. 

The kids are now middle-school aged and a lot of the toys and things that sprinkled their younger years are starting to make their way to more playful pastures. One of the last holdouts from the elementary era was the pretend food, a bucket of toys that for the last couple of years seemed to only appear on Thanksgiving Day as some sort of "make a fake meal" tradition they concocted or when a smaller friend was visiting that needed entertainment. I sorted through the bin, placed all of the food that was in good condition in a bag, and posted it on the online Marketplace for a lot less than we paid for it but enough to get the kids an ice cream or new board game. 

Within minutes, a dad messaged me with interest. Yes, please take it off our hands and into the hands of your little one. He drove to my house, handed me cash, and a brief story. 

His elementary-aged daughter had one wish for her birthday: a new play kitchen. My sale of a Trader Joe's bag full of pretend food came for them at the absolute perfect time. 

The paltry amount of cash in my hand does not cover the worth of the joy that pretend food brought my children or the joy it will bring that little girl whose one birthday wish was a play kitchen. I could have charged and received $1,000 and it wouldn't have amounted to the value of that joy. 

But the pretend food is gone from my house and space for a new round of memories connected to things has opened. 

There are times when a purge is necessary in order to move forward. For example, any time I have a move on the horizon I find this to be the prime opportunity to purge of things that have collected dust and taken up space long enough. No one wants to move things they don't have to; moving is enough of a pain in the backside without having extra boxes of clothes you haven't worn in ages, kitchenware you'll never use, and papers you haven't looked at in over a decade. 

Books move. All of the books move. Don't judge. And while you're at it, don't look at my "To Be Read" list on The Storygraph either. 

In the late spring of 2022, a house came on the market in our town that after 5 years of passively watching the market my husband and I agreed fit both of our checklists. We looked at it, put in an offer, and against every odd we had stacked up against ourselves in our head - it was accepted. 

I immediately went into action. I worked my whole life for this. I moved 9 times in my life before I went to college and countless times in and out of dorms during the course of my Bachelor's degree. No, family, we are not going to just throw it in a box and then sort through it when we get to the new place. That's how we never get rid of things and become keepers of boxes of unused things. I became a Tasmanian Devil of packing and purging, getting things squared away through the stages of first getting ready to stage to sell, then minimizing down to what we absolutely needed for the last few weeks while we prepped the new-to-us house, then the last things before we evacuated. I was a machine, constantly repeating the phrase "Trust me, fam, we're in good shape, I've done this more than I care to think about, it's a lot but we've got this" as each box gets packed and each room becomes less of a home and more of a naked shell. 

When you're moving and you're in this flurry of activity to get it all done, at some point you look around and the space you've occupied is now empty. In this case, the space was our first house. Our first space that was truly ours. We celebrated 12 years of birthdays and Christmases in that house. Both of our kids came home through the front door of that house, because we thought that they - like us and every friend and family member welcomed to our home for the first time before them - deserved a grand entrance through the front door and not the basement next to the garage. First birthday cake smashes. First steps. First tooth fairy visits. Snow days. The most amazing octogenarian neighbors who loved our kids like their own grandkids. 

We sat on the floor of the kitchen in our first house, eating takeout dinner and sharing our favorite memories. Our laughs echoed, the sad and excited tears of our kids fell to the floor. Cleaning up the vestiges of our last meal in the house, my husband took the kids outside to play in the yard one last time while I stayed behind in the kitchen to set up the small gifts and menus and brochures from our town I had gathered for the new family with the toddler that was moving in. 

I turned one last time to look at the empty kitchen that I had packed and purged and had made my home office for the last decade after leaving work to be home full-time. I looked out the back deck door at my family running around making one last set of joyful memories before we turned the page to a new chapter in a new house with a new yard and a new set of neighbors who would love my kids so well. 

A house is just a thing. I move on from things. 

But things serve us, and this house turned us from a couple of crazy late-20s kids into a couple of early 40s adults. This house watched us grow from a fairly newly married couple into a full-blown family. This house held us during a pandemic and was a constant when uncertainty ran rampant. This house showed us independence and helped us mature and grow. 

I looked at the plant and the sidewalk chalk and the folded menus and brochures on the island and looked at the space that had once been filled with things and was now empty. This kitchen, this house, this toy that I and my family had outgrown and were ready to pass along to the next family. 

I took a deep breath. And then somewhere, something, some well of suppressed emotion that I had put a cap on while I purged and packed and packed and purged and moved all of our things from one place to hold our stuff to another place to hold our stuff just erupted. I stood there, in the middle of the kitchen, the ugliest of ugly cries spilling out of my depths and pouring out, covering the walls with a dozen years of memories and stories and love. 

My husband through some cosmic spousal connection at that moment looked through the back deck door and saw me standing there, arms at my side like some sort of physically paralyzed yet emotionally collapsing doll, and ran into the house. He held me, he let me cry it out, sharing in the outpouring of emotion that somehow I had been the last one to grab the rail and jump on the feelings train as it pulled out of the station a minute after departure time. 

The money that exchanged from buyer to seller in the closing of the sale of our first house, one that became our home and saw us grow into a family, was paltry in comparison to the memories we made and took with us. It's nothing compared to the couple who bought it and who are now making their own roots and memories and growing their own family within its walls. 

I never did follow Marie Kondo or jump on the KonMari bandwagon. 

But things serve us. And though we may purge them and send them to the next person in a cycle of usage that lasts as long as the object does, the memory impact is much longer. The memories are part of our story, part of what makes us who we are. 

Thank you, Pretend Food. Thank you, Mint Green Colonial. 

We are grateful for how you served our family. 

In Which I Piss Off Some of the Feminists Who Follow Me...

When I was in college, I worked with the orientation program for new students. There was this video that we showed the kids from a guy named Mike Green (aka "Greeny") about making responsible choices - specifically about alcohol and parties, but the wisdom could be applied to many of the situations that we are presented with in college life. What stood out to me was a line that he repeated throughout the video:

"Be your brother's keeper, be your sister's keeper."

In college, and really in the whole world, we are a part of a larger community. We need to watch out for each other and make sure we are taking care of each other in as many aspects of life that we can.

So now we cross into the territory where I get absolutely infuriated when I see memes or posts or whatever posted on social media that basically say that we women should be able to dress as provocatively as we want. That when a young lady goes to school dressed in clothes that are too revealing that it is detracting from her education to send her home or send her to the office for a change of clothes that are less revealing. That our first amendment rights of expression are being violated because men can't just control themselves and not rape us. Or some other variation on this general idea that we should be able to wear whatever we want, whenever we want and everyone else in the world - namely men - should just kind of deal with that.

Before I get into this - let me be abundantly clear about a couple of things:

1. I do feel that no matter what a woman decides to wear be it a full-on burqa or a g-string bikini - no one has a right to violate her body, or cat call, or otherwise treat that woman in any way disrespectfully. Rape is despicable in all instances - no means no, and wearing an outfit (or not wearing an outfit) is not an open invitation for anyone to force themselves upon another person.

...ok really that's it. Rape is horrible and I don't think that dressing provocatively is an open invitation to be raped. There is never an excuse to that deeply abuse a fellow human being. Ever. For any reason. At all.

I just want to make sure that's clear before I begin my rant.

And friends, I AM going to rant. Buckle up.

I can remember as a teenager wanting to dress in a certain way because I wanted my boyfriend to be attracted to me. I didn't understand what all that entailed, but I knew that I had a certain amount of appeal to him and I wanted to... exploit it may not be the right word, but I'll use it for now.

There were a handful of times that I would leave for school in the morning and be turned right around back to my room. But... My mom had a fingertip-and-bra rule: If she could see my bra, a shirt needed to be layered underneath or the one I had on changed altogether and if the skirt/shorts I was wearing did not extend past the tip of my middle fingertip when my hands were at my sides then I had to change that too.

Why?

Because having your boobs hanging out isn't exactly appropriate for school, nor is having your behind hanging out when you bend over for your pen. Also because my mom cared/cares very much about me and didn't want me sending out an unintentional message. She explained this to me, and I understood. I didn't go off on a free-speech rant, and she let me choose what the substitute or replacement was - but those were the boundaries. Because she cared. And wanted to protect me. And I understood her boundaries existed because she loves me.

At no point did I think that she might be violating my first amendment rights or insinuating that I was a slut. She was just being her daughter's keeper and watching my back.

Let me extend this a bit further. Dress codes exist in high schools, I think, for a number of reasons. The BIGGEST one that I can think of is that when students get into the real world they are expected to dress in a certain professional manner. They cannot wear "F**K YOU" t-shirts or "GARAGE BAND WORLD TOUR 2013" t-shirts to work, nor can they wear jeans ripped to shreds, or have their underpants hanging out, or wear incredibly provocative clothing. If the purpose of school is to prepare you for the real world - then that should include clothing. A lot of jobs that these kids are going to work force you to wear a uniform, or adhere to a certain dress code or an expectation of a certain level of business attire exists in the culture. The odds of a student landing a job where excessive amounts of cleavage OR the donning of a "F**K YOU" hat are acceptable are pretty darned slim. As such - dress codes prepare students for the real world where real rules apply for real reasons.

The memes that are out there defending the rights of women to dress provocatively miss this point. Instead they say it's distracting from a girl's education or violating her first amendment rights. Well... to me this smacks of "Yes, but just because you CAN run into a crowded movie theater and shout 'FIRE' doesn't mean you SHOULD". Is it responsible to dress in a way that sends a message you're not looking to send, potentially putting ourselves and our fellow human beings - in this case, likely men - at a risk of being in a situation where intentions are misconstrued and a relationship or a person's emotional well-being can be destroyed?

But Danielle - you're bordering on "slut shaming"! But Danielle - it's not our responsibility to make sure that other people behave appropriately!

Is that really true though?

Let's go with the commonly accepted notion that men are more visually stimulated sexually than women. Whether this is truly engrained in them biologically or created from a society where physical appearance is elevated above internal beauty does not matter, studies have supported this in one capacity or another and so we'll start from here. If that is indeed the case, then if Suzy Student walks into class one day wearing loose-fitting jeans, a standard t-shirt, and a pair of Converse - would you not say that it is less likely that Peter Pupil notices Suzy than if she were to walk in wearing a low-cut midriff shirt with a mini-skirt and a pair of boots that carry the nickname "f**k-me boots"?

Now, if Peter is a stand-up human being (which most men are believe it or not) even if he IS distracted by Suzy it won't affect his studies and he can go on with his day. Suzy feels empowered or beautiful or whatever with what she's wearing and no harm is done.

But Danielle - what if Suzy really DOES want people to look at her physical beauty?!?! What ever happened to "if you've got it, flaunt it"? WHY ARE YOU STOMPING ON HER RIGHT OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION????

Welll... because. The reality is that no matter what her intentions, Suzy is going to turn heads with the latter outfit. She's probably going to get attention both positive AND negative from both boys AND girls at the school. It's possible that while walking around with her backpack on that her skirt creeps up the back of her bag and her behind will be flashing everyone. It's possible that some of her male friends will notice that her low-cut shirt creates the perfect "basketball hoop" for potato chips during lunch (both of those things happened to me).

It's possible she'll get cat-called. It's possible she'll be sexually assaulted or sexually harassed or raped.

Dress codes exist to teach kids that there are boundaries for what is acceptable to wear in the real world. A lot of this is professional - but a lot of it is personal. And in this instance, the school is protecting not just Peter from "being distracted" - it's protecting Suzy too.

Because Suzy doesn't understand as a teenager whose brain is not fully developed yet that she is indeed taking a risk by dressing that way - and the school needs to be its sister's keeper in this instance.

I stopped choosing revealing clothes after a time. Sure, I got tired of having Fritos chucked at my chest, but mostly I realized that I wasn't doing myself any favors. I watched as girls who dressed certain ways were thought to have certain behaviors and I didn't want to send a message to anyone that I was someone I wasn't. I began to dress more to represent who I actually was and not who the pages of Seventeen stated I could be.

I have a daughter now - and so a lot of this really hits home and is part of what infuriates me about these memes and posts. I know - some of you are reading this thinking "Well what do you want to teach her? That she needs to dress in a certain way so that men don't go fawning all over her?"

Good question. What do I want to teach her? Three things:

My daughter. She's awesome.

1. How you dress should be an expression of who you ACTUALLY are - not what whatever the magazine or social media of the time when she's in high school says she should be or look like. The people who will love her the most in her life and cherish her for who she is are the ones who will find her attractive in sneakers, a sweater, and khakis. Right now her preferred outfits are dress-like shirts, leggings or jeans, and a pair of sneakers because she loves to run. She's active. She needs to dress to express who she actually is - not what she thinks will appeal her to someone.

2. I'll finally close on my Greeny point that I've skirted on several times. For better or worse, our male counterparts are sexually visually stimulated. I want my daughter to understand how the male mind works and how she can be her brothers' keeper. How she can help men out there to see women as more than just sexual objects and see each one of us for our true depth of beauty. I want her to help the men in her life to disspell this reputation they've gotten as pigs who "only want one thing". I want her to blow up social media with how strong and awesome people are. We're not going to destroy rape culture by elevating the rights of women to dress however they want - we're going to destroy it by empowering real men to speak up and make it harder and more uncomfortable to sexually harass women. I want her to be a part of that.

3. We're a Christian home, and we believe in God and we believe in Jesus. In Stasi Eldridge's book "Captivating", she spends page after page after page describing how we are so beautiful just as we are created by God. Each one of us is unique and beautiful and amazing regardless of how we look or dress. God has designed each of us and Jeremiah 29:11 tells us that God has great plans for us of hope and a future and not of disaster. Psalm 139:13 describes how we were beautifully knit together in our mothers' wombs. We have lost our ability to place our intrinsic value in how God sees us - and I hope and I pray and I desire for her to base her worth in that.

In a world where we scream for equality and for the rights of the individual, we have lost the need for true community and we have forgotten how to be our brothers' keeper and our sisters' keeper. We will not beat rape culture or rape mindset by downplaying our very real role as women. Feminism might seem to some to be about our rights to do whatever we want and not be abused by men - but really it's about being strong, being independent-minded, and being able to be counter-culture and changing the culture. It's about rising above societal norms and not perpetuating the same ones and just changing the soundtrack of reasons.

So, social media - enough with the pseudo-feminist memes about free speech and distractions from education. Enough with the "You Go Girl!" rants and double-standards when we then post pictures of ourselves and expect men not to virtually cat-call us when we do. Enough slut-shaming and enough of not loving ourselves and respecting ourselves and others.

Let's ACTUALLY empower our daughters, our cousins, our BFFs, our sisters to actually do something about it on a personal level. Let's become activists.

Let's DO something. 

Daily To-Do List

I like to think in my own mind that I have it together. That I am the kind of woman who means business and just gets things done and...

Here's where my husband would chuckle to himself and say "Yeah, OK Honey." Why? Why would he say such a thing?

Well... because the reality is that I am rather scatterbrained and a bit distractable. It drives him crazy when I get to work at home because I'll start one chore, then start another, then sometimes for fun a third, then go back to the first, work on the third again, go back and finish the first, then work on the second... you get my point. 

I knew this about myself when I worked a desk job before I came home, so back then I used to have a to-do list notebook and a million sticky-notes that reminded me to do the important things. Anything that didn't get checked off on the to-do list moved to the next day's list with any new things to do. By keeping those running lists, I was able to actually get things done and keep things moving. I still got distracted, but at least I had some guidance.

So I went on Pinterest and found a couple of to-do lists that I liked, but none were exactly what I was looking for. I took a few, cherry-picked what I liked and made my own which I am now adding to the fray.

Here's my to-do list printable; I'm sharing it with you. I made it today in MS Publisher using one of their basic stationary templates (I know, I'm so original) and added in some text boxes of what works best for me. Maybe it works best for you, maybe like the other 83475 to-do lists out there did for me it will help you to shape your own.

Either way - here it is.

The Value of Lonely

This beautiful video about being alone had been making its way around the internet but I had been avoiding it. Admittedly, I have a hard time being alone and somewhere in my brain I thought that watching this video would have meant that I was preparing myself for loneliness.

It took reading my friend Kimberly's blog and seeing that she felt it was the single most beautiful thing she had ever read, seen, or heard for me to succumb to pressing the play button and watching it.

I am glad I did.

Her first words: "If you are, at first, lonely - be patient" spoke to me directly. It was almost as if she had said "Danielle" before starting that sentence because I am not patient when I am - at first - lonely.

There are times when I am alone for 5-10 days at a time because the nature of Steve's job has him away at trainings and conferences to be brought up to date on the latest technologies. During these times I have a tendency to make plans and surround myself with my closest friends or visit family because I am subconsciously afraid of being alone. 

"...and it doesn't mean you're not connected, the community's not present. Just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it."

This video has given me the perspective I need to start to understand the value of being alone. Steve is heading out to Colorado soon for more training - a 10-day jaunt - which means I'll be given opportunity to be alone for long stretches at a time.

I will take this time to do some of the things I've always wanted to do alone and been too afraid to try. I will find the beauty and value of being alone.

"But He Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray." - Luke 5:16

Making a Difference with Small Improvements

One of the first things I noticed after we moved to New Hampshire and I was commuting over the state line every day was the difference in the level of cleanliness on the sides of the highway. Where the sides of the road along Route-93 in New Hampshire are relatively clean and well kept, the sides in Massachusetts have more garbage and tends to be more overgrown in some spots. At first I thought that maybe New Hampshire commuters were more conscientious about their littering habits (think Woodsy the Owl from the 1980's commercials - "Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute!" - after all, a big owl is right in line with the whole "woods of New Hampshire" thing.



Then a little while later I saw something on the side of the road in New Hampshire that I don't really see in Massachusetts. The NH-DOT has people out there regularly (once a month or every other month) with trash bags picking up the trash. They gather up all the garbage that people lose from their cars or just outright throw out of their windows, put it in bags on the side of the road, a truck comes by and collects the bags and VOILA! The sides of the highway are clean. It is rare in Massachusetts to see this regularly; when I have it has been correctional work-release programs and even then it's on an inconsistent basis.

As often happens when my thoughts wander, I then began to think about how far the environmental movement has come in the last 50 years. If you've ever seen the movie or read the book "A Civil Action", then you know that American industry did a darn good job before we knew better of damaging our environment, and the average American - who also didn't know better - helped in that process with pitching garbage on the ground without a second thought. Since then, there are all sorts of ways to recycle used material into new, we're looking for renewable energy resources, and all the messes made of the environment by previous generations are being cleaned up by the US Environmental Protection agency. Yet, people still exist that think that throwing their garbage out the window is a fabulous idea; two years ago after I had just gotten my car back from getting body work done, I got hit in the new paint job with a Minute Maid juice bottle thrown from the window of a Jeep Grand Cherokee.

My day continued and I had my review mid-morning. One of the things that was noted on my review was that I "implemented many small improvements in the process that have added up to increased efficiency for the business." So this of course made me start thinking about all the small things that we all can do to make a difference in helping the environment (these things tend to go on all day when they pop in my head)... like... not throwing our juice bottles out the window, as a simple example. Just sayin'.

Ahem.

In all seriousness... there are two specific areas that Americans can help in that are pretty normal and/or popular activities that we all do regularly - shopping and drinking coffee.

Shopping

There are two things that are available now that people can do to make the use of shopping bags a bit more environmentally friendly. They are:

1. Get some reusable shopping bags - and remember to take them out of your car when you use them. Not only do you cut down on the number of those wonderful "these are not a toy" plastic bags that don't biodegrade - there are many of them available for people with all sorts of fashion sense. You can get bags from your favorite store, homemade ones, or just some pretty darn stylish ones. Some of them even support causes - the ones I got from Shaw's are pink and support Breast Cancer Research.
2. A lot of grocery stores have a repository now at the entrance of the store that you can return your used plastic bags to be recycled. I'm assuming they're just made into more grocery bags... but it's certainly a better alternative to having hoodlums light them up over campfires and make popping noises. Or throwing them away so they accumulate in a landfill someplace.

Me? I opt for the reusable shopping bags; admittedly I sometimes forget to take them out of the car, so then I try to remember to catch the bagger and say paper... but sometimes I miss that too. But I do indeed prefer the reusable bags to the bags the store provides. Right now I have a whole bunch of them from various places. They fit a ton of food and most of them are made pretty sturdy. If you get them from your grocery store they're usually only a couple of dollars, but if you're looking for something more stylish and fancy - why not also support handmade goods artists and get one on Etsy?

Other things you can do to help the enviroment - keep an eye for your favorite stores' flyers & sales to be sent to your email (Bath & Body Works, Kohls, and a lot of grocery stores do this). Do you use your credit or debit card to shop? If you do - why not convert to paperless statements? You'll be saving lots of trees!

Coffee

There are a few different things with coffee or other hot beverages that you can do that are easy and are great ways to take steps towards helping the environment.

1. Reusable coffee mugs. This might seem like an obvious one - but it's amazing how obvious it is not. As Americans we value convenience, and there's nothing more convenient than someone else providing things for you. However, we generate a lot of garbage every year in hot beverage cups alone. Starbucks is doing a promotion today where everyone who brings in a reusable travel mug will get a free cup of brewed coffee. They are also encouraging people to take a pledge to use reusable mugs rather than standard paper mugs. Let's say I got my one cup of coffee every day from Starbucks. If I did that and switched to using my own mug - I would save 7 trees every year. If 10 people did that - 70 trees every year. I use my own mug every day at work rather than the styrofoam cups my company provides. I would like to start remembering to keep a clean travel mug in the car incase I want coffee when I'm out. See? Simple, easy... and can be stylish if you get the right mug!
2. Reusable coffee cup sleeves. I have to admit that I love those stupid cardboard sleeves that are available to slip over my cup and keep my hand from burning or freezing. These are another item that are made in a reusable format and are small enough to keep in your car, pocket, or purse. Not that I love to promote handmade goods or anything, but there are a large variety available on Etsy. One of these years I'm going to crochet one for myself - I made one once for a swap and it was super easy!
3. Do you garden? Did you know that used coffee grounds make great compost for your flower beds? Starbucks will often have grounds available at their shops for their patrons to take for free (or at least they used to, and I'm sure if they don't immediately they might if you talk to the manager). If you don't take it - it will just get thrown away, so you might as well ask. My guess is that your local coffee shop owner would be willing to do the same, so if you have an in - talk up the manager and ask.

That's all I have for now that I can think of... but I encourage everyone to think of different small ways that you can help out the environment. Maybe you'll bike or walk somewhere instead of drive, start to bring your lunch in reusable containers - the possibilities are endless!

What do you do daily to add your small part in to helping our planet?