How about a Max Daniels inspired virtual self-care camp for the summer? Every summer I want to make it the summer of clean closets. And of course never do. This summer - my kids are home but older and self-sufficient so I have the time, and I might actually get it done with a little group motivation.
Any one want to join me and “Get Something Important Done” whatever that something might be?
COUNT ME IN!
My office is starting to look even more worrisome than usual. I have been thinking in the back of my mind: 15 minutes a day. I can do anything for 15 minutes. What do you think? In a week it will be almost two hours of tidying, which I would never actually do otherwise!
I’m putting my husband into a nursing home next week and suspect that I’ll need some structure in my summer. I can’t say what I’ll do or accomplish but I’m in.
I am totally in! My house is in minor chaos right now but it’s slowly edging towards full blown!!! I did take everything out of the fridge and clean it on Sunday. The upside is I’m pretty sure I’m a shoe in for first place in the Science Fair.
My first Camp project is cleaning the cabinet in my laundry room. This is a 5 year and 1 hour project: 4 foot wide cabinet with 2 shelves.
I would say you have your hands full and they you will definitely need not only structure but lots of self care. My boyfriend is in a nursing home right now. It’s not a huge deal–he has to get daily, IV antibiotics because of a diabetic foot wound–but the lifestyle change is significant. One big thing I would suggest is that if they have laundry services available, take advantage of them. Brian’s not there for much longer but I am definitely totally done with schlepping laundry back and forth.
Thanks! I never would have thought of that but then I think I’ll be schlepping his daily martini, a week at a time, so maybe I could do both.
Provided you can identify what that fuzzy thing is…
I took the bottom drawers out. I should at least get honorable mention for that alone!
Yes! I need to find and open every last box that got shipped here from my parents’ former home a few years ago. The house they lived in for about 5 decades. I went through a lot of it - a LOT - and dealt with Stuff, but then I hit a box that was full of youthful hopes and dreams (not mine) and it was just too much weight on my soul so I pushed the rest of the boxes under furniture. Boom! Invisible! I’ve invited my niece to come in July and take anything she wants, so I need to do the preliminary search mission ASAP. So…count me in!
That sounds like a really, really hard job. I’m a big believer in 15 minutes a day and if necessary an accompanying glass of something - whether wine, scotch, or ice tea.
I MUST be in. Hubs decided to celebrate my retirement by purchasing a condo less than half the size of our house, and less than 2 miles from his work. Can you say FORCED DOWNSIZING?!?!
We moved into that house 25 years ago, just prior to our wedding in August. The accumulation is nothing short of amazing…
And to top it off, (because there is always a silver lining, isn’t there?) my eldest has announced her engagement and wedding last week! It’s going to be an outdoor wedding in the Smokies on December 22nd. I’m going to freeze! She wants me to wear silver glitter and on her way up the aisle, instead of the traditional rose, she wants to hand me some monogrammed knitting needles and have me knit through the ceremony!!
Now if I can get through 2 surgeries, one estate sale, the downsized move, and my husband and other daughter freaking out along the way, the dogs and I will be just fine!
I know there’s a lot going on in your life, and your downsizing task sounds huge, but I just want to say one thing: your eldest is AMAZING!
I need to seam up and block some sweaters.
[runs and sobs into vat of liquor]
If the time thing doesn’t work — I once dropped it to 5 minutes and it still didn’t work! — So I was told to try the touch x number of papers/mail/objects to deal with method. I started w 5. And then found myself doing another 5 because it was so easy. And so on… it was a miracle for me. No idea why my insane brain found this method working when 5 minutes didn’t. Perhaps because sometimes 5 pieces of mail meant less than 5 seconds, whereas one get really get into the weeds in 15 minutes?
I wasn’t sure I was going to share the picture but the heck with it! With the BF in the hospital (he’s fine–just treatments) I have the whole couch to myself. I usually sit on the right side of the couch with Brian on the left. The left is now mine!!! So the “Get 'er done” plan is to get this hot mess of a sofa cushion organized, prioritized and put away. And since I’m feeling very Pavlovian today, once I get it done, I get to watch the first episode of Season 2 of GLOW.
P.S. Yes that is a week’s worth of bras that have been flung.
Congratulations on your retirement! So good to have the wedding after, rather than before 
You CAN do anything for 15 minutes a day! Especially when you have a timer 
Friends, I am in! I am going to write the first draft of my book. Will I sound insane if I say I want it to be done before I go to Mexico on the 17th? Perhaps. But that is the goal. It may involve some intensity.
Thank you so much! She really is!
Although yesterday, in the middle of trying to figure out how to get the kitchen stove to get out of Power Failure mode (we live in Florida, daily thunderstorms in the afternoon) and back to where I could set a 15 minute timer, she called in a panic to tell me that the bridal salon accidentally wrote her wedding date down as December 2019 instead of 2018, so they were going to have to make it from scratch in under three months to get it to the alterations people and the beaders!!! Remembering my own wedding 25 years ago next month, (her love of “glitter and goop, Mommy”comes honestly) I had fudged the date by a month because if I hadn’t back then, I would have gone down the aisle naked! And my dress came from Vera Wang Atelier - I only needed alterations to make a bustle from a cathedral train!
I wound up calming her down and just running the microwave for 15 minutes. I’m pretty sure another thunderstorm will happen again today and my favorite indie Dyer is having a shop update. Life’s too short to worry about stove timers!
