Aren't Monday mornings just the best for lists?
I completely meant to share all of this over the weekend, but life just kept expanding and expanding and crowding out computer time. That's sorta the theme of this post, by the way.
So, last week I dug into Simple Organic's Make Week. I had a list of things I hoped to make. As it turns out, I was a smidgen overly ambitious. That's sorta the theme of my life, by the way.
I did NOT make:
* time for knitting. Big fail. Again. Boo.
* time for reorganizing the storage room. Turns out that was okay. More on that in a bit.
* the upcycling projects I linked to last week. However, they are still very much on the project list!
However, I did:
* make a somewhat workable recycling system. It's not ideal, but it will work for now. At some point in the future, I would love to see some recycling systems in homes where curbside recycling is not available.
* make time to read. Two fun book reviews coming up later this week.
* make time to reorganize the laundry room/craft space.
* make a little seed starting magic happen:
(the only ones that have sprouted so far are AJ's carrots.)
* make the house company ready for a cookout that officially kicked off the grilling season! Dacey did her part to make our guests feel welcome. (We are LOVING the window markers!)
* make a lot of time to make believe, and a lot of time to wander. We spent so much time outside last week. It was glorious.
* make time to talk with Kyle about the stuff we are slowly accumulating again. Both of us are ready for a time of purging of stuff. We do this every now and again, and we are both excited to move stuff out of the house. We made the decision to go ahead and get rid of most of the baby clothes and a lot of the baby paraphernalia taking up space in the storage room. We do think we'll have another baby someday, but as I read Tsh's thoughts on decluttering, I couldn't help but to be convicted of how much stuff we are holding on to "just in case."
God provided all that we needed for each of our two children. I am choosing to believe that if He blesses us with another child, He will be faithful to provide once again. In the meantime, we can be a blessing to families in need in our community by passing all of those sweet pink outfits and bins full of toys to the pregnancy care center.
Thoughts going forward:
1) I know that we will never be a totally TV-Free family. And I really have come to a place of accepting that. I was struck by this comment from Songbirdy on the TV-Free in the Morning post:
I have a few older mentors from my church, and once I was talking about tv watching and moaning about how pathetic it is that our big 'family event' most weekends is to 'watch tv or a movie together.' And two of them said something that totally shocked me and has given me much thought about tv in general.
Both of them told me that they don't really understand all the problems that us younger women have with tv. Yes, they understand the excess issue... but this feeling of guilt for any tv usage seems, to them, irrational.
They both felt that its the fact that we are spending time together that is important not the 'what' we are doing. The fact that my family regularly sits together... that is to be celebrated.
I thought about that quite a bit. One of my favorite memories from childhood is of Friday nights in our home. We would often have "campouts" on the floor of my parents' bedroom - making beds on the floor, getting to snack on normally forbidden junk foods, and watching ABC's friday night line-up (Full House, anyone?) At the end of the week, we were able to reconnect in this way. I truly treasure those memories. It wasn't about the TV; it was about time together. 2) However, having said that, having a week with the TV (mostly) turned off helped me to see how much I've fallen into the habit of TV-babysitting for AJ during the day. It feels icky to admit that, but turning the TV allowed me the clarity to examine this problem and think about some solutions. 3) Okay, so here is the big thing. As I examined how much I've been utilizing electronic babysitting, I just keep running into the same conclusion. I cannot live a full and connected and intentional life in the 3-D world while maintaining the same schedule/pace/goals that I have for my life online. Completely obvious, I know. Last week forced me to recognize that I have - once again - fallen into the trap of placing a priority on being the best mommy blogger I can be rather than the best mommy I can be. I just can't keep up. I can't respond to every comment anymore. I can't visit and comment on other blogs every day anymore. I feel like I can't be a contributing member of "the community" the way I once was. I can't continue to sacrifice these precious hours with my children so that I can find validation and fulfillment in growing this blog. So there. I've said it out loud. And it feels pretty vulnerable. As it turns out, the biggest benefit of Make Week for me was recognizing that I have got to make peace with subscriber numbers and page views dropping. I've got to make peace with not being a Twitter maven. I've got to make peace with significantly downsizing time online. An emphasis on making life happen is exactly the reality check I needed. I don't know what that will look like, but I thought perhaps I should give you fair warning. Anyway. Enough with the seriousness. Because how stinkin' awesome was the Project Runway finale?! *swoon* And how much did you love the Madonna-centric episode of Glee last week? And how exciting is it to be in full-on flip-flop weather again? FINALLY: * If you are a Project: Spring Green participant, could you email me the links to all of your Project posts? And if you are a non-blogger, can you email me what you have done this month to meet a green living goal? (email is sortacrunchy at gmail dot com) Thanks for letting me do a little soul-purging here this morning. I hope your week is beautiful!
