Happy Friday! This week has gone by so quickly. Maybe it's because summer is speeding to a close and all the Back-to-School mayhem is in full swing. We've got less than two weeks before my son heads back, but I have friends whose kids have already returned. That was the norm when we lived in Tennessee, but I always thought that was crazy early. Anyway, let's get down to...Friday Thoughts!
*Don't Be Afraid of Robert Munsch's Love You Forever*
Everyone knows Love You Forever, right? The sweet children's book that starts out with the mom rocking her new baby and singing, "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living my baby you'll be." I first read this when I was twelve and my librarian/teacher grandmother owned a copy. I sat on the floor in front of her bookshelf, turning the pages, and by the end, I had tears streaming down my face. When my son was born, I couldn't even read it to him, the book hit me so hard. My husband, who prides himself on not getting emotional over anything, got halfway through the book and refused to finish, and my teenage son was like, "Why did you make me read that???" after I'd pushed it on him.
This book punches people in the gut. It's the perfect illustration of not only the deep and abiding love a parent feels for a child, but also how deeply young children need their parents. I've seen far too many people write the book off as 'creepy.' 'Why is that mom climbing into her adult son's window and rocking him?' they cry. 'That's just messed up!' But those people are looking at it the wrong way. If you look at it from the perspective of a five year old snuggled up next to their parent, reading this book, they don't see a creepy mom who can't let go. What they hear is the message that even when they're big and grown up (and the idea of being big and grown up is kind of scary!), Mom (or Dad or whoever is raising them) will still love them just as much as she does right now. It's comforting. It's reassuring. It's a promise of security and stability, of support and lifelong unconditional love. It's what every child deserves to hear, and Robert Munsch has framed in perfectly and beautifully.
I'm never going to be able to read this book without crying- heck, I'm tearing up right now. I won't ever flip the page like the author of this article has, and I'm okay with that. :)
*How Decluttering Saves Me Money, Time, and Stress*
This blog post is exactly where I'm at right now. A lot of my time lately has been going to my summer project of organizing, deep cleaning, and weeding out clutter that I don't need. "The more I own, the more I have to clean, the more I have to store, and the more I’m responsible for," Elizabeth Thames writes, and I've come to understand that. The things we own, own us. If we bring an item into the house, we're responsible for maintaining it, for caring for it, for figuring out where it goes and how/when we'll use it, how/when we'll clean it. I've begun to consider deeply before bringing anything permanent into my house (things that will be used up, like food or toiletries, fall in a different category for me). Do I want to be responsible for that item? Do I want to try to find a place to cram it into, in my already-hurting-for-storage home? (Spoiler alert: I usually don't.) For the most part, I have everything I need. There are a few things I would like, things that I've thought about for a while and decided that it would be worth it, but they're not going to make or break me. I really am content with what I have.
If you've read the blog post, you've seen the picture of what the Frugalwoods' basement looked like, pre-decluttering and organizing. That's a close approximation of what my basement looks like, no joke. Mine might be worse. My husband has 4382947329843 boxes from when we moved in, and that's where they were all abandoned and forgotten. Sadly, my laundry room, which is also located in the basement, isn't much better. That room is my next project; I'll be tackling it slowly because it's kind of overwhelming, and then I'm going to move on to the basement. That room might involve buying things like Rubbermaid containers for storage; our crawlspace gets a little moisture in it sometimes and it's safer to store things NOT in cardboard boxes (ask me how I know). So we'll see. It feels SO much better to be decluttered and organized, and I'm smack in the middle of it right now, to the point where other projects are kind of getting pushed to the side. I'm okay with that- who knows when this organization bug will bite again? Might as well run with it. :)
Have you read Meet the Frugalwoods by Elizabeth Willard Thames? I adore her blog. I just finished her book this week and it's great. Full of frugal inspiration and long-term planning and the big payoffs that come with each, and I enjoyed every page of it. Highly recommended!
*Trying to Keep Up With the Kardashians? Here's How to Stop Money Envy*
I don't know that I've ever suffered from money envy, per se. I do see pictures of well-organized homes where everything is coordinated and things are perfectly placed and everything seems so calm and orderly, and I envy that (and am trying to emulate at least the sense of calm and organization in my own home), and when I was younger and money was tight, I distinctly remember lamenting to friends that I didn't want anything super fancy but I just wished we could go into the grocery store and buy a few frivolous things, like cookies and orange juice. Those were luxuries that were unaffordable to us, things we usually had around the house when I was younger, and at the time, it felt like deprivation to not have them.
It took a while, a lot of growth and learning, self-examination and studying of others, but I don't feel deprived of anything these days. While we can afford orange juice, it's not something I normally buy because I don't feel like we need the extra sugar. And cookies? Meh. I can make my own, and they're far superior in taste and ingredients than what I could buy at the store. I've learned to appreciate the process of baking, the way it makes my house smell sweet and feel warm and cozy, and the feeling that I've accomplished something when I pull a tray of something homemade out of the oven. It's a little luxury, one I'm grateful for, and I'm now trying to cultivate that mindset of gratitude in my daughter. She definitely has toy envy; it's hard passing by toys at stores or yard sales because she's immediately thrown into a deep abyss of "That dollhouse is a different color than mine and thus it's SO MUCH BETTER and I WANT IT!" We had a long talk the other night, and I'm very focused on helping her learn to appreciate the things she has and not focusing on what she doesn't. It's a lesson much better learned earlier in life, so I'm hoping I'll get there with her. :)
*Bringing Afternoon Tea*
How gorgeous is this post??? Such lovely baking, and the message is something I need to get better at. I usually have all the ingredients to whip up quite a few things at any given moment, but often I'm too busy or exhausted, especially during the school year when I'm running in twenty different directions after my two very different kids! It's something I'm working on. :)
*Tsundoku: The Practice of Buying More Books Than You Can Read*
Eek! This is something that every reader I know struggles with, and I'm no different, but now that I'm aware of it, I'm actively working to prevent this. While I'm focused on emptying out my Goodreads To Read list right now, I'm reading my own books while I wait for my interlibrary loans, and when my To Read list is down to books I'll have to buy (some of them just aren't available through my library system), I'm going to focus on reading what I own (and then weeding those books out). All these books on my shelves aren't doing me any good if I'm not reading them, and they're taking up space that could be used for other storage or just clear, calm empty space.
'I will allow myself to engage in some tsundoku – besides, it's not actually a waste because of course, I'm going to get to that teetering stack of books someday, really!' the author says. I don't necessarily like that. No more somedays for me: I'm a woman with a plan. If it's not something I'm going to actively use, I no longer want to bring it into my life. I ADORE books, but I want to be the kind of person who reads- and benefits from- the books she owns, not the kind of person who lives among the stacks but never touches them.
So that was what was on my mind this week (which has been a little bit of an odd week around here, but I'll get to that on Monday). What have you been contemplating?
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