Book Review: Cleaning House

One afternoon I found myself with an hour to spare in a part of town that made it inconvenient to go home before I had to pick up a kid. There happened to be a bookstore right there. And so I found myself, for one glorious hour, browsing a brick-and-mortar bookstore for no other reason than that I could. One whole hour spent just wandering shelves, looking at titles, flipping through cookbooks and pondering new releases.

Which is how I found this:

We're preparing for a cross-country move with three kids, and I thought Kay Wills Wyma's Cleaning House: A Mom's 12-Month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement would be a great resource for how to motivate the kids to give me the help I need to make this process go smoothly.

Wyma claims her Experiment was prompted by her 14-year-old son's off-hand request for a Porsche for his 16th birthday. She came up with a twelve-step program to teach the children the hows and whys of self-sufficiency. Each month was assigned a step (see below for a list).

Each month she announced, via a pseudo-democratic family meeting, what the project of the month was. She heard the groans, the protests, and the eyerolls, and she persevered. She gave each child his or her own container, put a dollar for each day of the month in it, and then set them to work. If they failed to do the required job they lost a dollar for that day. At the end of the month they kept whatever remained. As the year progressed, the chores that had been practiced the month before were retained, so that in the first month they were earning a dollar a day just for keeping their rooms neat, and by the end of the year they were keeping their rooms neat, doing their own laundry, helping to plan, prepare, and clean up after meals, and more, all for that same dollar. Halfway through she also instituted a jobs board that enabled kids to earn extra on additional projects.

It was generous of Wyma to give readers insight into her family. I always appreciate hearing how normal my kids are -- other people's kids give more or less the same kind of trouble in more or less the same proportions as mine.

It also was reassuring; my kids have been helping set the table, clear dishes, make beds, dust, sweep, empty the dishwasher, sort dirty laundry, fold and put away clean laundry, and help out with the grocery shopping since they were very small. Wyma's kids didn't know what produce was. So at least I knew I hadn't been slacking as much as I feared in the personal responsibility aspect of child-rearing.

But as interesting as I found Wyma's insights, the book was lacking as a parenting guide. It really is just an account of how things went for one family. Her kids never failed; the dollar and her word seemed to be sufficient motivation for them. If I promised my kids a dollar a day to clean their rooms and make their beds, I'm pretty sure they'd earn only maybe half the money (at best), because they are so unaccustomed to having a regular income. Not getting a dollar they wouldn't have gotten anyway makes little impact on them. Nobody in her family ever seemed to balk at whatever she was asking of them, or if they did she didn't talk at all about how she coped with the resistance. They complained and maybe rolled their eyes, and then they did it.

They also never seemed to fail even when they made the attempt. Failure happens, even when the kids are moved by a generous spirit, as when my six-year-old broke a glass while emptying the dishwasher. He was so excited to help and show how capable he was that he was moving fast. The look on his face when he dropped it was heartbreaking. Of course he was barefoot, so my reaction was "DON'T MOVE!" because I was afraid he would step on the glass and cut his feet. But he heard yelling and thought he was in trouble. When we got everything cleaned up he said "I guess I should just go back to putting away the silverware." Of course I reassured him and he got over it; the point is that her kids rarely failed at what they attempted, except from resistance or laziness (as when they were cleaning the bathroom), nor does she address how to draw the line between a job done poorly but with good intentions and a job just flat out done poorly.

Another difficulty I had with this book is that her conservative political bent sometimes manifests as though her kids are liberals (she actually uses the word "socialists") who expect handouts, while she, the responsible conservative, wants them to be responsible for themselves. As a liberal, I really object to her position, but since it doesn't cover the majority of her book, just kind of flavors it, it is not a reason to avoid it altogether. I do want to point out,  however, that liberals want their children to be as empowered and capable as conservatives do, and that if she does continue writing like this that I would find her work more compelling if she left the liberal-conservative thing out of it. And also, used the word "socialists" correctly.

I'm not sure if Wyma meant Cleaning House to be a parenting book or a memoir; she did almost no research to support her assertions. She mentioned Michael Gurian's Wonder of Boys a few times, but it sounded like she had heard it recounted to her, rather than read it herself. There were a few other snippets of professional advice scattered throughout, but mostly it was the anecdotal sort from other families, so helpful, but not necessarily authoritative. Surely over the course of a year she could have read his book herself (especially since he blurbed hers for her)? And perhaps one or two others on similar topics?

Overall, I'd give Cleaning House 3 1/2 stars out of 5. I take a full star off for not being specific enough about resistance and failure, and half a star for putting a conservative slant on a topic that does not need to be politicized. If you'd like a jumping off place for helping teach your children to be useful, confident adults, you could do worse than this book. I just wish that Wyma had done rather better.

*Kay Wills Wyma's Twelve Steps: 

1. Making beds and keeping clutter off the floor
2. Planning and cooking a meal, cleaning up kitchen afterwards
3. Working outdoors
4. Making income
5. Cleaning the bathrooms
6. Laundry
7. Small maintenance/repair jobs around the home
8. Hospitality
9. Working as a Team
10. Running errands
11. Service to others
12. Good manners

Advent Gratitude, Day 6: Books Again, and Boys

My first grader is learning to read. It's the coolest thing in the world, and I love being a part of it.

We recently arranged an elaborate hand off on a Kindle so I could get an upgrade (thank you, family!!) This sparked Duncan to ask when he could have a Kindle of his own, like his big sister. Answer: When he could read chapter books as well as Charlotte. This seems to have lit a fire under him, because he has been very patiently and laboriously working through a Junie B. Jones story. Have you read Junie B.? She uses lots of big words, like actually, situation, and frustration. As in: "he got frustration in him."

The cool thing here is that the method of instruction used at our school encourages kids to use the pictures to deduce words that are giving them trouble. Not so many pictures in Junie B., so D is having to remember phonetic rules and rely on reading a sentence to the end to deduce a hard word. Which he is doing, with a degree of patience that my daughter never, ever exhibited. It is fun to watch and a relaxing way to spend an afternoon snuggling my growing guy.

Quentin distinguished himself at school today by making a BB gun out of paper and craft tape. Complete with a little paper BB. He couldn't even get out the door before he was telling me about it. I checked with the preschool teacher to make sure he hadn't violated some kind of school rule (as he certainly would have been doing at the elementary school), and then spent a few minutes apologizing for my violent boy. The other moms laughed. Another boy picked up a six-foot-long fallen branch and began threatening our sons with it -- so I felt much better. Then I put Quentin in the car and listened to a dissertation about the nature of and uses for BBs all the way home. It's nice that he falls in the fat part of the bell curve.

I'm looking for a reasonable follow-up to Warm Bodies. I'm contemplating another zombie book (but I'm also a little bit afraid to), or maybe Gone Girl or the Rob Lowe biography I'm supposed to be reading for book club (which, by the way, ladies, I am so grateful for all of you as well!!). Any thoughts???

What are you grateful for?

Advent Gratitude, Days 4 & 5: Books and Girls.

I didn't write a post yesterday because I was totally absorbed by a book that I found because of my Day 3 gratitude.

Can I just say... WOW.

Warm Bodies is a debut novel by Isaac Marion which, fortunate man, was not only optioned for a movie but actually previewed at the Breaking Dawn Part 2 screening I saw on Sunday. The preview looked fun (see the trailer here), but the book is a lot more. (Isaac Marion has a blog, rather more sporadic than this one, for anyone who wants to connect with him.)

The idea behind Warm Bodies is kind of Zombie Romeo meets Post-Apocalyptic Juliet, but the book reaches deeper than that, into the path to apocalypse, the difference between a zombie and a human, the nature of hope, and the elements of a high-quality life. Don't read this book because you want to read a zombie novel -- although Marion offers a witty, funny, compassionate first-person perspective on zombie existence. Read it because it's a damn good read.

I also finally finished Lytton Strachey by Michael Holroyd. Lytton Strachey was a contemporary and close friend of Virginia Woolf's, a fellow writer and, in fact, was even momentarily engaged to her when she was still Virginia Stephen. He was also a homosexual who was 13 when Oscar Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labor for a homosexual love affair. He is famous for his dramatic and subversive biographies of the lions of the Victorian age, and for his rather Byzantine personal life. This 700 page tome took me a looooong time to finish, so I'm grateful for Holroyd's insight into Strachey's life and character, and also that I can recommend a movie, Carrington, to anyone who is interested in the gossipy arty bits and willing to pass on all the thoughtful analysis.

So my gratitude for today is my girl, and her girlfriends. Those zany, goofy, silly girls spent a long afternoon at my house today, and they wrestled in the backyard, did homework together, dressed up and put on crazy makeup, pretended to be zombies in the front yard, baked cookies and ate them, played "Call Me Maybe" at top volume (but only once, thank goodness), and generally behaved like girls having a wonderful time. They never beat up on any of the little brothers who couldn't resist their crazy energy. When they left, my girl hugged me and thanked me for their fun day, cleaned up nicely, ate her dinner, and passed out in bed 45 minutes earlier than usual.

I like making my kids happy. Sometimes they surprise me by making it easy to please them. I am grateful.

You Don't Have To Be a Domestic Goddess To Make...

Chocolate Syrup!

Here's the recipe:

1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
2/3 cup cocoa powder (some recipes specify dutch-process)
pinch of salt
1 tsp of vanilla extract

1.  Water and sugar in a saucepan. Heat gently to a low boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar.
2.  Whisk cocoa powder into the syrup and let simmer gently for a few minutes to thicken.
3.  Stir in salt & vanilla.

Enjoy!

Finished syrup will thicken as it cools.  I found out the hard way that chocolate syrup should be refrigerated even though the components don't need to be. Don't make my mistake!

The whole recipe takes about six minutes to prepare. In fact, I am usually making the syrup while I make the kids' breakfasts on school mornings because I have just discovered that we're out as I was trying to prepare Quentin's chocolate milk. Syrup stirs into warm milk more efficiently than cocoa powder. Because my kids don't actually like milk very much, chocolate milk was the alternative to no milk at all; but that doesn't mean I have to feed them high-fructose corn syrup out of a bottle that leaches BPA.

And speaking of BPA, part of what I like about this recipe is that it makes it possible for me to avoid another plastic bottle. I can buy the salt, sugar, and cocoa powder from the bulk section of our grocery store, so I avoid almost any kind of waste at all (my vanilla comes in a glass bottle). Plus, I can customize the syrup.

Options:

• Although this syrup is quite rich and chocolaty, you can up the luxury factor by reducing the sugar (slightly) and increasing the cocoa powder (slightly) to make it even richer.
• Add-ins like a touch of cayenne pepper, cinnamon, or alternate flavors like orange or almond extracts bring a grown-up touch to the syrup. 
• Instead of using orange extract, simmer a few strips of orange zest in the simple syrup, and then fish them out before adding the cocoa powder. (you can do the same with a cinnamon stick instead)
• This chocolate syrup is also yummy in coffee, over ice cream, mixed in your favorite chocolate martini recipe, in sparkling water for an Italian soda (would be divine that with orange flavoring), or as a glaze over cakes and muffins.

Bonus: If you are going to make a chocolate martini or an Italian soda, you can make a rimming powder by running a quarter cup of sugar through a tiny blender or food processor and then mixing with a tablespoon or two of cocoa powder and/or ground cinnamon (to taste).

Why not to buy chocolate syrup:

1. The plastic bottle is unnecessary waste. Even if you go to the trouble of cleaning out the bottle so it will be recycled (dirty bottles won't be), the squirt top will not be recycled. Not to mention that you have bought and paid for a bottle that could be leaching BPA into your syrup. Yum!

2.  Convenience. The ingredients have a long shelf life without getting icky. I always have cocoa powder on hand, I always have sugar, and I always have salt and vanilla. Ergo, I always have chocolate syrup available. If I always bought my chocolate syrup, I would risk not having any available for that third child who has been patiently waiting for the hot cocoa, only to discover that he's going to be getting gypped because I ran out halfway through making the second kid's cocoa.

3.  Convenience II. Chocolate syrup dissolves into milk way better than cocoa powder and sugar, meaning no disgusting bitter lumps surprising picky kids.

4.  Quality. I love chocolate. I do not love sugar. Call me crazy, but I don't actually have much of a sweet tooth. Making my own means my chocolate syrup actually tastes like chocolate.

5.  Ingredients. See what you're paying for when you buy commercial chocolate syrup:

HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP; CORN SYRUP; WATER; COCOA; SUGAR; CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF: POTASSIUM SORBATE (PRESERVATIVE); SALT; MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES; XANTHAN GUM; POLYSORBATE 60; VANILLIN, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR

What's for Dinner?

The always hungry SoRMuiJAi

Do you hate it too? That question... the one that pops up every single day right at the witching hour.

What's for dinner?

It's almost always demanded by a kid who has just been nagging me for snacks and turned her or his nose up at whatever healthy options were offered. Most likely whatever I answer (so long as it isn't pizza or boxed mac and cheese) is going to be met with a whine and followed by "Can't we go out to eat?"

No. We are not going out to eat.

or

But you like chicken cordon bleu.

Oh, you don't make chicken cordon bleu? Neither do I. Although if I did it would probably be a family favorite.

Anyway... I was asked that question one time too many when my third child was an infant, because I totally threw in the towel and subscribed to a menu-planning service that came with a grocery list. You could select what types of meal preferences you had (vegetarian, kosher, etc.) and the menu list would arrive in my email inbox, weekly, complete with grocery list. All I had to do was print the whole thing out, check the grocery list against my pantry and refrigerator, and follow the directions.

It was perfect for a very intense year when I didn't care a whole lot what went into my mouth. The menu I selected was a "healthy" option created by a registered dietician, and basic enough that I could adjust it for the 5 year old and the 2 year old without having to make anything extra. For times when I had guests coming, or knew I'd have a little help, I could also purchase the directions for make-ahead freezer meals that could be pulled out at and prepared at short notice.

After about a year, though, I noticed that it was pretty repetitive. I get bored easily and by the time Quentin was two I was feeling more capable of taking back the menu-making responsibilities. I really enjoy cooking and I love to eat. I'm willing to try unfamiliar flavors and recipes and I enjoy cooking blogs, so I didn't need as basic of menu planning as what I had been using during the "barely keeping my head above water" period. At the same time my husband's travel started picking up, so six nights a week of planned dinners was a little more than my family could use. So I liberated myself.

I do my grocery shopping on Mondays. Sunday nights we all contribute our requests for the weekly menu based on the schedule for the week. Friday is always pizza & movie night, which simplifies things a lot. My four year old always asks for shrimp, which I honor once a month. I do not plan for weekends, which evolve based on opportunity. I have developed a hard line about dinner. I am not a short order cook and what is on the menu is what is offered. There is not a whole lot of compromise going on, but I'm willing to take some pasta out before adding sauce, to serve vegetables raw, or to add dressings or dips on the side, if they require little prep. Surprisingly, my kids are becoming more adventurous in their tastes, which I attribute to their having a say in the dinner plan. We talk a lot about flavors and preferences, and I am pleased to say that Quentin, who had formerly declared vegetables his "emmamy," ate three servings of roasted broccoli for dinner earlier this week.

I'm going to take credit for that achievement.

Mechanics: 

• Friday is pizza night
• One vegetarian dinner per week (at least) 
• Try to aim for one meal of planned-overs during particularly busy weeks
• Sometimes I use cookbooks or my Evernote recipe system to help with planning
• Keep an eye on other people's menu mentions on Facebook (we usually have Taco Tuesday the week after my cousin announces it...)
• When all else fails, raid the freezer for my husband's spaghetti stash and cut up a head of lettuce

If you don't have it in you to make your own weekly meal plan, or if you'd like to see some samples of how others manage it, there are lots of menu-planning services to choose from. Some are free, others you have to pay for. Many of the paid services include a free week or two so you can find out if their ingredients and prep times are consistent with your own preferences.

I used Saving Dinner, which is associated with the FlyLady, for anyone who might be familiar with her. It is the only one I can speak to directly, so I won't recommend any others. However, if you Google "menu planning service" you'll find a list so huge that it might make you prefer to order take out. Alternatively, you can check out the blog 100 Days of Real Food. There is a page of menu plans, and also a very informative post, "Product Review: Meal Plan Services."

 Planning meals a week in advance has saved me money -- as much as 1/3 of my previous grocery bill -- and prevented food waste. It's made the witching hour a lot less painful. It's easier to stick to my grocery list knowing that I have a plan for eating what's on the list; extra purchases are likely to end up on my thighs. I'm going to even stick my neck out and say that it's helped my kids to be more adventurous eaters (they are nagging me for a "build your own salad night" this week) and best of all, it has freed my brain up for interesting problems like the plot of the novel I'm worrying over.

How do you manage "What's for dinner?" (Please feel free to share favorite outsourcing options!!)

Turned the Page... Again

Improving the lighting in my photographs
should be an additional checklist item.

Another month, another picture of John Lennon to preside over my writing space... where has the time gone?

In May, I turned the page on my calendar and used that action to organize my priorities for the month. Then I fell off that wagon and never returned to it in this forum (though I am a lifelong list-maker). So I'm going to re-collect myself and set some goals for October. Please hold me accountable!

Firstly, I'm going to prioritize my writing first rather than third, because it is the area in which I have been struggling most -- and where I am most likely to procrastinate. Seriously, for having written for as long as I can remember, I am absurdly intimidated by a blank page. Fifteen minutes ago, when I contemplated getting back to work on my current short story, I had butterflies in my stomach. Fight-or-flight feelings. A strong urge to find the nearest bag of chips.

However, I will be attending my first-ever writing conference, on self-publishing, at the end of this month, so I'd like to have something substantial to share with the other professionals I'll be meeting there. (This plan also makes me want to break out in hives, but in August I said that one of my goals for my kids is diligence in the presence of failure or uncertainty, and since I probably can best teach that by demonstrating it, I'm going to swallow those butterflies as best I can, ignore the call of the chips, and set pen to paper.) And once I push past that first fifteen minutes of panic I actually really enjoy writing.

Ergo, writing goals for this month:

• Write one blog post at Simply Richer Living per week (sorry for downgrading the expectation since May; it's very important to me to get the fiction well-established, and my time is somewhat limited this month)
• Calendar the blog posts in advance so I am more prepared to complete them
• Write a rough draft of "Rasputin Wakes Up" (you can follow my progress if you want to help keep me moving)
• Polish up the rough draft of Rasputin into something I feel good about sharing before October 18th
• Finish my commentary on a project a fellow writer entrusted to me an embarrassingly long time ago (sorry, Nicole!!)
• If I finish Rasputin before October 18th, then I have a choice of two other projects to tackle, so I should have one of those in progress for the remainder of the month.
• Post completed word counts on this blog so I have real-time accountability

The other area where I'm really struggling at the moment is household management. Only... it's not the management part that's giving me a hard time, so much, as the labor. I should make some goals for staying on top of the laundry and the cleaning. I really should. But I'm not going to. Because those plans seem to overtake my writing plans, and the work always seems to get done somehow, even if it is only on an emergency basis because Duncan is out of pants. So I think I'm going to bow to my inner sloth and liberate myself from making a home management checklist in favor of the things that are really important. Like writing. 

Or my children. Here again, though, we seem to have found a rhythm that works. I'm not worrying about playdates because my little one is seeing his friends every day at school now, and there really isn't time available for additional playdates. My six year old has found bliss in the after-school childcare program (free till four o'clock!!) where he can compete in a real Beyblade stadium against all comers every afternoon of the week. And the walkability of our neighborhood means that my oldest child can invite friends over for playdates whenever she wants without having to rely on me to do a whole lot of arranging anymore. No one is nagging me for anything except more electronics access. Time together is guaranteed by the various activities and responsibilities we have now that school is in session, and things feel generally pretty good. No checklist required.

My last significant endeavor is weight loss. That is just not happening, though I have gotten the afternoon binge habit under control. I have come to realize that I require a certain level of physical effort to feel good, and that it has to happen very regularly. For the most part I'm getting that level of activity, but the exercise is now a daily activity -- almost like taking a shower -- and I have to protect the intensity. So... I bought some new pants, I'm going to always keep an eye out for ways to make the workouts high quality and regular, and for the rest, just let the chips fall where they will.  I'm only human. 

Do you have goals for October? If you're looking for some jump-starts, here are a few suggestions:

• The October Buttoned-Up Challenge will get you ready for the (gulp!) holidays before it becomes a crisis
• FlyLady's Challenge of the Month is reducing paper clutter
• The Year of Less is taking on a Sermon On The Mount Challenge, a spiritual discipline intended to remind us that "Where your treasure lies, there your heart will be also," (some of you might recognize this as Dumbledore's epitaph in Harry Potter) in preparation for celebrating the holidays in a more meaningful way than the usual purchasing frenzy.

Domestic Bliss -- A To Do List

On a day when the children are very tired and not fighting too much, finish a book you've been plowing through for three weeks.

Add one handsome husband and 1-2 glasses of very good red wine.  Kisses helpful, but optional.

Quietly and peacefully make your favorite simple dinner. Linger. Especially if the children are being quiet.  (Suspiciously quiet is OK if you've had enough wine.)

Call the children to the table. Refill your glass. Put only their favorite vegetables on the table.

Turn on the Glen Hansard channel on Pandora.  Ask everyone about their day.  Sit back and enjoy your meal.

Then put the children to bed.

Right-Sized?

I have been living in 1470 square feet with three children for four months now.  For the most part it's going well.  But I'm not sure this is how I want to live for the rest of their childhood.  Or, frankly, even much beyond the end of our current lease.

I don't want much.  I want maybe a foot more space in each room.  I'd like some delineation between the dining area and the living area.  I'd like a little more space for the children to play -- especially now that my six year old has become totally obsessed with Beyblades and had to be restrained from shouting "One... Two... Three... Let 'er RIP!!!" at six in the morning, and the sound of battle tops hitting the wood floors at seven on a Saturday morning is hard to sleep over.

I would love to have a kitchen where I can open the refrigerator and the dishwasher at the same time.  With enough counter space that the kids and I could stretch a really good cooking project, or playdough, or art, or... well, just about anything.  But I would like to have enough room for more than a single person in the kitchen.  It doesn't have to be huge, just roomy enough for us to spend time together.

I'd like to have a separate office from my husband's.  The mostly-empty bookshelves behind his desk cramp the room up and make me a little crazy, as I'm sure my piles make him.  I've tried, but I've never in my life managed to live without them. I know he'd love for me to figure that out. Or we could just work apart.

I'd like to be able to host book club at my house without waking up the children with our wine-fueled conversational catharses.

So much for the minimalist dream.

I'm sure some of my squeezed feeling is left over from the quiet I was able to experience escaping to a quiet couch in the upstairs of the house my entire family shared in Hilton Head, or the peace of hanging out in the screen porch at my in-laws' house.  And that summer vacation can make even the most harmonious families a little short with each other. But I would really love 300 more square feet and a garage.

Is that so bad?

I'm feeling a little torn. Proponents of responsible, sustainable living advocate for smaller houses and we're reminded by authors of money-management articles like this October, 2011 article from U.S. News & World Report that big houses are expensive in more than just the mortgage payment.  "Do you really want to live in a home that's 2,500 square feet or larger?"

Yes. Yes, I do.

But, chides the article,

If you take a quick look back, you'll see that historically, smaller homes have been the norm for most of us. In 1950, the average home size was 983 square feet. In 2004, at the height of the building boom, the average home size was 2,340 square feet. That's an enormous difference just over the span of a few decades.

I'm going to take slight issue with this.

First off, if people actually liked living in tiny houses, the houses wouldn't have grown. But they have, and not only the new houses; the 1939 house we bought in Falls Church, Virginia had an addition tacked on to the side that the previous owner had added in the 1960's. That addition consisted of a master bedroom & bathroom, a large family room, and a screen porch.  The kitchen had been remodeled in such a way that the refrigerator was moved into a walk-in pantry just outside the kitchen; it was arranged this way so they didn't have to change the basic footprint of the kitchen when enlarging the counter space and adding a dishwasher. The basement, which isn't included in square footage but which is a major bonus to living space, had been subdivided to provide an "illegal" bedroom for one of the couples' two daughters.  When we stripped the wallpaper from the original upstairs secondary bedroom, we noticed a head-shaped dent in the plaster wall and joked that the daughter must have been exiled to the basement after a massive adolescent fight between the two girls.

When we remodeled the house in 2004, the previous owner stopped by with his daughter and asked if he could see what we'd done.  I was a little nervous about this; we'd stripped the house, for the most part, back to the foundations, and built off the original footprint, out the back, and up, to double the size of the house as it had previously stood in all its dated, slanting horror.  (I guess I'm showing that my interest in minimalist living is pretty recent).  This was partly necessary, because the fabric-coated wiring and DIY addition weren't aging well, and it was partly... well, because we could, and we wanted to.

But as Joe, by then in his 80's, and his daughter, who was probably in her early 50's, walked through the house, all he kept saying was, "Yes, this is what I had in mind.  Yes, that's what I was going for.  Oh, I see you put the kitchen on the screen porch; that's exactly what I was going to do."

The daughter asked to see the basement, and when we got to that tiny illegal bedroom, she sighed and said "I really loved that room."

"Really?" I asked, speechless.

"Oh, yes," she answered. She was glass-eyed remembering the past. "I was so happy to get some space away from my family."

Joe bought that house in 1962.  He wasn't appalled and looking back at the glory days of a happier, simpler time.  He wanted what we had managed to build. And we were able to build as we did because of the floor plan he put together during the time that big living was supposedly anathema. I'll tell you something else: Joe didn't build the house bigger to hold more stuff. The closets were never the best part of that house. In fact, the coat closet next to the 1939 front door couldn't even handle regular hangers, because it was too shallow for the door to close if I put a coat on a hanger (it did have a hanger bar, which I never understood). When Joe tacked the addition on to the side of the house, he built a new front door as well (right next to the original front door, which we always thought was hilarious). But he didn't add a coat closet. His family didn't care about stuff.  They just wanted space to stretch their legs a bit. That's true for all the other many, many World War II era houses that were built in the DC metro area that have little box additions tacked on to the side or back (trust me, that means most of them).

And then "average size" is a meaningless statistic.  What does it include? My first studio apartment in Atlanta? The 18,000 square foot, eight bedroom mansion for sale in San Francisco (and all the other estates like it) right now?  Let's be specific, people! Tell me how houses have changed for a specific kind of household in a specific part of the country -- and tell me how those people are living now, too. There might be good reasons for living smaller, but "because that's how they lived before" is not one of them, especially when that assertion is poorly supported.

I realize that I'm writing contrary to "Simply Richer Living." I'm sorry. I'm trying to process what is beginning to feel like mutually exclusive states of being: The desire to simplify my life and the desire to live more easily and fully. I want my little guy to wake up early in the morning and practice his passion.  I also want to be able to sleep till my appointed wake-up time (and for my four-year-old to do so as well).  I like being close to my kids wherever we are in the house, and I also want to be able to get a little quiet for some part of every day so that I actually want to talk to them. I want to be able to entertain my friends at home, not at a restaurant.

These desires are new in a historical sense. An interesting paper, "Housing: Then, Now, and Future" by Moya K. Mason points out that:

The novelty of our age is that how we use the space in our homes is continually evolving. And, as we transform these spaces, they transform us. These transformations are the result of demographic, economic, lifestyle, environmental, and technological changes and pressures. Home offices and media rooms are new spaces, while old spaces like living rooms are now being used as computer rooms. Video entertainment, games, computers, and the Internet serve to isolate, and also demand more personal space, separating us from the people we live with.

Bill Bryson's At Home makes a similar case with much more entertaining language, for anyone who is interested in the history of our home space. But essentially: Living rooms are computer rooms now, because we use computers heavily in most of daily life, and because we entertain more casually, with friends welcome in our "family" rooms and our kitchens. Home offices are the result of a greater diversity in the work force, including women who work from home, and a greater complexity in home management needs.  The new configuration of our homes serves both to isolate us, but also to make more of our relationships less formal, more genuine.


Certainly isolation is a danger of a larger home space, and for sure that's not what I want. But my family and I don't live the kind of life people lived in 1940 or earlier; we live now. Part of living now is that people actually live quite a lot in their homes.  Kitchens were smaller because frozen dinners were supposed to do away with the need to cook every night, and a more elaborate food network meant that you didn't need to have the skill or space to preserve at home. Our reliance on the car and the decay of community means kids have to live at home instead of out prowling the territory that could be covered on a bicycle (without a helmet). What I want is to figure out how to create a lifestyle that is consistent with my values of creating intimacy with the people I care about while still having the space to recharge and be the sort of person with whom they want to be intimate. I don't want to be obnoxious about the fact that I can have these things. I just want a little leg room.

OK, it doesn't have to be 2500 square feet. Am I asking for too much? In a world where way too many people live in poverty and the earth is going to hell speedy-quick, then definitely yes. In the world I live in... I don't know what is right. What are my obligations to the world, and to what extent am I entitled to live, well, selfishly? I don't know. I hope I figure it out some day.

In the meantime, a basement would ease things here significantly.

Where Do You Get Fashion Advice?

My favorite fashion magazines are InStyle, People StyleWatch, and Lucky magazine.  And I can't say I like them very much.  They tend to feature girls almost half my age wearing four-inch heels and mini skirts, with fur vests or dresses that cost $1,200.  But they are useful for seeing what shapes and color schemes are trending, so I still pick them up occasionally.

I'm actually a "charter subscriber" to Lucky, because I subscribed in the first couple of months that magazine was published, and haven't let my subscription lapse in twelve years. (Yikes! I just looked that up. Time to cancel.) Back when the magazine first came out, it featured a couple of very trendy, creative looks, then recreated each one with items found in a wide range of sources and price points.  Everything from Old Navy and Target to high-end labels were represented in these looks. It was the democratic nature of the magazine that billed itself as "The magazine about shopping" (as opposed to "the magazine about clothes, or advertising, or whatever Vogue is supposed to be about") that appealed to me and kept me renewing my subscription for so long.

Fast forward twelve years and here I am, a twenty-two year old girl in a forty year old woman's minivan lifestyle; Lucky has aged a lot worse, from creating looks that anyone can adapt for themselves to showcasing $1,500 black slacks and four-inch-long miniskirts from Forever 21.  These are not styles a forty-year-old mom of three can wear to the playground.

I have yet to find a magazine that offers style advice -- and only style advice -- for a woman with an active, not athletic, lifestyle.  I don't want a magazine like Cookie (now defunct), which claimed to be for hip moms (I'm not sure how hip I am, but I'm willing to try... sort of) and interspersed celebrity parenting advice with Ralph Lauren tie-and-jacket ensembles for toddlers and pencil skirts, rather than minis, for the moms. Uh, no.

I may drive a minivan, but believe it or not, I am actually interested in looking stylish in my own right.  My kids are cute, but I'm not throwing in the towel on myself.  When I set out to learn about new trends  I don't want to accidentally run into an article that reminds me that the kids are watching too much TV, that the white bread I put in their lunchboxes is some day going to kill them, and that I didn't put on their sunscreen... again.  No, I want to see if bootcut jeans are back, find out what the season's color palette is, and figure out how to repurpose the stuff in my closet so that it looks all brand new.

Since I have yet to find a magazine that will give me that information without also including a recipe for chicken broccoli casserole, I've had to branch out a bit. There are a few great fashion resources on the internet that I've found useful.

jseverydayfashion.com

J's Everyday Fashion updates daily and is budget-aware.  J is on Facebook as well as at her own site, and is generous with answering questions on her FB Wall. She encourages followers to post pictures of their own outfits on her Facebook page and offers suggestions for how to accessorize for specific situations.  She has a web-show in which she gives fashion advice for real women, J's Everyday Fashion (3 episodes recorded as of this date); her advice isn't just buy this or that, but here's how to remix your wardrobe to stretch it in ways you hadn't thought of before.  Episode 2 and Episode 3 (yet to be aired) feature... wait for it... moms who want to look great even when their kids are around.

The one thing I don't totally love about J's Everyday Fashion is that since she is a very trim size 4, what looks good on her (skinny pants and short shorts) aren't necessarily going to be great for me, and to a certain extent I have trouble compensating for that.  But I love the way she puts colors together and her suggestions for how to duplicate or adapt looks found in catalogs and magazines. I appreciate that she periodically takes time out to share how she creates a shopping list for clothing and how she makes decisions about how she manages her clothing budget -- $100-$200 per month (J is newly single and child-free).

fashionatforty.blogspot.com

Fashion At Forty is a cool fashion blog maintained by a real woman with actual curves.  Niki seems very sweet.  Her outfits are sometimes a little trendy for my taste (I really don't like the high-low trend), but that's occasional; she tends towards preppy, for the most part. She's also pretty up front about her own reservations about what works and what doesn't. Her blog is about how she makes her fashion fit her life, and so her choices are budget conscious; unlike J, in addition to lots of retail options she shops at consignment shops, eBay, and Etsy to find higher-end and custom pieces without spending too much money.  Niki is a working wife with no children, but her outfits are wearable even for those of us who stay home, and she is on-trend with color combinations and accessorizing. Like J, she's very responsive to questions and comments.  She also has a blogroll (J doesn't) that includes more fashion resources. I have to admit I've only skimmed a few of them because I haven't found them to be as comprehensive as Fashion at Forty, and I really like Niki's tone.

I have to also credit Niki with a book recommendation.  Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion will be my next book review, and most likely will change the way I approach my wardrobe as well.  But that's a different post.




My other favorite sources for fashion inspiration are Pinterest and Polyvore. I follow several fashion-heavy pinners on Pinterest.  I found Outfit 31 through her blog, which she doesn't appear to be updating anymore.  She still pins outfits, though, and her outfits are totally playground ready.  Note that though a lot of her repinned outfits include high heel pumps, there's no reason they have to be duplicated with the pumps, a cute wedge or loafer would do just as well for the vast majority of the outfits shown.  I also use the search function on Pinterest to figure out what to do with what's already in my own closet -- for example, I searched on "gray blazer" to get some ideas on how to mix up the underworn gray blazer in my closet and found images that dress it down in ways I might not have thought up when just staring glass-eyed in my closet.

I'd like to mention that my husband's cousin had the brilliant idea of organizing her fashion pinboards by color (using, very cleverly, lines from songs for board titles) and I sure wish I had thought to do that before I accumulated 250 pins to the "My Style" board... live and learn.

Polyvore is a little bit more labor intensive than flipping through a fashion magazine, but just as informative and a lot more adaptable. It's basically a Facebook for fashion with a Q&A section for people with fashion dilemmas.  I find it difficult to use for my own purposes, but most of the best images on Pinterest come from there, so if you've got the inclination to work through it (and please, share with me if you do), then it is a great shopping resource. One of the blogs I have listed in my blogroll, Outfits by Stacy Gustin, I found on Polyvore. The images are attractive, but she's light on text, and since I'm a text kind of girl I'm going to find it a little less compelling than chattier bloggers. Stacy Gustin is a mom of three, however, and the outfits generally seem wearable, so it's worth checking out.

If you Google "mom fashion blog" a decent list of blogs will pop up and you can peruse those at your leisure.  I've checked out a few and ruled them out for my own use, primarily because of the cost of the items pictured, or because the moms are so posh that I rarely find their articles useful. Also, I'm happy with my current resources. There is only so much time available for hanging out online clicking through outfits. But fashion is personal. Maybe you've got a runway ready figure, or a job where heels are daily requirements, or a way better night life than I have. Go crazy! Share what you find! And most of all, have fun dressing yourself, not just your kids, because, let's face it... they got their good looks from you.

Right-Sizing: Or, I Am Not a Minimalist

Well, the Big House has found a buyer.  Everything that's still in it either comes to the Little House, the storage unit, or out into the world.

In theory, everything except the art on the walls, some of the furniture, and the wedding china could leave my possession.  In theory.

A few years ago, I was participating in a local online-only moms club.  The online-only part is important; women said some of the most amazing, outrageous things under the mighty thin anonymity of a username like "MindyA" or "EllasMom."  Cris-de-coeur like "Am I ever going to get my waist back?" or "At what age did YOUR baby sleep at night?" were interspersed with outrageously personal details about their sex lives, their (or their husbands') DUIs, nanny problems, mother-in-law problems, and requests for gardeners.  And of course, repeated complaints about The Mess.

I doubt I need to explain The Mess.  But since I do need to vent, I will share what our Mess currently consists of:

• Toy cars
• Various jump ropes
• Move debris (books, etc. that had been used for staging but can now come home to Mama)
• Quentin's "Writing Office" where he is conducting his Write On Mamas writing class -- this is a big plastic tool chest thingy with paper & pencils on top.  The boys are numbering all the rooms in the house, except the living room, which has been designated the Write On Mamas Conference Room.  Quentin says he is On Writing Duty.
• Various shoes and dirty socks
• Backpacks
• School work that they are returning for my inspection which I have not yet inspected
• Folded laundry on the couch -- usually it's not folded, but I spiffed the place up for y'all
• Miscelleneous detritis that I'm not willing to admit to

So, every happy family I know has a Mess.  And everybody complains about the Mess.  And it popped up regularly on the forum.  Complaining about the Mess was always a hot topic, with responses usually wordy and ranging from some variation of "don't worry about it, enjoy your kids while they're little" to "I make the kids clean up each type of toy or game before they move on to the next one" (which I personally object to, but probably that person doesn't have items on her Mess list that she won't admit).  

There was one exception, one time.  The response consisted of a single line:

zerowastehome.blogspot.com

Well, that's almost like God sending you a little text message cutting through all that wordy crap and saying "CHECK OUT THIS BLOG."

So of course I did.  

Now, if you are remotely interested in being green, or reducing your waste, you have probably encountered Bea Johnson and her family.  She's been all over the place in the last two years: the Today show, People magazine, the New York Times and Sunset magazine, to name her highest profile appearances (sorry, the link to the Sunset article was password protected; check your library for the December 2010 issue).  I went a little cross-eyed looking at the blog, at first, not understanding if I was seeing what I was really seeing, so then I clicked over to the New York Times article.

That entire article had an impact on me, and it all started with this paragraph:

It’s like some kind of amazing magic trick. Bea has a husband, two sons (ages 10 and 8) and a dog, and yet her household generates no empty containers, no food scraps, no dirty paper towels, no broken toys, no crumpled wrapping paper, no empty ketchup packets from fast-food restaurants, no orphan socks with holes in the toes. 

Nothing.

Ever.

Doesn't that sound beautiful?  Amazing?  Magical, as the article says?

Yes.  Yes, it does.

Imagine a life without the mess.

...

WAKE UP!!


Yes, back to reality.  Back to where Bea Johnson has led where I can't follow.

The thing is, in addition to being nearly zero waste, she's also a true minimalist.  There is a pretty detailed inventory of her house over the course of her blog entries, and it's impressive.

Her house is beautiful.  It's all white, with little pops of orange, which is one of my favorite colors.  And it is, as described, utterly uncluttered.  If you toodle around on her blog you'll find lots of places where she details all the things she got rid of and why she found them unnecessary.

But as I have been packing away many of my belongings, the ones that were used to stage the house and give it personality, I have realized that, although many of those things have little real value, I do find them beautiful.  I am sad to be packing them up with no sense of when I might see them again.

Can I live without the little Fiestaware vase & cherub arrangement that I seem to create in each of my homes?  For sure.  But somehow, seeing the green vase and the cherub holding the (fake) mistletoe ball, which I'm sure Bea Johnson would find too tacky for words, makes me feel... I don't know... at home.  I mean, I've occupied five dwellings in the twelve years that those items have been part of my life, so they certainly have more permanence to me than any building has had.

Can I live without my John Lennon calendar hanging over my desk?  Well, yes.  I have only had it since November (and couldn't even hang it till March, owing to the Big House being staged).  But it calls to mind a set of memories that wouldn't need to surface otherwise: looking at a big painting of John in New York City, priced at $14,000, at some ridiculous store at the Mirage in Las Vegas, laughing with my husband about "maybe someday" -- and then coming back to the hotel room later to find that he'd bought me the calendar, the cover of which is the photo that inspired the painting.  That weekend, when everything was smooth and easy and not distracted by children or house stuff.  It reminds me of how much my husband, who doesn't usually buy me flowers but got the John Lennon calendar and 82% cacao chocolate bars, knows and and loves me.  With all these children and projects, it can be easy to stop noticing that.

Could I  live without my wedding china?  The fruit dishes from Jeff's grandmother?  The brown linen chair with the broken leg?  Yes.  Yes.  Yes again.  Some of it I even want to release into the world.

But somehow, parting with the Big House, and the easy stuff (half our possessions, almost), is enough. I'm beginning to feel a sense of loss.  I don't want to lose momentum on this project, so I think I have done Enough.  I will keep my (number withheld) pairs of shoes, my (too many) skirts and dresses, the (not going to admit) books about Virginia Woolf and the Beatles and England, and each of my children's coming-home-from-the-hospital newborn outfits.

But just because I keep those things today doesn't mean I have to make that same decision tomorrow.

Laundry is My Emmamy

At the very end of 2009 the obligatory Facebook app made the rounds, summing up a year's worth of posts with cloud labels.  Coming off a high-low year that contrasted the demands of running a household with three children aged six and under with the incredible experience of training for and completing the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer 3 Day, I installed it.  I expected to relive all the satisfaction of the work I did for the 3 Day, something that reflected my hard work and success.  Which I did.

But the mentions of the laundry were a lot huger.

I'm going to backtrack a bit to a Cute Thing My Kids Said a couple of days ago.

Me, serving dinner: "Quentin, would you like any grape tomatoes?"

Quentin (age 4), looks up: "No." Looks back at his plate.  No expression.

Duncan (age 6), astounded: "But why not?  They're the most delicious things ever!"

Quentin, deadpan: "Vegetables are my emmamy."

Which is it, in one.  Laundry is my emmamy.

Now, I do try not to be Debbie Downer on Facebook.  So I use little euphemisms, like "I'm off to tackle Mount Washmore!" because it really was the most interesting thing going on in a day that is typically filled with various potty responsibilities and the making of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  Also, I think just lurking is sneaky and Facebook was, at that time, pretty much my only adult interaction for days on end.  On a really good day I might post "Mount Washmore is a molehill!" but by the next morning somebody would have wet the bed and I'd be in silent despair as I contemplated the loads of bedding to be dealt with.

I don't expect many men to have made it this far into the SAHM's lament, but just in case my husband's eyes haven't yet glazed over, and also to enumerate the pain of fellow laundry haters, I will spell out exactly why I loathe a job that is primarily done by two (mostly) automatic machines.

First is sheer volume.  In my household there are two adults, three children, and a cat.  Now, though I don't actually dress my cat, he does generate more than his share of laundry... if you get my drift.  He's old and not as spry as he used to be and, like the children in 2009, he doesn't always get there in time.  Which is fun.  I expect the rest of the family is self-explanatory, but what it all amounts to is that there is a lot of laundry and it's generally very disgusting, especially in 2009, when my children were 6, 3, and 1.

Second is my own idea of a job well-done.  Apparently there are a lot of ways to separate laundry (one friend divided them into "whites, reds or pinks, and everything else") and I use one of the more elaborate systems, involving not only color but fabric care. So nobody else is allowed to separate the laundry but me.

Third is the amount of time the machines take and the nature of parenting.  The washing machine takes just under an hour, but the dryer takes just over an hour.  This means that if I start the washer and the dryer at the same time, the washer will have to sit, completed, till the dryer finishes.  Except, if I put a load of line-dry only clothes in, I can squeeze two loads into the washer before I have to move the second one over to the dryer, so theoretically I get more done.  Except, when you are the only adult in the house reponsible for three children under six, inevitably there's going to be some reason to forget that you are supposed to go back and move everything over, and you certainly can't babysit the machines when you have to prevent the children from killing each other, or poisoning themselves, or when you have to fetch them from school or take them to baseball practice or... take your choice.  Children are distracting... as is Facebook.

Then there's the folding... the endless, monotonous folding.  It's not so bad when I can watch a lot of TV while I'm working at it, but I can't really watch TV while the children are around if I don't want their brains to rot in their heads and leak right out of their ears, so I inevitably end up taking 2 nights a week with a gargantuan mound of laundry next to me and watch something like 4 episodes of Star Trek Voyager until I get it all done.  Which is fine, I guess, although we are now a one-TV household and my husband really likes his xBox.

I won't talk about lugging it all around to the five rooms in the house where it is all stored.

Are you tired yet?

So in 2010, when my youngest son was 2 1/2 and we judged that my parents wouldn't hate us if they kept the three children while my husband and I took a long weekend to ourselves, we went to stay at a resort in Jamaica.  We went there to sit on the beach and just rest.  I exerted myself far enough to get a pedicure.  While I was at the salon, just me and the aesthetician, there was a terrible thunderstorm and the power went out.  She opened all the windows and we had enough light for her to keep working.  It was quiet, really, really quiet, and peaceful, and she was a very beautiful woman.  Not magazine beautiful, but character beautiful.  Someone you could really like.  And in that peaceful setting, with her working on my feet, we got to talking like women, sharing about our families (she had two teenage daughters) and how things were in Jamaica, which at that time was experiencing a lot of unrest in Kingstown, on the other end of the island.  (Now that I think about it, I don't know how or if or when that worked out, and I'm a little ashamed).

She said, "Three children, that's a lot of work."

And I, feeling rested and relaxed after two and a half days of enough sleep and nobody begging me for anything, said, "Yes, they are a lot of work.  But they're a lot of fun, too.  The laundry is the worst part."

She was surprised and we got to talking about laundry.  She never even thought of it as a chore, she said, because nobody has a washing machine, let alone a dryer, you just wash all your clothes in a tub, and it takes maybe ten or fifteen minutes.  You put it out on the line and a couple of hours later you bring it in and that's all there is to it.

So it got me wondering.  Has our labor-saving device turned what could be a short, quick job into something that requires hours of thought and effort?  If I did all my laundry in the bathtub instead of in a high efficiency front loader would I be able to make peace with that chore?

But then I look at Mount Washmore.  And I think of putting all that in a tub, and scrubbing it by hand, and hauling it out to the clothesline my neighborhood won't permit me to have, and how long it would take to dry in the San Francisco Bay Area fog belt even if I had one, and I think, not bloody likely.

So, laundry is, and shall remain, my emmamy.