Fessing up

I've decided something. I've decided I'm wishy washy. I can't seem to make up my mind. Then again, I think it's pretty obvious to anyone who reads my blog. I step away for awhile. Then I come back with plans to post everyday, and life happens, and I don't. So I've made a decision. I'm not going to worry about whether I post daily or not. I'm still getting things done, and when I have time, I will post about my success and my failures. 

There. 

It's decided.

I've been working in the kitchen again today. We have some hooks on the wall under the telephone that we use to hang reusable shopping bags and purses, etc. While I was sitting at the table trying to sort that last little bit of stuff that seems to take all my concentration to get finished, a purse hanging on the hooks caught my eye. It had been hanging there unused for over a year. I had taken it out of our closet last year when I thoroughly cleaned our bedroom. 

I decided I was not going to let it escape my grip yet again and dumped the contents on the table.

It's not like there was a lot in it. A pocket Bible Hubster had gotten me, a small emergency kit that held bandages, hand wipes, samples of headache medicines, 2 lip balms and a small tin of mints with 2 mints left in it. There was also a book of cards I'd kept in my purse for several years. At one point it probably contained over 100 business, credit or store perk cards. I've gone through it a few times over the years and slowly but surely purged what I could handle getting rid of at the time. 

Today, I emptied it. Most of the contents went in the shredables bag. The rest have been set aside to go in my purse, because they're still relevant. There were perks cards for 2 stores that have gone out of business, old business cards of our realtor who recently retired, and business cards from the insurance guy we had when we bought our house. I did keep the old prescriptions for our glasses and 5 or 6 cards, 3 of which were library cards, that were in there, but overall, I felt pretty good about it. I even threw the book away. I've been putting off cleaning out that purse for close to a decade. The latest date I saw on anything was 2003.

I momentarily thought I'd wash the purse. It's made of blue denim and canvas, but there were a couple of quarter sized brown stains on the light part, and I didn't figure I could get them out. Well, I probably could, but it also had an insert in it made of cardboard, and I knew that it would be ruined, if it got wet, so I just pitched it. I didn't succumb to my old way of thought and undo the seam to remove the cardboard, so I could wash it. I just threw it away. 

I threw the makeup case that had held the emergency supplies, too. I saved one bandage out of it, the mint tin, the fingernail clipper and the Swiss Army knife that I'd had in there. But the little makeup case, which was in good shape overall, had a sticky zipper. And it was dirty inside. I didn't feel like rubbing a candle over the zipper or washing it, so I just pitched it, too. 

It's amazing how empty the wall looks without that purse hanging there. Since Bugster took her bag of stuff home that I'd had hanging there waiting for her, it looks downright bare. I like it. I really like that my purse won't be sticking out anymore, too. I hate when it hits me in the thigh when I come around the corner. 

Awhile back, I wrote about buying pants hangers in bulk, so I could get rid of the ones that didn't match. They were taking entirely too much of my attention. When the new hangers came in, I immediately went to each room and switched out the old hangers for the new ones. The problem was that I neglected to get rid of the old hangers. I'd put them aside, so I wouldn't have to make a decision about getting rid of them. Even though I knew I needed to do it, I couldn't seem to bring myself to list them on Craigslist. 

I had no problem knowing I needed to get rid of the clear plastic ones. They were made of cheap plastic and broke easily. But I really struggled with getting rid of the opaque ones. They were a much higher quality. They looked clean. Plus they all had the clothespin-type clamps on them. Only 2 of the black ones had them. I just kept thinking of how handy they would be to hang jeans. Jeans are so heavy, and they need a durable hanger, or the hanger tends to bend.

We've used the new hangers long enough for me to realize they're decent hangers, even though they aren't all that heavy duty. They still hold the jeans tight, and they don't bend or break from the weight of the jeans. So I sorted out the different types of hangers, listed them on Craigslist, and someone picked them all up within an hour of emailing. It was such a relief to know that I'd finally dealt with them.

I did find one opaque hanger after the others had gone out the door, but I didn't hang onto it. Well, not really. We took the ends that clamp off the hanger to use for chip clips and tossed the rest in the garbage. They're really handy, and they're a lot cheaper than buying clips that don't work or don't last and make you feel cheated for having made the purchase in the first place. 

So yeah. The hangers are gone. 

:::looks guilty:::

OK! OK! I kept the 2 black hangers that had the pinch clips! I didn't put them in the closet or in the laundry room. They're sitting in the study for me to deal with later. I'm don't know what I'm going to do with them just yet. I'll probably change my mind a few times.

I'm sorta wishy washy like that.

Don't judge me.

Me and my hangups.

When the court visitor was here last week and looked in Scooter's closet, she said, "Wow. OCD much?" She thought Scooter had arranged the closet, but I told her I had. I explained that it just made things so much easier for Scooter to find what she needed at a glance. I had all of her clothes sorted and hung neatly. Starting at the left were the long-sleeved blouses followed by short-sleeved blouses, short-sleeved t-shirts, long-sleeved t-shirts, pants, dresses and skirts, and each section was arranged by color. To me, it just looked nice and neat. It makes things much easier for Scooter to see what's available in her closet and to pick out what she's going to wear for the day. 


I was thinking that her closet was the only one that looked like that, when I realized all of them do. Hopper's closet has one of those wire closet organizers installed, so it's organized a bit differently but even the coats in the coat closet are organized by who wears them with the winter coats to the left and lightweight coats to the right. And the linen closet looks amazing, if I do say so, myself. Everything is folded neatly and in its place, and looks great. Best of all, things are very easy to find. 


When any of the closets start to get messy and disorganized, I find my anxiety level goes up. It's just disconcerting. Maybe it's because they're the only truly finished areas in the house. All I know, is that I have to have them looking neat and organized as much as possible.


It can be a real hangup for me. 


Almost 2 years ago, I wrote about the struggle I was having with my hangers. I had so many different types  of hangers that I was compelled to sort them every time I passed them by. I had to have a different color for each person in the house, and it drove me absolutely nuts when the colors were mixed up in the closets. I wasted so much time and energy on them.


At the time, I realized that the best thing for me to do for myself in regard to the hangers was to start over from scratch, and I gave myself permission to buy all new hangers for our tops. It was hard for me to justify the expense, but I'm so glad I felt I was worth the small cost. It has helped tremendously. 


At the time, I thought I could get away without doing anything about the pants and skirt hangers. Well, that's not entirely true. I did get rid of a hodgepodge of pants hangers (at least 4 different styles and 4 different colors), but I still had 3 different colors and 2 different styles left. I've found that it's still too many choices for me.


In the last 2 years, we've had black, opaque and clear hangers that had the pinch things on them that opened like a clothespin to hang the pants or skirts. The clearest ones were supposed to only be used for Scooter's clothes, because her pants and skirts are the lightest weight, and they'd be least likely to break the hangers. Then the black pinch ones were Hoppers, and the opaque pinch ones were Scooter's. Hubster's hangers were black, but instead of pinching open and closed, there was a little part that went over the clothing and then a silver piece slid down over the plastic to hold the fabric in the hangers.


It's bothered me over the last 2 years, but it hasn't bothered me enough to do anything about it. 


Until today. 


This past week, I realized I've been wasting a lot of time and emotional strength and energy on these stupid hangers. It was frustrating when one of Hopper's was used to hang my clothes, because none of mine were available, or when some of Hubster's clothes were hung on Scooter's hangers and were heavy enough they snapped the hanger in two. Never mind the amount of time waste looking for the 'right' one to use when I had something to hang. 


I've tried for years to make the hangers work. But now that I've come to the conclusion that they aren't working for me, I've decided to do something about it. I realized that it was worth it to buy pants hangers in bulk on eBay, so I'm not obsessing over the mismatched hangers anymore. I will donate the old mismatched ones. The new ones will take the stress over who is using whose hangers away completely, and they'll cut down on the time looking for the right hanger to nothing. The choice will be gone. 


I'm already looking forward to their arrival next week. It will just be one less hangup for me to deal with on a daily basis.


I can deal with that.

Memories

I don't remember the exact time frame my parents gave me my bedspread, curtains and hangers, but I was still in high school. It would have been for my 15th or 16th birthday, but I just don't remember for sure. I do know, though that they meant the world to me, and I still have them almost 30 years later. It's stuff like this that makes decisions hard for me.

The bedspread they got me was a very pretty floral design with lavenders and roses in it. It wasn't your typical cotton fabric that can be so stiff and hard, but a soft, sort of silky taffeta. I'd fall asleep stroking it. I just loved it.

The curtains had sort of a romantic way of falling on the window - light and airy. They were semi-sheer with a valance sewn on the top, and when they were criss-crossed one behind the other, you couldn't see through them at all, but they let in the light. I felt like I was in a fairy tale in my bedroom with the lavender carpet and my matching bedspread and curtains. My bedroom always made me feel happy.

Mom spent hours sewing on a flat lavender lace to the edge of the bedspread and the 4 curtains to make them match, and to make them more special. She put so much love into dolling them up for me, and I was in heaven!

Years later, after my hubby and I were married, I found more of the curtains at a store in North Carolina. I bought another 2 sets, so I had 8 curtains all together. We had a lot of windows in the house where we lived, and I wanted to still be able to use the curtains my parents had given me. I put the ones without the lace in behind as liners, which allowed me to criss-cross the ones with the lace in the front. It allowed for brightness and privacy at the same time.

We used the curtains and bedspread until 8 years or so ago, when we finally bought our bedroom set and changed color schemes, but I haven't been able to bring myself to get rid of them. I mentioned the other day that our daughter gets married next week. She and her husband will close on a house a week later, and they'll be getting the curtains to use in their bedroom, as they'll match color-wise. It makes me feel good knowing that they'll use them for awhile, too.

I still am not sure what I'll be doing with the bedspread, but I'll be doing something special with it. It's been too big a part of my life to just give it to someone. It was something that has never, ever made me unhappy. Not once. There aren't many things in one's life that can be said about. I have Mom and Dad to thank for all those years of happiness!

At the time that I had the lavender lace-trimmed curtains and bedspread and the lavender carpet, I needed hangers. This was back in the day when plastic hangers first came out, and they were only available in a few select colors. So imagine my delight when my parents surprised me with a new package of lavender hangers for one of my birthday or Christmas gifts! I was thrilled! They lived with me in countless homes and traveled the US with us. They've been a very big part of my life for the last 30 years.

So when I went through the hangers the other day, I made the decision to finally let them go. I put them in the bag with all the other hangers I decided to give to my friend. But it hasn't been easy. I had to request that she send her son to come pick up the bag as soon as possible, so I didn't dig through and retrieve my lifelong companions. I've been okay as long as I haven't thought about them, but even while writing this post, I keep wanting to email her and ask her for the lightest blue hangers with the lavender tint. My heart is racing, I'm feeling quite anxious, and I'm regretting giving them away.

I know that this feeling will pass. I may still have twinges of regret tomorrow or even the next day, but I'll make it through.

I have the memories. Memories of love, of Mom and Dad and the sacrifice they made to give me such a happy room. The memories will be enough.

Nobody can take them away.

One Fish. Two Fish. Red Fish. Blue Fish. brought to you by the letter H.

For years, I've done laundry a certain way. In many ways, it's tedious. I get that. Our clothes didn't show wear very quickly, because of the way I do laundry, so it saved us a lot of money by not having to buy new clothes. My trick? For the most part I only dry sheets, towels, undies, socks and sweats in the dryer. The rest gets 'fluffed and hung'.

During a 'fluffing and hanging' episode, the clothes go straight from the washer to the dryer, and heated until the wrinkles come out. The clothes are still quite wet when they're taken out and hung on hangers to air dry. In the summertime, the hangers of clothes are hung on the clothesline to dry and to have that incredible hung-in-the-sun smell when they're brought back in.

Over the years, clothes were passed down from one daughter to the next, and they often looked like only one child had worn them when we did finally part with them. The fading was minimal, and shrinkage was almost non-existent. It saved us money on the utility bills as well as on clothing replacement costs. I felt it was my duty to save as much as I could, because my husband works so very hard to support our family. I felt it was the least I could do.

Over the last couple of years, I've let up a little. I've dried a few more loads and fluffed and hung just a little less. But one thing I haven't let up on is a little obsession I have with the hangers. They have to be sorted according to color and style.

We have big fat chunky ones we use for coats, the kind with the notches on them to hang strappy things on, regular plastic hangers, and some big chunky ones with swivel heads on them. Some with swivel heads are orange. Some are yellow. The chunky ones for coats are yellow, white, blue and green. The notched ones for hanging strappy things were bright pink, teal and white. And then we had 2 colors of light blue, dark purple and white regular plastic hangers. And they had to be sorted according to color first and style second.

So not only did I sort hangers as I took clothes off them to fold or when the clothes were removed to be worn, but I also had to sort the hangers as I got things out of the dryer and fluffed and hung them. The lightest blue held my clothes. The darker light blue and dark purple were for my husband. The bright pink, teal and white were all for the girls. But sometimes I had strappy things, but I didn't have any light blue hangers for mine, so I had to use white. And the swivel hangers were used when we ran out of hangers and still had clothes to hang.

It was all quite tiresome. It wasn't just that I felt an obligation to sort the hangers. I couldn't stop myself, if I tried. And I did try. But they were such a jumbled assortment of hangers that I always felt stressed when I saw them messed up. It was distracting and it made the laundry room look less neat, and let's face it. I need all the neatness I can get.

But at what cost?

I have no idea how much extra time I spent on sorting hangers, but over the years, I wouldn't doubt, if it added up to an entire week. At least an entire business week. A M-F 8 to 5 sort of week. I know I spent a lot of time sorting hangers.

Today, I sorted hangers in a totally different way. I sorted them to give them to a friend who has a lot of kids and never seems to have enough hangers. She doesn't have the sorting problem I seem to have. All our hangers now are white, except for the chunky coat hangers. There are still two styles of the main hangers I'll use.

But that ain't nothin' but a thing. :)