Tag Archives: sparking joy

Posted in opinion

PANDEMIC PLANS

By Comments:9 Comments

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

 

Well, it’s been quite the week, heh?  Last week at this time I had all sorts of social engagements and golf games on the calendar.  Today, I think of a trip to the grocery store as a major outing.  Mind you, an outing the warrants rubber gloves and endless sheets of Clorox wipes.  Who ever thought that going to pick up some rutabagas would become a life-threatening excursion?  When they first told us to watch out for the elderly I envisioned the folks that Dash the Wonder Dog used to visit in the retirement care center.  To my horror, I soon discovered that I’m considered elderly and, therefore, in a high-risk group.  Our paranoia about the virus has resulted in some changes around here.  We’ve begun to look at our friends in a whole new light – do we really think the Smiths wash their hands as thoroughly as they should?  Is Sally going to the grocery store and then not wiping down her countertops?  And what about those Johnsons?  They had their kids and grandkids in for spring break last week.  Surely they are swimming in germs over at their house.  Just to make it easy, we are not only socially distancing – we are socially hibernating.

The other change is that we now spend a fair amount of time figuring out what to do.  Normally, each morning when we walk Dash we talk about our plans for the day.  Now, with nothing on our calendar, that conversation is a little stretched for content.  My husband’s main “job” is to play golf.  His secondary job is to watch golf and hockey on TV. But now our golf course has closed down and all sports have been suspended so he’s out of work.  I’m not sure that the new relief package is going to cover his “unemployment”.  But we may need it.  His occasional pastime is watching the stock market but we’ve had to put an end to that as well – his heart just couldn’t take it anymore.  I usually knit a couple of hours a day because I enjoy it and it’s a calming activity.  But now that I have all the time in the world and no place to go, my knitting feels like a time-filler, which is sadly true.  Yesterday I tackled some ironing I’ve been putting off and I cleaned the kitchen for the n-th time and then I ran out of ideas.  Now I’m wishing that I hadn’t spent so much time last year organizing my closets.  Damn that “sparking joy” craze.  My spice rack is alphabetized, the sock drawer is neat as a pin, and all of my pantry items are resting in their designated baskets. I’m looking for other activities to keep me entertained, and – this is important – refrain me from killing my husband. My friends and I joke that among the 30-somethings we will see a baby boom in 9 months, while some of us older folks may well end up in the hoosegow for murdering our spouse.

We’re only 8 days into the 15 day “distancing” suggestion and I’m already antsy.  I’ll get over it.  Really, it’s not much of a sacrifice to sit on the couch with Dash, watch trashy TV and knit.  When I think about what the front line people at hospitals are going through it gives me shivers.  I can’t imagine their stress – not only the anticipation of a coronavirus tsunami, but the risk they take for themselves and their families working so near the disease.  I worry about all the small businesses that may be lost because we all have to stay home – businesses that have provided our communities with so much diversity and character.  But I am optimistic that we will all get through this.  I’m cheered by some unusual bi-partisanship in Washington and how citizens of all stripes are pulling together.  For every stupid college student on the beach in Florida saying they don’t care if they infect others, there are 10 great kids who are volunteering to help the elderly and needy.  It’s uplifting and perhaps just what we needed to remind us that we’re all Americans.

I hope that in two weeks time when I’m writing this blog we will be through the worst of it.  But according to this website https://covidactnow.org/  we may just be at the beginning.  So just in case, does anyone have the name of a good bail bondsman?

Posted in opinion

SPARKING JOY

By Comments:7 Comments

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

In case you’ve missed it, organizing is a big trend. You can hardly pick up a magazine or scan the internet without bumping into an article about cleaning out and categorizing.  I think we used to call this Spring Cleaning, but of course now that it’s a trend it has a new name and its own hashtag – #sparkjoy.  Marie Kondo, the author of “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up”, started the latest movement and is raking in millions with her books and now her Netflix series, “Tidying Up“.  Seriously, Netflix videos on how to discard and organize.   Her practice is based on the Shinto religion theory of treasuring what you have; treating the objects you own as not disposable, but valuable, no matter their actual monetary worth; and creating displays so you can value each individual object.  So many people are participating in the possession version of Match.Com that thousands of thrift shops around the country are bursting with donations of useless crap that should more properly have been disposed of in a garbage bin.  The Goodwill store in Denver increased their monthly intake by over 500,000 pounds, including discarded tee shirts with armpit stains and underwear with spots that should indeed be unmentionable.

I used to revel in a messy desk and my car was a disaster. My home was just clean enough to pass a health inspection.  I was perfectly happy in my messy little corner of the world until we relocated from California to Arizona.  We had to wait 18 months for our house to be built which necessitated putting three-quarters of our worldly goods into storage. At long last, when the moving company delivered the crates, more than half of the furniture didn’t fit, much of the “stuff” was no longer needed or my tastes had totally changed. Thus, my method of discarding was born. I call it the “Move, Store or Discard” method. Each spring I pretend we’re going to move and determine whether I’d pay to move or store an item.  If not, out it goes.  I never thought about writing a book about it.  But then again, this is not the first boat that’s left the harbor without me.  My method has kept me organized for 20 years.  This year I’ve been focusing on our garage and the kitchen.  I bought several baskets from Amazon and sorted my pantry into categories – baking, cereals, canned goods, cleaning products, etc.  As you can see from the photo, just about everything has a place and is easy to find.  A friend stopped by to see what I was doing and after gazing at my handiwork for a moment she slowly turned to me and said, “I think you might be slightly OCD”.  Yup.

Ms. Kondo suggests that if an item doesn’t “spark joy” it should be donated or discarded.  She further says that we should thank the item for the role it’s played in our lives, suggesting that is a way of properly saying goodbye, so that you can recognize the end of your relationship with it and release it without guilt.  Honestly, I have enough trouble recognizing my relationships with people, much less household appliances. Take my rice cooker, for example.  I just donated that last week because I haven’t used it in a few years.  Why in the hell should I thank it?  It was minimally useful to me and has just been lounging in the back of the cabinet for years contributing nothing to the household.  Thank it?  Good riddance is more like it.  I longingly looked at my floor mop and, as hard as I tried, I could not spark joy looking at it.  I don’t even spark joy at the clean floors after I use it.  But there it sits, in its thankless state, perhaps in hope that one day it will receive its due.  It may be waiting a long time.

I tend to agree more with Joshua Becker, the best-selling author on minimalism, who argues that possessions shouldn’t have that much meaning in our lives to begin with.  Yes, he’s a big proponent of de-cluttering, but for the purpose of making your life more joyous.  His bottom line question is whether the possession is helping to fulfill a larger purpose.  So instead of ridding yourself of 17 old shirts, only to go out and buy 17 new ones, now neatly organized by color in your closet, he proposes that we just pare down to what is useful and meaningful to ourselves or others.  It’s a lot to think about.  But it sure beats time spent contemplating your relationship with a rice cooker.