here are some thoughts: March 12, 2024
if you asked me where the last 5ish weeks went, i genuinely could not tell you. i guess i am still too close to it? a lot and almost nothing has happened, as is the way. but i do have some actual coherent thoughts to share (and a previously-never-published essay i dusted off), so let's do this thing!
🥸 the biggest highlight is i got glasses, for the first time in my life (for reading and screens, so .... all day) and i feel like i've ascended to my most bookish self? not mad about it!
🌿 my partner and i are reading Ross Gay's INCITING JOY, which is just freaking incredible btw, and it inspired me to actually get out into our backyard on a nice day and get some things done. it felt amazing. looks like this week will be nice again, so i'm hoping to get out there and finish transferring piles of dirt to the correct place (i know, EXCITING) and getting my spring seeds planted.
📚 you can check out my recent reading on Litsy or Instagram, but in the meantime here's a linked list of what i've been reading and loving:
BUILDING A SECOND BRAIN by Tiago Forte
SISTERS OF THE VAST BLACK by Lina Rather
THE ICE GUY AND THE COOL GIRL VOL 1 by Miyuki Tonogaya
🧹 i wrote this almost exactly a year ago and never used it, and i had completely forgotten about the "crying over dust on the fan" thing. so this was a good reminder to me that progress is possible without dramatic change, we can conquer (or just make friends with) our inner demons, and also it's ok to cry over dust as long as you then do something about it.
I'm a Chaotic Householder and I'm OK
Raise your hand if you have expectations of how your living space looks that you will never, ever, ever live up to.
Me too, friends. Me too. But I had a break-through about it recently, and I’m here to tell you about it!
It all started when Patricia recommended KC Davis’s HOW TO KEEP HOUSE WHILE DROWNING on All the Books. A book about freeing yourself from judgment around how clean your space is or is not? Put it in my eyeballs immediately! Particularly during the last few years, when we’ve all been trapped in our living spaces to varying extents, and becoming a first-time homeowner, I felt the full futility of never actually meeting my own ideals of what that space should be like. A short, incomplete list of things that I felt should be happening regularly, not just when people were coming over and I was cleaning in a frenzy, included the following:
Dust should not actually be visible anywhere (dust is always visible, everywhere)
The dishes should be washed the same day they were dirty (pfft)
The floors should be swept regularly (LOL forever)
The couch should not be covered in cat hair (this one is truly unachievable)
There should never be a pile of clothes on the edge of the bed (but they’re not clean! But also not fully dirty??)
The counters should be clean, like wiped-down-recently clean as well as free of random crap all over them (nope)
Ditto for the coffee tables (double nope)
The bathroom sink and mirror should not have toothpaste all over them and the toilet should get scrubbed weekly (nooooooooope)
There should be well-thought out Decor ™ that is harmonious and looks like a Grown-Up Lives Here (as opposed to a bunch of things I’ve had since college or found on the side of the road or at a thrift store or actually did pay money for but now kind of regret)
My desperation over this unattainable (to me) state of living reached such heights that my partner found me crying on the couch one day about how much dust was visible on the ceiling fan blades, which I had never actually thought about before and then once I saw it, could only understand as the final nail in the coffin of my ability to Live Like a Grown-Up. It was stupid and untrue, but it also felt deeply real.
So believe me when I say that Davis’s gentle, compassionate, deeply pragmatic and mental-health-informed approach to cleaning was a light in a dark time. It helped me see where and how these ideals had been created and grown so overwhelming — I’ll spare you the full therapeutic work-up, but an inconsistent family-of-origin approach towards cleaning and “grew up poor” class anxiety top out the list. I adopted some of Davis’s tips that I thought might work for me, talked about it with my therapist, got real with my partner (who has opposing cleaning ideals to my own, inevitably) about what we can expect from each other and what is and is not ok for each of us, and worked on not mentally haranguing myself every time the cat batted yet another dust-bunny from underneath the couch or dishes sat (more than) one night in the sink.
I also went back to my copy of Marie Kondo’s THE LIFE-CHANGING MAGIC OF TIDYING UP, for help remembering that my possessions are there to make me feel good and to be useful, not to make my life somehow “correct.” (I know some do not find the KonMari method helpful, but it is a book I return to every few years, and her newest, KURASHI AT HOME, made home decoration feel achievable in a way it didn’t before.) I’m still working, and probably always will be, on that class anxiety, but the biggest breakthrough I’ve had post-Davis is thanks to the D&D alignment chart.
I was recently explaining to a friend how a mutual acquaintance’s house made me feel like a failure (truly, that house could be an interior design ad), and said something about how my own home’s style was more “chaotic.” Bam! A lightbulb went off as I heard myself! What if I could claim “Chaotic Good” as my Householder Alignment? (Because this is the kind of nerd I am.) The mutual acquaintance is a sterling example of Lawful Good; my first apartment out of college definitely qualifies as Chaotic Evil (think cockroaches in the building, giant piles of floor-laundry, and petri-dish tea mugs); and I have watched enough house-related TV to have seen plenty of examples from across the chart. But mine, right now — mine is Chaotic Good. It’s not necessarily tidy, and it’s not sparkling, but it is cozy and safe and full of comfort, and it is (as Davis taught me, the most important one) functional for me and my partner and our cat. The essentials get taken care of, sometimes the “nice to have”s happen as well, and I am no longer crying over ceiling fan dust.
It’s a pretty big win.
Whatever your housing situation — whether you’re renting or own, shared or solo, making do in your car right now or have thousands of square feet and an actual live interior designer — you, too, have a Householder Alignment, and you too can be ok.
👋