Seven Experiment

- Oh Happy Daze

A note from "the girl who begins tons of projects and never finishes them"

Remember that experiment in self reduction I started in January of this year? I took an accidental hiatus from it because I seriously completely forgot about it. I hate to admit that. If you are wondering what I’m talking about you can read about the premise of my ‘experiment’ here. Over the course of 6 months I tackled excess in my life in the areas of clothing, possessions, waste, and spending after reading a book by Jen Hatmaker called ‘7’. The categories still to be completed: stress, media, and food. While writing this I had originally included ‘food’ into that list of areas I’d already tackled, probably out of wishful thing. Turns out I never actually completed that month, just talked about it. Ha. That is so me.
Chris and I have had so many changes to our life over the past few months, it’s truly a miracle I’ve gotten anything done.  I’m not surprised I completely put this project on the back burner. The biggest task consuming my time recently has been my new business adventure. (since we’re talking about it, go like the Facebook page, share it a few times, and share this information with anyone who may need it. I specialize in helping children with developmental delays and disorders, particularly those families who may have just learned that Autism will now be part of their daily vocabulary). Shameless self-promotion over, I’ve decided to tackle media during the month of November.
This month’s experiment will, of course, begin on November 2nd because today (November 1st) I am busy binging on Netflix, reddit, Facebook, instagram, Pinterest, and the internets (all of them).
How Technology Is Used By Different Generations
 
Here are my parameters. Read them, study them, and slap my phone out of my hand if you see my thumb hovering over the Facebook app with the little red circle indicating 99+ notifications. I’m going to need some help with this month:

  • No television. Not even in a doctor’s waiting room. I solemnly swear. Tonight Chris and I are going to finish watching The Hunger Games: Catching Fire so I can cross that off my list and officially not pine after anything on Netflix right now.
  • No Reddit. If you don’t know what Reddit is, I emplore you don’t look into it. Don’t ask about it. Don’t talk about it. And absolutely do not put an app on your phone. I will be removing the app from my phone as soon as this is posted.
  • No Pinterest. I am not going to remove the app from my phone because in all honesty I don’t remember my user name and password and that would seriously be such a pain to try and get the app again. I am attempting to prep for the entire month’s worth of creativity and crafting needs in the next few hours before this experiment begins so I hopefully won’t find myself needing to enter the black hole of Pinterest ideas I will never actually attempt.
  • No Instagram. Instagram is not usually my go-to time-waster so I feel pretty confident that I won’t be tempted to visit.
  • Facebook will be limited. I will not be scrolling through my newsfeed. I will, however, be checking messages so If you want to talk to me about something and don’t have my number you can message me there. Don’t post on my wall. I won’t see it. I won’t be checking notification. I will resist. I swear. I will also be posting in two of my groups and on my Little Fish Speech Therapy page as needed. Gotta pay the bills.
  • I will not use the internets for anything other than business related tasks or research. Or to look up the hours for the post office. Well, let’s be realistic. Replace the word ‘post office’ with ‘Target’.
  • I will not play any games on my phone. I go through phrases with phone games and right now I’m in a lull, so hopefully this one won’t be difficult at all.

I will still listen to music, still watch sermon videos in our community group, and still use my coupon apps (don’t you dare take those away from me).
Chris and Charlotte will be joining me this month. Charlotte is already limited to 30 minutes of television a day, if even that… I’m still a stickler for following the guidelines recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics discussed in this post. The exception to that was when she was sick. I think she watched both Finding Nemo and Frozen in the same day with back to back episodes of Curious George sandwiched in between while she had the stomach bug. This is definitely going to be hard for her because she loves to ask for “FeeVee” and snuggle up on the couch with a snack. I think it will be even harder on Chris and I because we love when she can snuggle on the couch and watch “FeeVee” while we get lunches packed. Chris is also very much in the habit of being drawn to media throughout the workday because the nature of his work involves a lot of ‘hurry up and wait’ scenarios.
I think this will be a difficult month for both Chris and I.  I’m sure this may seem pointless to some. Here are a few passages from Jen’s book that really convicted me to continue with my journey in self-reduction:

“Media has changed the way we interact with one another and what we spend our time doing. Our social norms have changed.” 
“The dangerous part of our social media and technologically saturated world is not its existence but what it distracts us from.” 

“My communion with God suffers not for lack of desire but time.  And let’s be honest; I say I don’t have time, yet I found thirty-five minutes for Facebook and an hour for my shows.  I found half an hour for YouTube videos on how to fix lil’ black girls’ hair (my Ethiopian children are on deck, and I can’t have them looking nappy).  I found fifteen minutes for the radio and twenty-four minutes for a missed 30 Rock episode.  So when I say I don’t have time, I’m a gigantic liar. I have time. I just spend it elsewhere.”

“If a fast doesn’t include any sacrifices, then it’s not a fast. The discomfort is where the magic happens. Life zips along, unchecked and automatic. We default to our lifestyles, enjoying our privileges tra la la, but a fast interrupts that rote trajectory. Jesus gets a fresh platform in the empty space where indulgence resided.” 
      – Jen Hatmaker, 7: An Expermental Mutiny Against Excess

Won’t you join me? Your reduction in media may look different from ours but I’d love to hear about it if you decide to limit even one aspect of media in your life!
 

- Oh Happy Daze

My coffee is still warm.

Hello friends.
I’ve missed you. I have been begging and pleading with my schedule to let up and allow me some time to write, but no such luck.
Until today, when I dropped my sweet almost 2 year old off for her first day of summer preschool camp.
Charlotte's first day of summer preschool
 
haha, let’s play a game called “how many dead plants are there”?
Charlotte's first day of summer preK2
 
So here I am drinking a cup of still warm coffee and writing a few of my thoughts down. And now you get to enjoy the ramblings of my brain displayed on paper:

  • Remember my experimental mutiny against excess {inspired and imitated from Jen Hatmaker’s book} ?  Well, I already completed month 4 without you. I sat down at the computer on June 1st to tell you all about how we were going to tackle reducing Waste together throughout the whole month. Today is July 9th, and I still haven’t completed that post or shared an ounce of my month’s experiences with you. I will catch you up later, I know you’re waiting at the edge of your seat to hear more about how much of a waste monster you are.
  • I have been purging again. The struggle is real folks. It sort of never ends. I think my tolerance level for the amount of possessions in my house is decreasing. er, increasing? whatever. The first month of purging stuff was painful. nay, brutal. The second was slightly less  painful and a lot more annoying (as I realized how much of a hold some things truly had on my heart). It is becoming easier and easier for me to let go of things and have become more and more annoyed when things pile up again. Thankfully, I’ve had a lot of motivation to continue down this new fangled path in life called ‘being content with what you have’ in the last few weeks. We’ve needed to make space in our extra room {previously my ‘craft’ room, Chris’ ‘guitar’ room, and my beloved ‘store the junk here and close the door’ room} for a friend who will be staying with us for a bit. I wasn’t sure how I would fit all the contents of that room into other places in my house and I eventually had to come to terms with the fact that it wasn’t really possible, so I had to purge more. Fortunately for me I have the most awesome friends in the world. This is how it played out:

me: hey friends, I am calling out for help. I need to get rid of more things and I am feeling overwhelmed. I don’t know where to start or when to find the time and am dreading it because all that stuff in there is stuff that already made it through the first three rounds of purging so I obviously love it and value it and want to keep it but know I have to make some hard decisions to let things go and make room and I don’t know if I can do it as quickly as it needs to be done.  I mean, I don’t want to burden you guys and I know you have your own stuff going on. I hate to take away from your time when I know you have your own schedules to deal with, just let me know if possibly, just maybe in the next few weeks or months or this year some time you can spare a minute to help me out a bit. Kthanks.

friends: ok. see you tomorrow.

And they came. and they brought liquid encouragement in the form of a large fresh-squeezed lemonade. And they stayed pretty much all day even though I said repeatedly “don’t feel like you have to stay all day”. And I am so, so thankful for them.

So, seriously if you don’t have a group of people who do this kind of thing for you please reach out to me and I will be that for you!

  • On Tuesday I ate 9 mini reese’s peanut butter cups while at work. Tuesday was a tough day for some of my patient’s, so it was a tough day for me emotionally.
  • The community garden is going very well. We are dealing with some finicky soil, some annoying rain barrels, and some brazen deer… but we continue forth in our efforts to grow green stuff. I’m not gonna lie, gardening is a little bit addictive.
  • I haggled at a yard sale for the first time in my life last weekend and afterwards I all but ran back to the car to proclaim my boldness to Chris. I still don’t think he realizes the magnitude of this life experience for me. I mean, I was that kid who wanted ketchup but would suffer without it just so I didn’t have to go up to the counter and, gulp, speak to someone. This is big folks.

Brain purge: 20% complete, but alone time is over so the rest will have to wait for another day.

- Oh Happy Daze

Month 3: Clothing {update 3}

I don’t even know where to begin. This month hasn’t been going like I had planned.
I mean, in my mind this month was going to be pretty easy. Pick my 7 items, wear those 7 items, demonstrate that I can survive with fewer clothes in my closet. La. De. Da.
Lemme just say… this has been the most difficult self-reduction month ever! Reducing yourself to 7 articles of clothing is impossible. Well not impossible, because people do it daily all over the world, but really really tricky. The worst aspect of it is when I have to change clothes because of the task I’m doing. I have been doing a lot of work in the community garden these past few weeks. Garden = dirt = dirty clothes. Every time I go I wear my blue running shorts, gray t-shirt, and black tennis shoes. Once back from the garden all of those things need to be washed, so I have to put on my other ‘outfit’ while the garden clothes are being washed: skinny jeans, white shirt, flip flops.  It’s a crazy cycle, and happens about 5 times a week on my days off {I work in the garden in the morning, then back home for the rest of the day}.  The other 2 days are work days and I wear my scrubs. All this to say, I am doing laundry a lot. Usually by hand, which is tedious.
I have definitely gone out of the house wearing damp clothing on more than one occasion in the past 2 weeks.
Here are a few of the issues I have encountered with this limited clothing supply:
On Tuesday as I was rushing out of the door for work I found my black tennis shoes caked in dirt and mud from the veggie garden. If I were the ‘plan ahead, responsible type’ {which I am not} then I would have washed them immediately after working in the garden on Monday morning so they’d be ready for work on Tuesday morning.Obviously I didn’t do that, so I decided to wear a different clean pair of shoes to work. After all, I’m representing a company and would like to keep my job.
On Wednesday  I discovered that my blue running shorts were missing. Tuesday it was blazing hot here in Chesapeake, Virginia. I would probably have been carted to the ER for heat stroke if I had worn my only other ‘bottom half’ clothing: jeans. I searched everywhere and even now as I type this {a week later}, I still haven’t found them! It is driving me bonkers! How can shorts just disappear?!
On Saturday Charlotte came down with a stomach virus. The ‘try to get home quickly but she still threw up in the car twice’ kind of tummy bug. It was absolutely awful hearing her say ‘all done’ to throwing up and crying for ‘bread’ even though I couldn’t give her any. I really had no choice but to break my 7 clothing rules the moment vomit became involved. Together, Charlotte and I probably went through 10 different shirt changes Saturday night. That wasn’t really the worst part, though. The worst part was taking her carseat cover off, washing it, then wrestling with the seat to get the clean cover back on. I’ve never been more relieved to have a washer and dryer in my home. I can’t imagine trying to cart those yucky linens to a laundromat.
Other than those bloopers I’ve been able to stick with the parameters of my little experiment so far {it is now day 12}. I am definitely learning to be thankful that I DO have access to more than 7 things to wear, though. And I am so looking forward to wearing clothing item #7 to a wedding this weekend. Bring on THE DRESS!!