Blogging for Bucks

Just saw a report on blogging that reported a woman who started a blog after receiving a personal challenge ("you can't make any money doing a blog...") and now employs 12 people doing her blog.

Um...holy crap.

Here's hoping.  I'm hitting the shredder.  :)

A Comparative Study of the Similarities Between Doing Puzzles With a Seventeen-Month-Old and DeCluttering OR Things That Make Me Think I Could Develop a Drinking Problem

Occasionally, my seventeen-month-old notices the puzzles that are sitting in the entertainment center and decides she wants to pull them out and play.  And by "play," I mean take the pieces out and scatter them across the living room, and then bring out some books that she will angrily grunt at until they are read to her. 

When I think she has tired of the puzzles, I decide to try and return them to their proper home.  After putting a few pieces back into the big wooden base, she notices what I'm doing, promptly approaches me, and starts taking out the pieces that I have just put in.  So I start working faster.  And so does she.  And soon, I simply give up and leave the pile there until after she goes to bed, because I realize that the entire effort is completely futile.  Because of this, my living room is frequently not company-ready.  And if anyone were to criticize me for having puzzles out for a toddler, well....they would receive the verbal lashing of their life.  At least in my head.  Potentially out loud, depending on the level of sleep I'd had the night before.

This same principle seems to apply itself to my clutter.  As soon as I've decluttered an entire box of crap...suddenly there's another stack sitting on my desk, just waiting to be put into yet another box..and wait for a few years to go by before it's placed in the garage or on the moving truck.  YIKES.  I hate this pattern.  Hate it. 

I don't think this is unlike a lot of problems in life.  Ask anyone who has been through a twelve-step program and they will tell you that there are setbacks, cycles, ups-and-downs.  That every day they have to start fresh, admitting they have a problem, and that they submit to a higher power for help.

For those folks, there are meetings to go to, people to call in a crisis, coaches, counselors, helpers.  For clutterbugs, there are no twelve-steps groups, no meetings, no counselors.  Just book after book after book on clutter-busting, that if you spend the time to read, another pile will pop up as if magically while you sat down to read the book...about organizing.

I'm not whining and asking for a 12-step program for people with clutter problems.  (Because undoubtedly, one could possibly show up in the world.  I know there are other people like me out there.)  I'm just saying that no matter who you are or where you've been or where you're going, there are likely to be some things that you do that aren't the best or healthiest things you could do.  It could be alcohol, drugs, food, or even clutter.  It's just a matter of every day getting up, looking yourself in the mirror and asking God for the strength to make your life a little better instead of backsliding once again.   

So I'll let my daughter pull out the puzzles....because no matter what, she's learning.  And little by little, so am I.

Resources and Questions

A dear friend of mine sent me this link.  It is....unbelievably fantastic.

Where to Donate Your Stuff

Very exciting possibilities for stuff I had no idea where or how to unload.

And now that I figured out how to put a link in my blog, here's one from a previous post that didn't have the exact link....just incase my loyal fan base is aching to know what I'm looking at online.  :)

www.flylady.net

Working on getting myself to the good will store today for yet another drop off.  They're starting to know my face there, and I'm not sure if they're thrilled to see me or dreading my arrival.

Reorganized my kitchen the other night and it is a thing of beauty.  Once I figure out how to post pictures, that's just what I'll do.  The trick is...do I spend my time blogging about the process or engaging in the process?  With a 17-month-old on my hands, time is like gold, so I have to use it oh-so-carefully.

Here's to a little less weight hanging out in my house!

Silence

Silence is as common as the air we breathe.  It is a vast pool always available to us where we can refresh and renew ourselves, or simply stop in for a while.  Silence is God's gift to our minds, a gift that modern life seems to have lost or crowded out.  We need more silence in our lives, more stillness in our homes.  We need, in our increasingly complex and frenetic world, to silence ourselves -- and to listen… The key ingredient is not so much the total absence of noise as receptivity and access to the "still small voice within".

 

The cultivated ability to hear that voice is the most enduring value of silence.  In silence we can discover the divine within, which is universally accessible but speaks to each of us in a unique voice.  If we can locate, at the very center of silence, our individual "still small voice," we will have found our greatest ally in life.  Because if we listen to that voice with an open heart, it will guide us through the most challenging crossroads of our lives:  in work, in love, in distinguishing right from wrong.

 

We need only trust the voice that speaks to us out of the silence. 

 

-- Robert Lawrence Smith in A Quaker Book of Wisdom