HJ Waxing Moon

Our new schedule, as I mentioned a few days ago, included needed to re-arrange our chore schedule. I'm sure I could have sat down and worked it out myself, but part of being a team means it's important that we are BOTH included in the work that shapes our lives. It's important to both of us that even if we do each have skills and responsibilities consistent with traditional gender roles, we are making our choices together and mindfully. It's one thing to have me typing up our decisions that we make together and helping him stick to them; it's another thing altogether for me to make decisions for him when they primarily impact his schedule and responsibilities as if he has no information or opinion to contribute. It was a perfect opportunity to discuss as well what parts of our current/now-previous system were in need of improvement, and what new habits or skills we want to be incorporating. For example, we've had a bad habit of going grocery shopping and leavi...

With Mr. Moon's recent promotion, and subsequent phasing out of his retail job from his schedule, we've had to completely revisit our chore schedule. This has been a bit more difficult than I expected, because of how intricately I'd weaved the chores and the rest of our lives together. But that's exactly why what we had was no longer working. Tuesdays were laundry days, but he works during the day now. Trouble is, weekdays during the day is when the laundry room has lower demand, which is why we picked it; and because Tuesday is laundry day, Monday is bathrooms day so the cloth wipes can soak overnight. So switching laundry day to, say, Thursday or Monday means unraveling everything. And laundry isn't the only thing like that! Most everything is a twice-a-week job, deeper cleaning on one day and a tidy-up on another. We'd had Friday as a day to do little bits of highly visible tidying before the weekend, populated by late nights, early mornings, at least one...

I went paper-towel free, officially, about 4 years ago. I'd been weaning off them for years, but living with my Gran meant I didn't have the authority to make that decision for the house. At the time, we purchased a 25-pack of bar towels and a bunch of cloth napkins. White, not-quite-square, durable terrycloth; and a bunch of mismatch cloth napkins ranging from "brought home some bread wrapped in a napkin from the restaurant in my purse" to "I found these 12 hand-stitched cotton napkins for a dollar and they match my kitchen." Spoiler alert, I love those matching cotton ones the best, not least because they are so clearly made with love, but also because they're so immediately absorbent so when you have greasy food on your hands it cleans right up--unlike the weird shiny ones from the restaurants that just sort of smear food around and water beads up on instead of absorbing. We also around this time bought a pack of washcloths for cleaning to get rid...

Sometimes I look at things people post online and I marvel at how many people seem to have more money than sense. Multi-layered, snap-together to make a roll, "unpaper towels" are the impetus for this particular rant. They seem to be an expansion of the cloth menstrual pads stores, more than anything, and presumably therefore made to appeal to the same demographic. But, there are better ways to accomplish a lot of goals sometimes, and this is one of those times. I love that people want to reduce their paper usage and their contribution to landfills. That's great! The ones I'm seeing about typically use a single-sided terrycloth on one side, and quilting cotton on the other. I've seen a few with interfacing or batting in the middle to increase absorbency. They have snaps on each corner so that you can snap them together in a row and roll them up to be stored on the paper towel holder. Presumably, this is to help the household adjust to the new method, because t...

Mr. Moon is the first to admit that he's scatterbrained and unfocused. And he'll be the first to tell you that if he doesn't have a list, it doesn't get done. However, making lists isn't exactly his strong suit. Thankfully, he married a woman who lives by her love of lists & structure. The hard part is struggling with falling into stuffy old gender roles. Ultimately though, we have to do what's best for each of us and our partnership, utilizing our strengths and working around our weaknesses, even if they're the ones we learned through a society that taught them to us based on our perceived genders. Recognizing where they came from doesn't negate their existence and the reality is that I'm both a lot more organized than him, and have a lot more time to BE organized. With the wedding out of the way and staring down the moving target of daily parenthood, we had a long discussion about priorities and what we want the rest of our lives to look like...

Alright after the flea post I did promise a post about getting rid of head lice without risking pesticide poisoning. Let me first explain why this is so important to me. [Click through at the "Read More" because I cut it for the bug-squick.]

Once upon a time, I didn't have a cat. [Cut for the bug squick, click through for more:]

As my asthma has gotten more fickle, and my efforts to reduce costs have resulted in more home-made solutions, I've found myself avoiding artificial fragrances more often. I knew that strong artificial fragrances could be a migraine trigger, but I'm not sure I realized before recently just how much I'd arranged my life to avoid them. My trip back to Michigan highlighted to me just how far I've come in removing excess fragrances from my life, when I discovered that for some reason there were 13!! "air freshener" things in my grandma's guest bedroom. I spent the first two days thinking I was suffering the worst jet lag of my life, until I finally got over the real jet lag and was still miserable. I finally had the energy to do something about the air fresheners, found more tucked away in hidden places than I had originally accounted for, collected them all and put them in another room with the door closed. With the window open, the air became less oppressi...

I was diagnosed with chronic illness at age 17, after 2 solid years of suffering and plenty more before of pain and misery. I don't remember more than 3 days of my life when I wasn't in pain. I spent a lot of time internalizing my fear of making goals and having dreams, because when you can't plan a week ahead, how do you know what next year will bring? How do you plan for decades when you could be crippled with pain an hour from now? Having dreamed so big and fallen so far, I have learned many things. The first and foremost of which is that my home is a sanctuary, even moreso than for the average person. I need a safe, clean, comfortable home to return to at the end of the day, sometimes even the middle of the day. These days, sitting at home usually IS my day. Finding my place in keeping my home, playing the dutiful housewife who can't do much physically, has been hard. It's been allegorical to finding my place in the world at large, as I sit here wondering what...

When we were moving in, the landlord did a walkthrough with us. He assured is the bathroom tub/shower area had been thoroughly scrubbed, and the faint brownish color on the one wall of the shower was staining from over the years. You probably already know where this is going, but we're going to take a detour first. The previous tenant also apparently had a fruit fly problem. Not having proper refuse disposal or cleaning supplies, Mr. Moon being here for a week before these systems were in place only made the fruit fly issue worse. IT WAS BAD. There are no pictures. Just me freaking out for weeks. We ended up putting out bowls of vinegar with a drop of soap, and after a few days of less-than-entirely-proper cleaning and refreshing the vinegar, the fruit flies seem to have died off. Thank goodness. We did scrub the cabinets in the kitchen. The area around the handles was nasty, and the shelves were dusty and dirty. We also wiped out the fridge, though that had pretty clearly be...

Mr. Moon has finished unpacking the kitchen, though there are already some rearrangements I want to make when we have the rest of the boxes unpacked. The dining room is still not done, and yes I realize they're the same "room" but for our sanity we needed to check something off. Having the kitchen done means no more eating takeout, which is obviously the financially responsible decision. We're still eating some packaged foods that I would typically make from scratch, but I'm hoping we can wean ourselves off them next month. Right now, we're just being gentle with ourselves and honest about our capabilities. Since Mr. Moon finally caught up on the backlog of dishes, that's been our main focus aside from unpacking: keeping up with the habit of emptying the sink every single night and putting away the dry dishes first thing in the morning. The bedroom is our next priority, since we have a new mattress coming in on Wednesday and must have a path cleared to ...

First off, I have been dealing with a bunch of fatigue and lack of creativity. For a while now. It's why I haven't posted about the plum project that we worked so hard on. I don't know if I'm just burned out on it or what, but I feel like I have nothing to say about it. Maybe I should just post the pictures without commentary.  I also promised a discussion about the Oat Dough I made, but then I discovered my oats had been rancid before I used them and the stuff tasted nasty. So I didn't even have a good product to discuss. I am really winning this week, huh? But one thing did go right! I have been meaning to make my own laundry soap for about two years now. Unfortunately, Mr. Moon has trouble gauging when he needs to add laundry soap to the shopping list, and waits until we are completely out on/right before laundry day and we don't have time for experiments like making laundry soap. Combine that with trouble finding the ingredients, and it's taken two...

Mr. Moon and I have been working for over a year on a project to turn the garage into a lounge area, second living room, game room, whatever you want to call it. We have a name all picked out, which will be revealed when we have AFTER pictures. We agreed to take a futon from one of his aunts who is moving out of the area, and somehow we ended up getting obligated to take a second couch. Not sure where the misunderstanding was, or if that was the couch Mum was going to use to replace the one in the living room she doesn't want, or what exactly happened that we have more furniture than I'd originally planned in there. All I know is that with the couch we found on the side of the road in the subdivision, and the futon and couch from the Aunt, we were supposed to be fitting three couches in this garage. Which would be fine, without the chair that Mr. Moon insists on keeping, and the massage chair that will not be gotten rid of so long as it works because the thing is delightful. ...

When the weeks get long and busy, when the world seems like it's creeping in to keep you from housekeeping, focus on the kitchen and the bathroom(s). As long as you have someplace to cook a good home-cooked meal, and you can take a shower and brush your teeth without stepping over clutter or having to stare at globs of toothpaste, everything else can wait until next week. But if the next week and the next come around and you're still "just having a busy week," it's time to accept this as your life and start finding ways to get the rest of the house onto a cleaning schedule and back into rotation. Maybe it's letting go of the idea that you have to do all of something at once--wipe down the mirror while you're thinking about it, scrub the toilet later, sweep the kitchen without mopping or run the vacuum in one room at a time if that's what it takes. For us, having a set schedule is what's really helped. Occasionally, the vacuuming gets put off lo...

It feels like spring cleaning around here. This is the weather that I'm used to having after months of bitter cold, snowstorms, and being cooped up inside. The cool yet crisp air beckons me to open the windows and blow the dust out. Even if it is still January.  My asthma has been acting up in November, and aside from being exhausting, it's really cutting into my ability to do much around the house. I was lying in bed the other day, and realized there was a visible film of dust covering the curtains... the ones right next to my head. As it was midnight, it took every ounce of willpower not to take them down and wash them immediately, but it was the top of my priority list the next morning.  We discovered when we took down the curtains that the windowsill was covered in mold. Gross. Not worth doing a whole blog entry about, because I sprayed it with vinegar and wiped it down, sprayed it again and let it sit, then wiped it down again. Washed the curtains, having made very su...

With Pops' birthday party on Sunday, it got sprung on us last Sunday that we would be having a major event here in... well, now, about two days. I'm struggling with the frustration that with a little more notice, we would have prioritized things like carpet shampooing to be this week instead of the week before Thanksgiving when we will, now ironically, have fewer people here. (Let's just say, clumsy adults + clumsy cat + WHITE carpets + said carpets are past double their life expectancy = Needs regular shampooing.) We have been here officially for 8 and a half months now, and the garage has not yet been set up into the lounge sanctuary that was intended to be our stress-relief area. Everything Else keeps getting prioritized ahead of the garage, and now it is in a stage that Pops' participation is required to continue at all, which means we are at the whim of his condition. It just so happens that if we can get the current stage of sorting done before Sunday, then some...

Five things we accomplished in September that are really kind of big: We got on a schedule of chores, and even managed to stick to it in this very busy week.  We had fun on some cheap dates, and got to spend more time with friends than we have any other time since we moved down here. We pinpointed some trouble areas with the housekeeping and started making strides to combat them in a manageable way.  We dove down the rabbit hole with gusto, starting on such projects are sourdough pancakes, waffles, yogurt, mozzarella, and possibly soon into sourdough bread. We managed to keep the sideboard in the dining room CLEAN and clear of clutter for the better part of a month, and still going!  It wasn't entirely intentional, but we spent the month working on building good housekeeping habits. If October has a theme project, I think it needs to be the garage. We got behind on cleaning that out and missed both of our self-imposed deadlines, or we will because the second o...

I mentioned last Monday that we were doing a little project to determine where we're falling behind in the kitchen, to turn that B+ into an A+. So how did our week go? Sunday night: Not bad! Pretty good for a Day 1. Let's see what we left out. Bag by the stove, a big dish left on the stove that should have been washed, a towel over by the toaster and a cutting board there as well. The pile of stuff to the left of the sink is a bit bad, but mostly that's empty bottles that need to get their labels soaked. Trash and compost could have been emptied. But the dishes got done and the sink was empty, and the kitchen was ready for cooking breakfast. Monday night: Yayy! Just a couple things on the counter by the stove, and otherwise only some dishes drying. Those bottles are a Wednesday project. A+! Tuesday night: Hmmm could have been better. A towel, some bags, half a crockpot, a basket, and some croutons that all should have been put away. BUT! The dishes are done and...

Do you remember how excited I was to set Laundry Day as a leisurely, TV-time activity? How we were going to PAUSE and switch laundry and FOLD while we WATCHED? Do you remember in that post how we were getting into a nice routine with chores (do we call these daily or weekly?) on a schedule? Let me tell you a little story about this pile of clothes... while Mr. Moon vacuums the carpets two days late. So, the basket in front is a pile of clean laundry that needs to be folded and put away. Behind it is a box of candle/decor stuff that I needed out because I'm running out of candles and we need the scrap wax bucket to make fire starters. On top of that box is a trash bag of clothes that no longer fit and need to be put into storage for the time being (until we even determine what's wrong with me, I'm not willing to give up perfectly good clothes that I might fit back into soon--but there is a date with a donation center next year if no progress has been made). Behind THA...

Mr. Moon and I are getting more accustomed to daily chores. Tuesday when I woke up, it was to the sound of vacuuming in the hallway--Tuesday's assigned chore day is deep vacuuming, which means getting under the lounge chairs and the dining room table. Light vacuuming is over the weekend, and it's just the main walkways. So I woke up proud of him and pleased, definitely sets the tone for a good morning. Then I discovered that again of his own volition he had emptied, refilled and run the dishwasher, as we've gotten behind on dishes again. And to top it off, I was greeted with a clean kitchen so I could prepare us a steak and eggs breakfast. Now tonight is just picking up our bedroom a bit, which means clearing off the desk and the shelves at the foot of the bed. Those shelves were just a few inches wider than the bed itself, which resulted in Mr. Moon rubbing a hole into the back of his work shorts by getting squished between shelves and the wall on his way by. We reorgani...