Lots of grass growing in my containers here, on the stump in the middle of the garden, but the flowers are flourishing, mostly. I did go out and weed my pot of mandevilla (the red flowers in the back) the other day, after this photo was taken. That one comes into the house for the winter, and I figured I might as well go ahead and neaten it up.
We had a lovely night out at the pub: spoke to friends, ate burgers, drank Oktoberfest beer. Tomorrow, in fact, is our local's Oktoberfest party, during the day, so that's the Saturday plan. Must wear cute twirly dress and shoes suitable for dancing the polka.
Mid-80s Farenheit today and tomorrow, quite warm.
Agenda:
*Walk dog
*Finish essays for next week (they are at least partially written)
*Work on lecture for November 13
*Light housekeeping
I read this interesting little Instagram spot on the "Diderot Effect" this morning. I'm not sure what this "effect" has to do with the French philosopher Denis Diderot, but the idea is that without even thinking about it, we fall into patterns of buying wherein one purchase begets another. You buy a phone (her initial example), and then you have to buy a case and accessories to go with it. Or you buy a dress (also her example), and then you buy earrings and shoes.
I don't really know how to avoid the Diderot Effect in buying a phone, because the case that fit your last phone almost certainly will not fit the next one. They do that on purpose, I'm sure. No one model is exactly the same size and shape as its successor. You CAN say to yourself, Do I really need earbuds right now, too? But your answer might well be yes. Hard to know how to get around that.
When you buy clothes, however, it's generally not so hard. Before making a purchase, you simply think through your closet. By the time you hit Complete Purchase, you've thought of at least three outfits to make with the item you're buying, using things that already exist in your closet. You simply do not buy clothes that don't go with the clothes you already have.
And I'm here to tell you that you can train yourself in this habit, so that even your impulse purchases (which you try not to make, but we're all human) follow the pattern. Even sort of out-there colors --- think my Cinnamon Rose Leila, for example, which is kind of out there, in relation to the rest of my closet palette --- should go with something in your closet. When I bought that pinkish dress, I did figure that it would go with a gray cardigan, a blue cardigan, my green blazer, etc.
Last night, for example, I wore my cobalt merino cardigan indoors, for the air conditioning.
It goes pretty well with the rather strange tone of the dress --- which I love, mind you, but it's hard to define. I knew that a blue would go with a pink, even if the pink has odd brown or peach undertones, as this does. I still don't know why this color looks good on me, by the way. It's just one of those mystical things. When I bought it, I was gambling, and I lucked out. But my gamble involved being sure that I knew some ways to wear it, and some things I already owned to wear it with, before I bought it.
I would love, at some point, to find a soft aqua shrug cardigan to go with this dress. This pink is divine with the color of my alpaca cardigan, but the shape of that cardigan is not great with the silhouette of the dress. Now, should I find such a cardigan, I'd already know that I could wear it not only with this dress, but with pretty much the whole rest of the closet, so buying it would be a cinch. But in the meantime, it's not like I don't have things to wear.
Anyway, I can't speak to avoiding the Diderot Effect in other areas of your life, but once you have some clothes in your closet, as most of us do, it's fairly easy to teach yourself the basic habit of making sure that nothing you buy is a lone wolf, which you would then have to supply with the rest of the pack.
The principle of that Instagram account, anyway, is not clothing but clutter --- and it's a great account. I've been slowly chipping away at various things. Yesterday I cleaned out the mail basket by the front door --- amazingly, about 3/4 of what was in it were either diocesan newspapers or advertising circulars, all of which, once I'd culled out the actual mail, went into the recycling bin. I did also pull out a bunch of alumni mailings that came for the Fire Son. VMI must spend millions annually on alumni publications, but there were also things from Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford, plus the alumni magazine of the Kappa Alpha fraternity, of which the Fire Son was never an active member, but for reasons I can't remember now, he got sworn into this fraternity the week he graduated from college. There was something about being at VMI, and maybe in a particular GPA bracket, that made membership in this fraternity automatic. So he has exactly zero personal connection to the actual fraternity, never attended a single fraternity party, and will probably not send them money, but he gets the mailings on the regular anyway.
We have two baskets of clutter in the kitchen that I also need to deal with. At least the clutter is contained in baskets, and does not live rent-free on the kitchen table, but it's getting a little out of hand, and I need to thin it out. If I could reduce the number of baskets to one, that would be good. Maybe I'll do that while the husband is at the gym. That's about the amount of time I would want to spend on such a task.
Oh, speaking of decluttering, I just sold my Xero Colorado water sandals. I need to clean them up more before I put them in the mail --- scrub the soles, etc. I think I'll do that this morning, put them out in the sun to dry, and then try to get them packed up before the evening, to put out for the mailman tomorrow morning. I usually ship things out faster than that, but looking at these shoes, I think they need some more attention before I send them.
So, that's the basic layout of the day. Right now I'm drinking coffee and contemplating getting dressed. Looking at my outfit plan, thinking about what I feel like wearing . . .
OK, so here's what I came up with. It's a little experimental, maybe, but I think I like it. It's also --- at least the base outfit --- an all-Flax ensemble. And it is all secondhand.
Wearing:
*Secondhand Flax navy linen tunic, bought April (I think? or February? I didn't buy it during Lent, I know that, or in May, either) 2024, last worn September 8.
*Secondhand Flax periwinkle skirt, bought February 2024 (right before Lent, for which it was a staple), last worn August 28.
*Secondhand J.Jill linen-ramie navy long cardigan, bought summer 2023, last worn September 8 (with this tunic, in fact).
*Secondhand leather double-wrap belt, bought sometime in 2023, last worn August 21. I really don't wear belts much, but I like this one and am glad I have it for those times when I do want a belt.
I've been into waist definition lately. It certainly helps me wear this very large tunic (it's a small, actually, but Flax shirt sizes seem to run toward enormous) over more items I own. I often wear it loose over maxi skirts, but with an A-line skirt, it needs a little something. Or I need it to have a little something, whichever way you want to think about it.
I'd originally planned to wear my pink merino tank with this skirt, but I've done that a lot. And linen appeals to me right now, in this rather sultry Southern fall weather we're having. I know, I know, wool is cool and breathable. Believe me, I know. But sometimes, still, linen is what I feel like, and I'm very happy to have options in that direction (lots of them, in increasing numbers).
I like that the hemlines of my tunic and cardigan don't line up. Helps me not present a boxy silhouette, but a broken line with some interest. I also like the play of textures, the very matte linen against the sheeny linen-rayon knit of the cardigan. It's tonal and subtle, but interesting (to me, anyway).
Wild-woman hair today, but I like it. I seem to get more voluminous, wavy Day 2 results if I use mousse as well as the 3-in-1 leave-in.
Once again, got that art-teacher vibe going on. I love all the natural materials and textures at play, even in what I'd probably categorize as a very mid-level outfit --- not totally blah, but not a standout. It's fine, and I like a lot about it, but I wouldn't choose this for a date night, for example. I wouldn't wear it for a public appearance. Still, I like it. For dog-walking, writing, and housework, it's just the thing.
I'm still using the designation of summer into fall in my tags for this post. Tomorrow, I guess, I'll just have to say fall. Of course, the weather will be exactly the same.
AFTERNOON UPDATE:
*I have walked the dog!
*I have finished and uploaded the essays!
*I have washed the shoes!
*My latest dress has been shipped (to me, by an unknown subject, hence the passive voice)!
*There are enormous fat light-glazed clouds out there, but no rain!
*Uhhh, what else did I say I was going to do today?
*Oh! I have decluttered various surfaces! I have reduced the number of clutter baskets in the kitchen from two to one, and this feels YUGE.
They say that one habit of tidy people is not having a junk drawer, and I can understand that. I don't have a junk drawer anymore. I cleaned it out, and now it's a functional drawer holding a selection of kitchen tools. To have a designated space for junk is to invite junk to collect. I know that now. If you say a house needs a "crap room," then what you are saying is that you want to make room for crap in your house, and my question --- bearing in mind that my house is actually quite full of crap, much of it belonging to other people --- is WHY?
Now, as it happens, I do have a crap basket in the kitchen. But we're being polite here, so I shall revert to my former use of the word junk. Yes, my kitchen has a junk basket. ONE. Here it is:
There's the coffee urn for when we have a lot of people over (read: Christmas). There's a little collection of coasters, neatly stacked. And there's the remaining basket.
Every room --- or at least, any room that's as busy as my kitchen --- probably needs a designated stuff-collection point. That is, there are always going to be things you don't have time to sort out right then, but you need a place for them to be, so that when you need to find them, you know where to look.
Why not a drawer? Well, because drawers are out-of-sight, out-of-mind spaces. You put something in a drawer, and it might as well not exist anymore. This is especially true if you have ADHD and very limited cognitive capacity for object permanence. Also, as I have come to realize, you need drawers for actual purposes. My kitchen drawers hold utensils, bowls, pots, and pans, storage containers, and spices. I really can't afford to give up valuable kitchen real estate to crap. Sorry, junk.
I can't imagine giving up an entire room of your house, like a room that's not an attic, to junk --- though in fact, my paternal grandparents did just that. There was a room across the hall from the room we always slept in as children that was just full of stuff. Nobody ever went into it. I guess when my dad was a child it was somebody's bedroom, though I don't know whose. All my life, my grandparents slept in a pass-through room between that back hall, with the children's room, the bathroom, and that forbidden secret junk room, and the front hall into the den.
At the time, I took that room for granted. It was just one more mysterious thing in my grandparents' house, like the knocker on the upstairs door in the shape of a woman's hand (the knocker, not the door), and the 1930s-era cabinet radio in the front hall that sat there silent and untouched until 1982, when my grandparents moved out and left it.
Now? I think: Who gives up an entire room to uselessness? Who can afford that space? I have a big house, now that only two people live here --- it really didn't seem that big when six people lived here --- but even so, I have a PURPOSE for every single room. I have PLANS for the two upstairs bedrooms still inhabited by the stuff of my two youngest children. Not that I'm going to kick them out until they have a place for themselves and all their belongings that is not this place, but I know what I'm going to do with those rooms, and attic is not in the plans. The big room, formerly occupied by our sons, will eventually be a library/sitting room, but also a guest room, because we have to have a lot of guest space. The Artgirl's room will be a guest room and sitting room. I might actually move my office up there, once it's free, and turn my current office back into a den, but we'll see. Either way, even with only two people in the house, that space is prime real estate.
Now, su casa no es mi casa. If you feel the need for a whole junk room, as my grandparents obviously did, then knock yourself out, I guess. I'm just here to say: BEWARE. Junk breeds junk. Overwhelm becomes more overwhelm, And if you have a whole room full of random stuff, junk piled on junk, the chances of your ever finding a thing when you need it are pretty much nil.
Anyway. I've been decluttering. I do it in small spurts --- took me maybe five minutes to sort out two baskets and collect whatever I wanted to keep there (miscellaneous charge cords, for example, and two calculators, and dog nail clippers, and various holy cards, and both the fire starters that I use to light candles) into one basket. I don't know why I kept the Altoids tin, but I can figure that out later.
I think I might go sort the second mail basket, the one under the table by the front door, where theoretically we put magazines, but where in practice a lot of diocesan newspapers and advertising circulars seem to have been stored. It would be nice to have one mail basket and dispense with the other clutter catcher.
I'm glad I'm doing all this now, because I doubt I'd do it in Advent, when all I want to do is decorate and make things pretty and expectant. Clearing space now will make all that far easier and more pleasant, in a season when my default setting is overwhelm.