Halfway through Christmas, the house is empty. The last kids --- delayed somewhat by Saturday's highway wreck --- had a very early flight (that they almost missed) back to Dallas this morning. So today I'm going to strip upstairs beds and wash sheets. I've already changed and made up the guest bed in the husband's office, so now I'm going to tackle those beds. I don't think I'll make them back up yet, since nobody will be sleeping in them. The Artgirl will be back home briefly next week, so I'll just let her mattress air out and remake her bed before she comes. Otherwise, all the sheets will just go back in the (thoroughly cleaned and reorganized) linen closet until I need them.
The big celebration is thoroughly over, which is bittersweet. On the one hand, I loved having everyone here. On the other hand, catering for a houseful is exhausting, even when they're as helpful and conscientious as these young people all were. And while the uproar was fun, the quiet days now are welcome. I miss all the people, but it's also nice to have my peaceful house back.
After interrupted sleep --- because apparently I stress out even when I'm not the one who has to make a flight --- and an early morning to say goodbye, followed by about an hour's nap, I do not have high ambitions for this day. Just to putter about, put things away, and finish off lingering tasks (chiefly laundry, of which I have done more in the last three days than I normally do in three weeks): that's enough.
It is nice to see the sun again after a few days' rain and storms. We're having one of those bland, warmish winter days that make me appreciate the South: springlike high of 63F. I don't mind the cold, but anything, cold or heat, starts to feel relentless after a while, and the nice thing about winter here is that you do get breaks from whichever kind of weather is prevailing. Not so in the summer, of course, but then I don't mind heat all that much. The older I get, the better it feels. I like the cold, but I also like having a break from it.
We're all at the point, I suppose, where we're summing up our year. 2024 has been pretty good on the whole: a second trip to Norway, a second fiction book, a lot of literary travel and activity around the publication of that book. The poetry Substack, of course, has been the prevailing new pursuit. This fall, I oversaw another fiction MFA thesis through to completion. Meanwhile, I was supposed to have a new poetry book out by now. That hasn't happened, and I'm not sure when it will. Developments with my publisher are not auspicious (and it's not just me, either). I can't say more than this right now, but a number of us in this publisher's orbit are discouraged and worried, and those of us with books under contract are not sure what's going to happen to our books.
Anyway, here's my literary year in review. My goals for 2025 are to revise at least one novella manuscript, with a view to sending it out in 2026, to finish at least one new short story, and to continue writing and revising poems. I began many poems this past year, but finished relatively few to my satisfaction and sent out even fewer. It would be nice to send out more poetry submissions this year. And if my poetry book contract falls through, or at least if the process is more massively delayed than it already it, I suppose that's an invitation to review that manuscript and maybe add in a few of the more successful new poems in place of some weaker ones in the current version.
As for the rather narrow and obsessive focus of this blog . . . well, for a year when I wasn't going to buy a lot of things, it sure does feel as though I bought a lot of things. I wasn't going to buy any dresses; reader, I bought four dresses. I bought what feels like a lot of shoes: 3 pairs of Mary Janes (only one of which I wear regularly, so I am going to be doing some reselling), a pair of clogs, a pair of boots. I bought some cardigans, though I did also cull out a number of cardigans that were past their sell-by date.
I have also resold a number of things:
2 Wool& dresses
Birkenstock Jackson hiking boots, Madeira fisherman sandals, and Bali sandals
Xero Cassie Mary Janes and Colorado sandals
As always, I'll be looking to cull more as time goes on, but on the whole, here at the end of 2024, I am quite happy with my closet and how it's working for me. I have enough clothes not to get bored --- at this point, if I want something else, I really have to interrogate whether that's just a function of FOMO or dopamine-seeking, because honestly, my clothes work hard and well for me, and I lack nothing.
I'll be happy to receive my new Sierra dress when it comes, because I have long wanted a dress in that Iris Blue color, and my secondhand Washed Navy Sierra reminds me how much I really do like wearing this style (as long as it doesn't stretch out to mid-calf, as my original Small Long Sierra has done . . .).
But beyond that . . . I'm glad to wear the clothes I own. Looking back over my outfits for 2024, I see far more hits, far fewer absolute misses than in previous years. Not zero misses --- some days I just did make schlumpy outfits --- but far fewer. I have the ingredients to make good outfits, and more and more I'm learning how to make them, which is a boost to my own confidence. The other major thing I'm glad to observe over the course of the year is that growing my hair back out has been the right move. I look and feel a lot more like myself with longer-than-shoulder-length hair, pulled back in a half-updo. If I have a signature look, that's really it.
I've also made significant progress toward decluttering and reorganizing my house. We bought our new mattress and bed frame last January, so it's been almost a full year of significantly better sleep for us, which is a huge gain. I have two closets working far better for me than they were before. My kitchen cabinets are clean, decluttered, and functional. And of course the purchase of a steam cleaner has meant that the kitchen and both bathrooms are cleaner, which makes them again more pleasant and functional. The addition of the new daybed in my study means more comfortable, sturdy seating every day, as well as more comfortable sleeping space for guests. We have a number of repairs planned for the new year as well. Like my wardrobe, my house is working better, smarter, and harder for me, and I anticipate continuing to move it in that direction in 2025.
My garden this year was pretty successful --- I have plenty of dried cayenne peppers to carry me through the winter and beyond. Soon it'll be time to start contemplating the new year's garden, and that's lovely. I have many ideas for reorganizing and expanding my planters, and plans to take out two volunteer mulberry trees that haven't borne berries (so I think they're male), to give me back more sunny area in the kitchen garden. I want to add more grow bags and increase the number of vegetables I grow successfully --- I really want a better tomato year and more eggplant and zucchini. It would also be nice to add more gooseberries, since the one bush I had did well in its fourth year. New ones would take some time to mature, but I think we'd enjoy having them.
I'm sure I'll continue to reflect today and tomorrow, as we move toward 2025, but for now I need to stop and get dressed.
Wearing:
*Secondhand Not Perfect Linen Leila dress (M/L) in Chocolate Brown, bought December 2023, last worn December 17. Total wears this year to date: 20 --- a nice round number to finish the year. At this rate of wear it will take me five years to reach 100 wears, but that's okay. I hope I have five years. I can certainly see wearing this dress that long, and longer. I paid roughly $50 for it secondhand, so cost-per-wear is $2.50, which isn't so bad, really. I guess it's a bit more if you add on the $15 I paid to have the shoulder straps raised, so maybe it's more like $3.50/wear --- but that's still not bad.
*Very old thrifted Talbots cotton cardigan, originally dark brown, redyed with Rit "Wine" in the fall of 2022. No idea how many times I've worn this cardigan, but I also paid maybe $1 for it, so cost per wear is undoubtedly well down in the negatives.
*Snag super-opaque tights in Hot Chocolate, bought summer 2024, first season of wear
*Secondhand Earth Shoe Mary Janes, bought August 2024, first season of wear.
I can never decide how closely I want to track wears. It can all start to feel kind of obsessive, and some things I've had so long that there's no way I could remember with any accuracy how many times I've worn them. I think I'll continue to focus on dresses, which are the big-ticket items in my wardrobe anyway, and the core of all my outfits. I think I'll just mark successive seasons of wear for other things --- when I bought them, how many years I've been wearing them, at whatever rate. Aside from dresses, which I do view as investment pieces, everything else is relatively negligible in price, and what matters to me, once I have it, is that I do wear it year after year until it wears out beyond repair. That's a note to myself about how I want to proceed in the new year. It's good to keep track, but also easy to be overly obsessive about counting things up.
Day 3 hair, still feeling quite clean, but ready for a default ponytail.
And now it's time to walk the dog.
PS: Oh, yeah, also in November 2024 I turned 60, which seems noteworthy. Big new decade, as well as a new year.
LATER:
Well, I've stripped two beds, a floor mattress that a guest slept on, and a futon, and I've washed one load of sheets and towels. A second load is in the wash now, and a third is queued up. Since it's a nice day, I hung as much as I could outside on the line, but the dryer is definitely working hard today.
I've folded yesterday's laundry and made my bed.
I've also swept and dust-mopped, because wow, do multiple people track stuff in. There are still dishes in the sink and a dishwasher that needs unloading, but I'm sitting down for now.
I hate doing housework, in case you were wondering, but I do like the feeling of gittin' 'er done. And I especially like the feeling of having got 'er done.
In case you've missed my mentions of this Insta account/podcast before, it is my #1 recommendation for home management. Her strategies are excellent and doable, and her approach is no-shame. I especially liked this recent post, on the topic of decluttering/disposal perfectionism --- the I can't take it to Goodwill because it will end up in the landfill hangup. That's a hamster wheel you can really get stuck on in groups devoted to sustainable/ethical/no-waste practices, and it's one more good road to insanity if you let yourself take it.
After reading that post, I have been eyeing my "donate" bag in the closet, for which I've been meaning to get one of those "Take-Back Bags." I do still want to do that, though I think I will sort out some of the better-condition items first and donate them so that someone else can use them.
I did just cut up another ratty old towel for kitchen cloths, so that's one no-waste practice I find relatively easy to do. But the drawer is only so big . . . at some point you do just have to get stuff out of your house. The earth does not profit from your creating a landfill in your own dwelling, nor do you.
EVENING UPDATE:
Quick date-night outfit tweak, because we figure that New Year's Eve is not a night when we want to be out and about, and nothing will be open New Year's Day. So we're going up to the old train-station pub in Hickory, always a favorite spot, for a meal that I didn't make.
*Same dress I've had on all day, obviously. I figured I might as well let it shine on.
*Switched out my red cotton cardigan for this chunky merino Connemara cardigan (also secondhand), because even though the weather's fairly mild, if we get seated by the window in the old train station, it will be cold.
*Switched out my daytime Mary Janes for sleek tall boots. They're warmer, but also they just look dressier. And I like the sleekness with the chunkiness of my cardigan. I also like the cool minty green with the tonal browns of the rest of my outfit.
*Changed to a bigger green scrunchie and did a pull-through ponytail, worn to one side (mostly because I don't like the feel of my hair against my neck when I wear it this way, but it also looks nicer, I think). The scrunchie still kind of shows through the pull-through, but on the whole, I like this do. It's a little more elevated than a plain ponytail, without my having to wash and dry my hair.
*This is a nice opportunity to wear a pretty brooch, one of a large collection I've amassed over the years and don't wear nearly enough. Almost all of them are gifts from my husband, and I really do need to make more of an effort to remember to pin them on my cardigans and jackets.
*I put on perfume to signal that I have dressed up a little.
So this was very low-effort prep, but I'm happy with the outcome. I haven't really changed clothes, but I kind of have, and importantly, I feel that I have. Where we're going is very casual --- I might well be the only woman wearing a dress --- but I like to feel that I've made an effort for a special occasion, which any dinner out really is. Yes, yes, we go out just about every week, but that doesn't make it not special.
The husband has spent most of the day hauling recycling and trash to the dump --- the city didn't pick up our garbage last week before Christmas Day, and after nearly a week of having a very full house, we not surprisingly had more garbage than usual. Normally our bin is pretty empty because we recycle so much, but not this week. It was all piled up in bags on the back porch, in and amidst all the boxes and other detritus of the season, but now it's gone. And the garage is cleaned out. It too had attracted much clutter and junk, and the husband's goal is for us to park our cars in it, which we have not been able to do in I don't know how long. Mind you, it's a narrow old garage, and the fit is a little tight, so we'll see how it goes.
Hopeful news from the mechanic: looks as though the wrecked car is reparable, and without a huge outlay of money. That is something to celebrate --- as if the 6th Day of Christmas were not enough in itself.