The Sororal Order of Feral Domesticity and Habitual Femininity 002
First things first...
I keep thinking about the things we ignore. The little blue wooden bowl that has been sitting under my kitchen cabinet for weeks that I see, that bothers me, that I choose to walk away from over and over. The bag of random items I took out of my car before Christmas that I need to sort through and put away that sits on my porch, almost mocking me every time I walk past. The pile of clothes to be mended that keeps gaining volume and height, which makes me feel a twinge of regret every time I stare at it while I load the washer. Of course, picking up a toy bowl and placing it back into the play kitchen is a much quicker and less involved task than mending a whole pile of clothes, but both chores hold an energy of neglect that makes me feel equally shame-ridden. Why do I, why do we, turn a blind eye to the things that need our attention so often?
My working theory is that when the most pressing of practicalities are not attended to, then these seemingly little things feel much more overwhelming than they are in actuality. And I have not been attending to certain practicalities.
This includes things like washing my face at night, doing my taxes, and cleaning out my oven. It’s a mix of consistent habits being neglected and major tasks being “tomorrow-ed” away. I confessed in my introduction to this version of my newsletter that I am a messy, disorganized creative-and this is how this manifests in my home and my life. I lose grip of the consistencies that make up a life that has a sense of peace and order.
With this, I invite you all to reclaim (or to stake claim to) your rightful grasp on your home-life. In the introduction post to this little club of mine, I referenced an area of interest being “Home and Heart and Hearth”….the wording of this wasn’t just mere alliteration, it was a nod to the fact that the home we make is both a reflection of the heart and an influence on it. We must work so that that influence isn’t the small things mocking us when we walk by, and instead becomes the beautiful and evocative things imbuing a sense of purpose in us as we walk by.
All of this to say….first things first.
I have spent the last three weeks slowly working through the matters of the home that have been gnawing at me for weeks, months, and even years. Here is my list of accomplishments-some of which feel embarrassing, some of which are an immense relief to have finished, all of which are giving me the gift of mental spaciousness:
•Cleaning out oven-this is one of those things I have been tomorrow-ing away. At some point in the past (I won’t say just how distant past!) some stray crumbs had caught alight in the oven and I threw baking soda on it to snuff out the fire, and proceeded to just let it stay that way for months. Every time I opened my oven to cook something, I cringed. When I baked things that required especially higher temperatures like pizza, it smelled like a house fire was brewing. Somehow I would ignore this time and time again. Again-that conscious ignorance, that “I can’t deal with this right now” over and over again. What a relief to have this done! I used baking soda and vinegar and rediscovered the power and magic of steel wool. It took several hours, my arms ached afterword and I remembered the inside of my oven is blue! Who knew!?
**side note-did you too forget about STEEL WOOL?!? If so I encourage you to mosey on down to your local whatever-mart and get some because my house has became like 300% cleaner since I remembered this stuff exists.
•Cleaning out the fridge-another basic thing I had neglected, hoping that the sourdough starter that had turned black and the dried milk and bits of old parsley would just deal with themselves somehow. Turns out, that isn’t how this works. As I pulled every bottle of hot sauce and long-lost homemade jam, sticky and forgotten, out of the big white box in my kitchen, I felt a mix of shame and revelation-“it’s really just this easy, all I need to do is be matter-of-fact!”. I am a sentimental through and through, and throwing out things like old jam and sourdough starter makes me anxious and sad because, well, if I am throwing it out, it means both that I failed and that I am giving up on a project that meant something to me at some point. Which is why I didn’t do it, and in not doing those things, I also wasn’t wiping the shelves out because I couldn’t even see them. In matters of organization and order in the more “industrial” areas of the home like this big white box, we must lose that sense of sentimentality and lean more on utility. There is space and time for the sentimental, but it does not live in the condiment shelf of my refrigerator.
•The dreaded great sorting of children’s clothing- this is like the Emotional Olympics of mother-tasks in my opinion, and this is why this task gets out on the back burner time and time again. The layers of questions and doubts and second-guessing that accompany this task are heavy with the weight of life and time. Time marches on, children grow bigger in limb and mind, that cute vintage Holly Hobbie crew neck with the gingham bows gets too small for your toddler and makes you feel weepy, that expensive woven baby wrap you never learned how to wrap stares you in your face unused, those silly Halloween jammies with Snoopy on them don’t have any use anymore, your own fertility and the potential of your womb demands witnessing. It’s a lot. I chose what to keep in case another sweet baby chooses me, what to save for my grandchildren, what to give to friends, and what to donate. It took all day, tears were shed, many items were snuck away by children and put in the dress-up clothes bin to my chagrin.
**another side note-this Olympian task had me dreaming of marriage chests. I keep things for my children-their art work, their yearly Old World Christmas ornament, their best wooden German toys, their cutest or favorite clothing items, etc. I also have an extreme penchant for old-world European hand-painted marriage/immigrant chests (I just bought one!). So naturally, now I feel the need to buy an antique chest and fill it with baby clothes and ornaments and Waldorf birthday rings to give to my kids when they get married. I don’t know where I will put such things, as these chests are not small- but a worthy endeavor indeed.
•THREE YEARS worth of taxes-I don’t want to bore my readers with tales of taxes woes but taxes are the sort of thing that I always dread completing even when the end result is positive for me, probably because I resent the entire premise to begin with. This was the sort of necessity that my ignoring of was slowly paralyzing me over time though, and also which the actual execution of was fairly painless-which is a pattern I have noticed with many of these tasks, now that I consider it.
•Taking down the Christmas decor, putting up the birthday decor, celebrating the birthday, and actually taking the birthday decor down promptly- We have historically been a “leave the tree up til February” sort of home. This probably has to do with that fact that despite my best intentions, I usually don’t get out home fully decorated for Christmas until mid-December, and once it is there, I want to enjoy it and simultaneously just dread packing it all up. My son’s birthday is in mid January though, and it is my goal to shift from Christmas mode to birthday mode for his sake, so that he feels special. This year I did all things knights and castles and dragons for him, and made him a lemon-vanilla pound cake with fresh berries. While I truly enjoy the Christmas tree and the lights, and I get that sort of bitter-sweet twinge of “this is the only Christmas they will be this little” when I put it up, it is a matter of keeping special things special I think. When we keep the traditions harnessed to their time frame I think it only adds to their magic, rather than diluting it.
•A slew of other, less significant things- a new vacuum, learning that my bathtub also had a need for the magic of steel wool, clearing out the entry way and all of the winter accessories it was home to, cleaning and organizing the toiletries in the bathroom, tackling the dreaded junk drawer. Things made possible thanks to the more daunting tasks listed above being handled. Which opens up the idea of spaciousness.
Spaciousness meaning freedom, really. Spaciousness that translates to time and focus and emotional opening. To create that spaciousness-a spaciousness of mental and emotional and physical quality-I think it is truly necessary to start with the tangible. As I do away with the weight of extra things in my home and the mental weight of clutter and paperwork and dust, I find in myself the capacity to address what truly matters-for me, this is memory.
I want my children to remember their mother making things. Making food that isn’t just a rushed meal, eaten by candlelight with fiddles playing in the background. I want them to remember me making crafts, hands a-flying while knitting up a wool hat for their Dad, or embroidering the tablecloth with roses that one of them will hopefully lay on their own table one day. I want them to remember me mending the holes they have worn in their pants-knees by the wood stove. I want them to remember story time with all the voices and saccharine tea parties and sunbathing and tearing juicy tomatoes off of vines, their fingers following mine, leaving their hands smelling sharp and summery.
I do not want them to remember me in front of a damn computer or phone all day. I do not want them to remember me crabby running errands everyday because I didn’t plan ahead or losing my temper because of clutter and the stress of piles and mess. I do not want their memories of me tinged with regret and disappointment and bitterness. I want these things out of a selfishness that is, at its core, actually selfless. Selfless because my selfish desire to be remembered well is an expression of the devout love I have for my children, and that sort of love is always more about them than us.
So friends, what are your tangible roadblocks to spaciousness? What have you been walking past and ignoring? What do you need to build spaciousness for? What truly matters to you, what are you interested in building habits for? Is your oven a mess too? Does organizing your children’s clothing turn you into a weepy pile of mush just like me? Tell me your favorite thing to keep for your grandchildren.
And now….
Some beautiful things, some practical things
Objects
•Midnight Milk from Beekman 1802-this stuff is light purple, it smells like lavender and is made with goat’s milk, and it is the only thing I have found that helps my face not feel like it is falling off by the end of my 12 hour shifts (more like 13-14 hour shifts) in the Sahara Desert-like hospital due to extreme dryness.
•A real chef’s knife. My brother-in-law went above and beyond for Secret Santa this Christmas when he pulled my name and got me a beautiful Tojiro Basic Knife. I had made it to the age of 33 without ever owning a knife that was worth anything and when I say this is LIFE CHANGING I mean it. I never knew chopping vegetables could be so enjoyable.
•Steel wool-this may be belaboring the point, but seriously, how did I forget about this stuff?! My bathtub is thankful for me having been reminded.
•In addition to working on my home, I am also honing the health of my original home, my physical body. I don’t go too wild with supplements, but here are the few I am finding to be truly beneficial. The wonderful and beautiful Dr. Suuzi Hazen makes her “Mother’s Best” beef liver capsules. Her beef liver is the only I have been able to find with optimal sourcing and also made in America. I also just love her as a human. I have taken these off and on for years and find them especially helpful in pregnancy and lactation. You can find them here. This morning magnesium and evening magnesium is pricey but since I have been taking it I no longer have heart palpitations and I haven’t experienced any insane charlie horses waking me in the middle of the night. Lastly, this probiotic which has significantly reduced bloating for me, something I had been struggling with for months. Well worth the extra little chore of remembering to take it!
•Shortbread molds- I was lucky to thrift mine from the local Agape house, but you can find them here (I’m partial to the thistle pattern!). Shortbread is my absolute favorite quick and easy dessert to make for my children-it only takes a few ingredients, comes together and bakes fairly quickly, and makes the house smell cozy. These pans lend themselves to a little extra whimsy for the kids.
•This book series- The Summa Domestica series from Leila Marie Lawler. It’s an investment ( can be found here) but I will say this-I cried reading the table of contents. This is the series we all need as women and homemakers who feel a little lost and need practical guidance full of grace from a fellow woman. Which brings me to…
Listening
•
interviewed Leila on her podcast, which is what sparked the purchasing of her series for me. I listened with absolute voraciousness, as this woman was speaking on things I rarely hear spoken of, things I needed to hear and things I need help with. Mothering and homemaking from a place of order and wonder, need I say more?!• I was grateful to be invited to the Venus Rising podcast with the lovely Kallie Fell of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network to speak on my article I published here last summer on my near-miss with egg donation as a young and desperate drug addict.
The accompanying essay can be read here:
•The podcast where I was introduced to this new conceptualization of spaciousness, in this case it is in reference to nourishment and nutrition, and comes from the genius mind of the one of the only women I trust for nutrition advice, Niecia Nelson of “Iamaltar” (who actually recommended the above probiotics). Here she is interviewed by Amber Magnolia Hill on her beautiful and honestly, legendary, podcast “Medicine Stories”.
Lastly, I want to share one of my favorite children’s albums from good ol’ Raffi. We all love Baby Beluga but I especially love his album “Quiet Time”, for when I need to calm my kids down. “Listen to the Horses” is especially sweet.
First, after reading this yesterday I cleaned out my fridge, some of the junk drawers (plural) and tried out the self clean setting on my new oven, so thanks for that inspiration! We have 8 people living in a smaller 3 bedroom house and it just always feels like there’s too much stuff, so I think purging things is my biggest tangible roadblock to spaciousness. I get especially overwhelmed by having a lot of books and homeschool stuff that I don’t utilize- it’s like they’re always at the back of my mind making me feel guilty for not playing more games or doing more art! This post also reminded me that I made a goal this year to go through the kids baby things and put together a memory box for each (which will entail getting rid of many sweet clothes), and to begin going through the many years of digital photos just hanging out in the cloud and print my favorites for each year. You’re right though- there is such a big emotional aspect to being able to feel spaciousness. A lot of it for me is about letting go of expectations for myself so that I can have the space to connect and be creative, because those junk drawers are honestly not going anywhere.
Yes yes, weepy pile of mush with every clothes clean-out.
Beekman 1802 is the literal best. We also love Raffi's "Listen to the Horses" song <3