What I Did Wednesday

(I think this suits me better than a Wordless Wednesday.)

One of the most important things I do every summer is to make sure that my chest-freezer is full of top-quality Ontario produce to feed my family all winter. 

(Just a little aside here:  When we went to Quebec earlier this month, the children asked me to bring strawberries to eat during the long car ride.  I was totally disappointed to only find berries from California in the grocery stores here in Toronto.  Yet, in the tiny grocery store where we stopped in Quebec, we picked up strawberries, raspberries and blueberries that were ALL grown locally.  Imagine that!  A grocery store that stocks local produce!  Not in Ontario, apparently.....)

I store the produce in Ziploc medium-sized freezer bags.  Already I have 12 bags of strawberries, 6 bags of blueberries and 8 bags of brocolli.

This week I nibbed, cleaned, blanched and bagged a bushel of green beans.

I picked up the beans at the East York Farmer's Market at 10am and it literally took me until 6pm to finish those beans!  The entire time that I was standing at the counter I kept thinking "My mother would NEVER have taken this long to blanch and bag a bushel of beans!" 

Aaaah, my mother.  Back in the day, she would have had the beans picked (out of her own garden) by 7am and the entire bushel would have been in the freezer before noon.  I just can't get it together to work that hard or that fast.

But now we have 16 bags of beans in the freezer!  This week I will make some peach jam and next week I am going to make oodles and oodles of spaghetti sauce with fresh Ontario tomatoes, onion, peppers, garlic and basil.

Now, sing it with me:
Good things grow-ow-ow
In Ontario!

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Are you planning to participate in the Carnival of Birth Reflections?
Please visit TouchstoneZ to fill out the submission form and then email your story to both me and Zoie:  ptinh0441 {at} rogers {dot} com
zoie{dot}touchstonez{at}gmail{dot}com

Submission Form and Emailed Post Deadline: Tuesday, August 23 midnight PST


Carnival Date: Friday, August 26

A Week of Secrets: #4

Psssssst....I'll tell you a little secret.  But you have to promise not to tell anyone.

I don't clean my house.

Yes, it's true.  If you come to my house you will see that it is an absolute pigsty.  The bathroom needs to be cleaned.  The floor needs to be washed.  The fridge needs to be wiped out.  The windows and mirrors need to be scrubbed.  Every horizontal surface needs to be dusted.

It's not that I'm lazy.  It's not even that I'm too busy.  Although certainly having 4 kids DOES keep me busy.

I just choose to spend my time doing other things (when I'm not directly involved in an activity with my children).

Like what?  Well, I'm glad you asked.

For one thing, I bake and cook.  A LOT.  In the last week, in addition to toast and fruit salads and assorted vegetable dishes, all of the following items came out of my kitchen:

• 6 loaves of whole wheat bread
• banana muffins, applesauce muffins and carrot muffins
• 3 pizzas made from scratch including the crust
• hamburgers with homemade buns
• meatballs in stewed tomato sauce
• strawberry jam
• a cake with icing
• egg-free cupcakes with icing
• curry chicken
• guacamole
• cilantro salad
• fresh pesto
• bean soup

So I do spend a lot of time in the kitchen.

I also tend to be pretty meticulous about my laundry.  I hang out as much as I can on the clothesline.  I wash diapers twice a week.  I fold every little shirt and skirt and dress and bib with tender loving care and place each item neatly back in its home in the dresser or on the shelf.  It takes time, but laundry is one of my favourite activities.

And finally, I spend a lot of time doing my own thing.  I put on makeup.  I read the newspaper.  I check my email.  I run.  I talk to Partner-Guy.  I hold the baby while he sleeps.  It's a good life, I tell ya!  And I sure don't stress about the cleanliness of my toilet!

That being said, if I know that I am having a visitor, I do clean the house.  It takes about half an hour.

• clean the bathroom (5 minutes)
• make the beds and put the laundry away (5 minutes)
• pick up toys and books and sweep the living room/dining room (10 minutes)
• wipe the counters and fill the dishwasher (5 minutes)
• sweep the kitchen and spot-clean the floor (5 minutes)

Ta Da!
That's it.  That's my definition of a clean house.

You can't eat off my floors, but if you show up at my door, I guarantee I'll be able to give you something good to eat.  On a plate.

So that's my fourth secret.  Are you ready to share some of YOUR secrets yet?
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In case you've missed some of my secrets, here they are:
Secret #1:  Un-Farming
Secret #2:  Un-Sleeping
Secret #3:  Un-Marriage

It's Not Easy Being Green

Green is the new black.

Or if you're a mom who carts her kids to activities all over the city in her gas guzzling SUV, green is the new thermometer by which you measure what a great mom you are. In other words, the more money you can spend on making your kid greener than somebody else's kid, the better mom you probably are.

Being a mom is very competitive. Until recently moms competed to have their kids in the most activities (outside of school) or the most expensive activities or the most obscure activities or the most talent-specific activities. Now everybody is buying into the idea that kids need at least a little downtime outside of school, so instead of schlepping the kids to karate, hockey, pottery class and the math tutor every week, moms are making them wear organic bamboo socks and eat tofu burgers.

It's not that I think being green is bad. On the contrary, I think we could all try harder to reduce our carbon footprint, feed our kids better and make sure our spending power is supporting a sustainable economy.  I just don't understand why it has to be a competition among women to rank ourselves and jockey for position.

One time at a playgroup we used to attend,  there was a mother who seemed to be writing a thesis called "Plastic is Bad" who had all the Grandmas in attendance captivated as she preached about how she has nothing made of plastic in her house. She went on to describe how only glass or stainless steel or ceramic ever came in contact with her children's food and how they only play with toys made of wood or cotton. Right.  I just didn't believe her.

There was another mom at the same play group who I knew was living on a shoe-string budget and one day I offered her a bag of very high quality second hand clothes for her daughter. She declined them because she prefers to make her daughter's clothes from reclaimed fabric. Apparently second hand is not nearly as green or budget-friendly as making a winter coat out of her grandfather's suit jacket that he wore to get married in 1945.  She even said, "My daughter doesn't wear GAP".  Oh.  Kay.


Then there are the vegan/organic snacks these moms brought for their kids. Vegan/organic oatmeal-flax-hemp-carob-chip cookies. Vegan/organic unsalted squash-yam-beet chips. Vegan/organic tofu-millet-mushroom sandwiches. Whatever happened to giving your kids an apple?  Nothing can convince me that these kids have never eaten a Schneiders Hotdog, especially the kids of the moms who can't go anywhere until after they hit Starbucks.

But it really disturbs me that we moms are so competitive that we have to show off for each other that we care about the health of our kids AND the health of our planet. Why can't we just support each other and pat each other on the back? (This from a woman who can barely be in the same room with a woman sticking a bottle in her baby's mouth.)  But seriously, I applaud the efforts of every mother to feed her child in a healthy sustainable way.  I just wish that those efforts would translate MORE into growing community gardens and LESS into bragging about how much money the weekly groceries cost at the local organic health food store.

I want my kids to grow up able to make responsible decisions with regards to their health and the health of the planet. And what I believe is really important is that they see that I live in such a way that shows them that there is one standard that applies to the whole family. This means that I don't eat Schneiders Hotdogs while I feed them organic spelt-quinoa-barley pasta, and vice versa. At our house, what's good for the kids is good for the parents.

And what's good for the planet is good for us all.

An editted re-post from the archives.

Gluten-Free Egg-Free Dairy-Free Banana-Cherry Muffins

Did you know that there are HUNDREDS of blogs out there about cooking to accommodate specific dietary restrictions?  Really.  There are probably thousands.

And every time I accidentally stumble upon one of them I think I know a lot about that.  Jasmine (my 3-year-old) and I had to go gluten-free, egg-free and dairy-free a couple of years ago when she had severe eczema.  So I have a lot of recipes under my belt but since this not a blog about cooking I have never bothered to mention them.  I do try to stay focussed on unschooling and authentic parenting, with just a little bit of Green Living thrown in once in a while.

BUT....

I made some totally amazing muffins this week and since I am going to be away for a while (and I write all my posts well in advance of when they are published) I thought I would throw in this one little recipe this one time and see if I get any positive feedback.....or just a lot of silence.  Or static.  I'm not sure which is worse....

Gluten-Free Egg-Free Dairy-Free Banana-Cherry Muffins

1 cup mashed banana
1/2 cup honey
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups gluten-free flour mix*
1/2 cup medium coconut
1/4 cup chopped maraschino cherries

*Gluten-Free flour mix:  Thoroughly blend 3 cups rice flour, 1 cup potato starch and 1 cup tapioca starch.

Using your food processor, blend the banana, honey and oil until smooth and liquid.
With the processor turned OFF, dump in the G-F flour mix.  Add the baking soda, baking powder and salt.  Process until smooth. 
Add the coconut and cherries and blend slowly and gently.
Put in muffin tins and bake at 350F for 20 minutes.
(If you are making these for someone else and you are not familiar with using G-F flour, you may be unaware that rice flour is a little bit gritty in baking.  You might think that the coconut is an optional ingredient, but it actually helps to hide the gritty-ness of the flour.  It also makes the muffins a little bit sweeter.)

Enjoy your muffins!

The Urge to Purge

It's (finally) springtime here in Toronto and although I am not nesting, I am purging.

It hits me every spring that I seem to have spent all winter accumulating STUFF.  Toys, clothes, books, baby paraphernalia.  You'd be amazed how many baby items I have that I don't even need!  My stash of carriers is nearing the double digits and Julian has so many pairs of shoes that he'll need to start running marathons in order to come even close to wearing out any of them.

Actually, we are very lucky to have friends and neighbours who have generously given us more clothes for Julian than we will ever need.  I sort through everything we are given and whatever I don't think I will use I donate to The June Callwood Centre in downtown Toronto.  It is a resource and housing centre for pregnant teens.  I can't think of a more vulnerable group than teen mothers and I am happy to pass on whatever might be of use.

Our neighbourhood has a gigantic yard sale in April, so most of the items I am purging will be offered for sale on that day.  I have decided to donate the proceeds of my sale to La Leche League Canada and whatever does not sell will go to The June Callwood Centre.  Here's what's leaving the premises, never to return!

• The High Chair--I'll be glad to get this cumbersome annoyance out of the house.  |At 8 months, Julian is so big that he can easily handle sitting in a booster seat as long as he is strapped in.
• The Change Table--I wouldn't even have set up the change table for Julian since it takes up so much space, but I didn't have anywhere else to keep his clothes and diapers!  Now he flips around so much when I change his diaper that I usually have to change him on the floor or on the bed.  I think I'll be able to move his baskets of clothes to a shelving unit for now and eventually I will purchase a dresser for his clothes and mine.
• All Out-grown Outdoor Winter Clothing--Since Julian is not going to be wearing purple boots or a pink snowsuit, it's time to get rid of everything that Jasmine has outgrown.
• My Multiple Winter Coats--need I say more?
• Bikes and Trikes--now here's something I wish that people wouldn't give us.  They take up so much space and they are usually rusting and really, does a family need three tricycles?
• Assorted Children Books--especially Barney books and anything with a bottle-feeding/crib sleeping theme in it.
• Strollers--I have 4.  I use only one.  You do the math.
• Bedding--we have a single, a queen and a king.  I figure we need two sets of sheets for each bed, plus a summer-weight quilt and a winter-weight duvet.  The rest can go.

So that's a pretty good list, eh?

I'm no expert on home organization or living simply, but I have found some pretty good information and inspiration from Simple Mom.  I don't endorse everything she writes about, but when it comes to getting rid of stuff, this girl (her name is TSH;  any clues how to pronounce that?) knows what she's talking about.  I even bought her book.

So when the purging is over, I'll be ready to focus on gardening.

What's on your To-Do List for Spring?

Let's Make Applesauce!

 

Last week my dad picked up a bushel of applesauce apples for me at the Waterloo Farmer's Market.  Now, I know that there is no variety of apples called 'applesauce', but these just happen to be the perfect apples for applesauce and I don't actually actually know what variety they are.  They have a very soft flesh and they are quite sweet.  And I don't know who grew and harvested and stored them, but they are blemish-free and not even bruised.  Excellent quality.

I washed them meticulously, then I cut them in quarters and cored them.  No peeling required!
 

I filled the pot heaping full and put it on a back burner at a very low temperature.  It stewed for about 3 hours and I stirred it with a bamboo spoon a couple of times.

And now for the fun part:  the applesauce mill!  This little device belonged to my mother and I can't even imagine how many liters of applesauce have passed through it.  My mother probably spun that handle with vigour enough to generate electricity for a small town!  I am honoured to have been the recipient of this fabulous little machine.

No need to peel the apples because the peels stay in the applesauce mill when the sauce passes through the tiny holes.

I filled Ziploc bags for the freezer and I made applesauce muffins and loaves for Anna.

Julian finds the applesauce to be a little bit sour, but he is eating it nonetheless.  I made 3 batches of applesauce and saved a few apples for making an apple crisp tomorrow for dessert.

Are you doing any big batch cooking these days?

Homemaking Part 4: Time Well Spent

Part of an ongoing series on Homemaking.

There is so much written about Time Management and most of it involves schedules and planning.  We tend not to do very well with schedules.  Our time is free and flowing.  But I do find that accounting for my time each day helps me to see why some of my priorities aren't being accomplished.

I was reading over some of my old posts when I found one where I listed how I spent my days.  In June, 2010 my days looked like this: 

3 hours reading to or otherwise fully engaged with the children
2 hours of housework or gardening or doing jobs like paying bills
2 hours directly supervising or observing the children, but not engaged in an activity with them
2 hours reading (for myself)
2 hours preparing and eating food
1 hour on the computer or on the phone
2 hours caring for the children such as bathing them, dressing them and putting them to bed
1 hour hanging out with Partner-Guy

Aaaah, those were the lazy days of pregnancy.  My how things change with a baby in the house!  These days look more like this:

3 hours directly engaged with Anna, Holly and Jasmine (together or individually)
3 hours directly caring for Julian
2 hours baking and preparing meals
1 hour taking care of myself (showering, getting dressed, eating, reading the daily newspaper)
3 hours housekeeping (cleaning, cleaning up and laundry)
2 hours reading or writing at the computer
1 hour with Partner-Guy

So what has changed?  Mostly it's the time I don't spend with Anna, Holly and Jasmine.  I miss reading to them for long periods everyday--I used to commit to a minimum of 60 minutes per day of reading aloud with them.  And I really miss observing their play--they are such interesting, creative people!  So whereas they used to get 7 hours of active and passive attention, they are now getting about 3 hours. 

I am doing more housework and food preparation these days, too.  In the winter there is always more cleaning and cleaning up to do because we are housebound most of the time.  I have also completely eliminated prepared foods from our grocery list, so I need to spend more time baking bread and muffins, as well as cutting up fruits and vegetables.  Some days I think I do as much food prep as a sous-chef.

Julian really does take up a lot of my time everyday, but as I explained to the girls, they got just as much attention as Julian when they were babies.  Julians' reflux continues to bother him, so he needs to be held a lot and he does not fall asleep easily.  I have learned to multi-task while holding him:  I stand near the counter and read parts of the newspaper that I would otherwise skip over or I stand near the computer to read an article online.  I've also discovered that I can do a lot of cooking with him in the sling.  It is, unfortunately, impossible to read to the girls while I'm holding him.  I've tried.  Many times.  Can't.  Do.  It.

So how do the girls spend their days?

2 hours eating, bathing, dressing, using the bathroom
2 hours watching DVDs
2 hours drawing, colouring, printing
5 hours playing together (Barbies, My Little Ponies, etc.)
1 hour individual play (Playmobil, Barbies, stickering, etc.)
2 hours playing with parents (UNO cards, hide-and-seek, Playmobil, helping in the kitchen)

I'm looking forward to spring when we will be outdoors more.  I have committed myself to taking all the kids to Taylor Creek Park (part of the Don Valley River system) for a nature walk, a picnic or an adventure at least twice per week as soon as the weather warms up and the ground is no longer muddy.  We can access the valley via a steep trail that is only 500m from our home, so hopefully I won't even need a stroller.   In the spring I'm also hoping to find time everyday to exercise.  If I figure that out I'll write about it!

The truth is that everyday is different.  And even though I can roughly account for how my day passes, there are many days when I go to bed thinking "I didn't get ANYTHING accomplished today!"  I try to set daily goals so that I can stay focused.  Today my goals are to bake oatmeal cookies, plant some seeds for indoor germination and vacuum upstairs and downstairs.  The vacuuming is left over from yesterday's goals, but it requires a general PICKING UP first, which can't be done while I'm holding a fussy baby.  So the vacuuming might have to wait another day.

So I set daily goals and also seasonal goals and I keep in mind that everything changes in its own time. The baby will grow, the girls will develop new interests, the weather will cycle.  And we'll keep filling our days with Freedom and Joy.

Homemaking Part 3

Part of a series on being a Homemaker.

One morning this week I set Julian on the kitchen floor with some stainless steel mixing bowls and wooden spoons to entertain him while I unloaded the dishwasher.  When I bent down to retrieve his scattered items a few minutes later I was disgusted to see how dirty the floor was.  Quickly I swept, then filled the sink with hot, soapy water and sank to my hands and knees to begin the task of washing the floor.

I washed from the front door to the kitchen sink, then I began the perimeter of the kitchen.  It seemed there had been a lot of spills!  I even took the kick-plate off the bottom of the dishwasher and scrubbed what may have once been orange juice.  I washed the baseboards and the lower cupboard doors and finally I moved Julian to a dry spot and washed the place where he had been sitting.

Pleased as punch with my efforts and feeling like I was on a roll, I decided to start a pot of soup for supper.  After finding lentils and tomato sauce in the pantry cupboard, I gave one of the drawers a little kick to close it. 

Crash!

Two bottles of olive oil knocked against each other and suddenly there was oil pooling on my clean hardwood floor.  An hour later, the pantry cupboard was cleaner than it's ever been, the floor was really shiny and the bottoms of my feet were remarkably soft.

But while I was cleaning I started to think "Why did we have two bottles of olive oil in the cupboard and one on the counter still nearly full?"  It is not our way to buy in bulk, even when things are on sale.   My dad once told me that he didn't think it was a good idea to have "a lot of capital tied up in groceries" and I guess I've always remembered that.

Nevertheless, we've always seemed to have cupboards that are overflowing with food.  I think we've generally had about a month's worth of groceries in the house at all times.  But in keeping with my plan to keep my homemaking more simple I've begun using up the excess food in the cupboards and freezer.  I've even begun making a weekly menu and creating much shorter grocery lists.  As a result our grocery bills have gone down from $1000+ per month to under $800.

I think that good money management is an essential part of homemaking.  And one shouldn't need to live on rice and beans to cut the grocery budget!  Although the term 'Home Economist' is no longer in vogue, I think it still applies to today's homemakers such as myself.  My mother knew how to stretch a dollar:  she mended jeans and froze vegetables and canned fruit and crocheted afghans and sewed curtains and bedspreads.  It was all an act of love for her but she was also expected to be thrifty and skillful. 

Nonetheless, there is a big difference between being thrifty--frugal, if you prefer--and being cheap.  We have a friend who was invited to spend a long weekend at another friend's cottage--a frugal vacation, to be sure.  He showed up with 2 bags of chips as his contribution to 3 days of eating and drinking.  That's cheap.

We have a story in our family lore that illustrates the oint as well.  When my brother and I were about 9 and 13 years old, my parents took us to Sudbury for a short vacation.  My mother, in typical thrifty-ness, brought buns and muffins and fruit and juice boxes for breakfast for the 3 or 4 days that we were away.  The evening meal was always at the hotel restaurant but between breakfast and supper, my brother and I were always hungry.  One day we were at Science North and he and I headed to the cafeteria where my dad told us in no uncertain terms "This is just a snack" to which my brother responded with all the sauciness and incredulity he could muster "Do we not get to EAT on this trip?"

We try not to be too hard on my dad for showing his tendency towards cheap-ness.  I think it's his intent to be frugal, but when the needs of those we love are denied for the sake of a dollar or two, sometimes the money needs to be spent.  That's my two cents, anyway.

Since I don't contribute much to our family income, I feel responsible to be mindful about how our money gets spent.  Saving money on groceries is something I can do just by planning better and the children don't even notice the difference.  I can also save a dollar here and there by doing laundry during off-peak hours and using the clothes line during warmer weather.  I save money on kids' clothes by accepting lots of hand-me-downs but I use the money I save to buy high quality winter boots and snow suits that can be passed from daughter to daughter. 

We try not to pinch our pennies too much but we are mindful about where our money goes.  And now that I've learned that olive oil makes a great moisturizer, I can save money there too!

Homemaking Part 2

The second in a series of posts about the meaning of being a Homemaking.


What defines successful homemaking? 
I think the role of a homemaker changes a little in the context of Unschooling, or even Homeschooling.  A completely different lifestyle emerges when a mother's days do not revolve around getting the children out of the house.  Being at home with children, all day, every day means that the house must work for the family, not the other way around.  Compromises must happen to allow for every member of the family to fully engage in their pursuits.

Before we moved to this house--just weeks before Anna'a birth--I had moved 3 times in 5 years.  Each condo inhabited I had decorated and organized and then kept in what I hoped was 'pristine condition'.  These were my days before babies.  I knew I wouldn't be staying in each location for the long-term so I didn't want to make it too lived-in before I had to sell it.

Baby #3 had arrived in my life before I was able to let go of that old mindset and embrace the idea that we live here.  My house was not going to be worthy of a six-page spread in a decorating magazine.  We needed to live here in a way that could make us all happy and comfortable. 

But happy and comfortable does not mean chaotic and messy.  An unschooling-stay-at-home-homemaker-mom has to set some standards and priorities.  It's hard to live freedom and joy in the midst of clutter and confusion.  But I wasn't about to spend my whole day cleaning up, picking up, wiping up. In fact, there are only two aspects of housekeeping that I am firmly committed to:  the kitchen gets cleaned up at the end of every day AND the laundry gets done and put away all at once on one day.

There is no end to organizing and home management solutions online, and I am not an expert, that's for sure.  Some good information can be found here.  But most of what I have read from other mommy-bloggers or home organization experts applies to people who are not like me and my family.  If you're a stay-at-home-mom whose kids go to school and activities and lessons and playdates then your house has to function in a completely different way from mine.  My children and I are away from our home less than 4 hours each week.  And we live large--6 people in only 900 square feet. And we don't function very well with routines and schedules and rules.

I had to figure out homemaking for unschoolers.

Tips for Simple Housekeeping and Organization for Unschoolers

1. Prioritize what you want in your house.  In our case, we have a lot of toys, a lot of craft supplies and a lot of books.  We do not have tons of clothes (only enough for about 10 outfits for each person for each season) and we do not have tons of knick-knacks or things that might be beautiful but are not useful.  We have some DVDs, but not tons.  We throw out whatever is old, broken or no longer useful or interesting and we rarely replace what we throw out.
2. Avoid toys that are designed to be educational as they are not created for your spontaneous, creative child.  Since your children are at home most of the time they need things that they can enjoy together and in lots of imaginary scenarios.  I have no problem with lots of toys, but I don't let my children get everything new thing that comes out.  We have lots of Barbies and accessories, lots of stuffed animals and lots of Playmobil.  New toys mostly fit into those categories and we are not going to start collecting new genres of toys.
3. Find creative ways to store and organize toys.  We use Rubbermaid bins, baskets on shelves and plastic drawer units,  as well as closets and dressers.  Children can't pick up after themselves if there is nowhere to put things.
4. Allow the entire house as a play area.  Is it really so bad if they use the bathroom to create a jungle for stuffed animals?  Or if the Barbies perform a ballet on your bed?  When you're returning the Lego to its bin, does it matter if it was under the table or in the bathtub?  The entire house must be child-friendly and this means that no areas or furniture are off-limits.
5. Don't make strict cleaning and cleaning-up rules, like "Everything gets picked up before bedtime" or "Clean the bathroom every Saturday morning."  Live flexibly.  Clean when something is dirty.  Pick up when the kids are done, which is not necessarily at the end of the day as some games continue for days at a time.

I think that whatever lifestyle you embrace, you probably have goals for you unschooled child that are similar to mine:  you want them to be creative and imaginative, carefree and busy, safe and comfortable.  It is hard for children to engage authentically in their lives if they are surrounded by clutter.  As a homemaker, I think that controlling the stuff in the house is of paramount importance.

PHOTOS:  Our shelves as they look right now.

Homemaking Part 1

The first of a  series of posts on what it means to be a homemaker.
Please check for more Homemaking posts in the coming weeks.

I started to think about the meaning of homemaking when my mother mentioned the other day that she misses it.  She lives alone in a beautifully decorated 3-bedroom apartment (worth mentioning, since I live with 5 other people in a 2-bedroom bungalow).  She misses making nice meals and meeting people at the front door and taking care of a home in a way that makes it pleasant for other people to live in.  She doesn't miss housework.  She misses the often-ignored work that we do that makes other people feel comfortable.

In the 80s elementary schools stopped teaching Home Economics and started calling it Family Studies.  I don't think the subject matter changed much. For the two years that I was in Family Studies I made a few recipes, sewed some curtains, learned about kitchen safety and did a project to create a floor plan for a nursery.  We certainly didn't study the economics of running a household, nor did we study how to create and be part of a fabulous family.  We didn't even study what I would consider for adolescents and teenagers to be the most important aspect of family studies:  birth control!

Frankly, I think it's impossible for schools to teach homemaking.  Homemaking is about making the home a place where people want to be.  It's not about having throw cushions that coordinate with the couch and curtains--although that can be part of it.  It's not about washing floors and windows--although you might have to do that.  It's not about having a bedtime routine or planning your meals a month in advance--although some people find that helpful.

My paternal grandmother was a homemaker of the Home Economist variety.  She was a mother of 8, a Dutch immigrant farmer's wife, who brought her family to Canada after World War II.  She dried apples, made currents into syrup, knit socks for every member of the family and got them all to church every Sunday morning.  She stretched every dollar and nothing ever went to waste.  The family never went hungry and the kids were never cold.  But her children don't remember her as being warm, comforting and patient.  She was devoted, diligent, strong and smart.  Her home was clean and everything was in its place and she welcomed her grandchildren with homemade fudge, but I don't remember ever having any fun at Grandma's house. 

My mother was a next-generation-homemaker/home economist.  She blanched peas and beans to put in the freezer.  She made applesauce.  She sewed our clothes when we were little and she crocheted afghans when we went to university.  Our clothes were stylish as well as practical and our home was decorated with taste and comfort.  Christmases were elaborate with food, decorations and presents.  We did not live a life of total austerity.  We were nurtured as well as nourished.

My mom has occasionally described me as a homemaker, but until recently I never thought of myself that way.  I thought that it was a pretty old-fashioned term.  But I'm coming around to accepting it.  Being a homemaker carries a certain amount of moxy.  It's something I can do with style. I've called myself a stay-at-home-mom and I have said that I'm not a very good housekeeper, but being a homemaker is a lot bigger than being a good housekeeper.  Saying that I'm a stay-at-home-mom simply describes where I am all day.  Saying that I'm a homemaker explains what I do all day. It's about purpose.

My grandmother's purpose in homemaking was all about frugality.  My mother's purpose was more about getting the details right.  That's my mom:  she knows how to do things right.

What's my purpose in homemaking?  I think it's to keep things simple so that we can live freedom and joy.  That's why I say I'm not a good housekeeper;  I like to keep it simple and I don't like to follow a lot of routines and schedules.  Our day are free to do whatever we want.  Whatever brings us joy.

So maybe I am a homemaker.  And I'm lovin' it.

Still Working on the Clutter

I am still working on reducing the clutter and the overall volume of contents in our house. What a huge job!! I do a little every week, but the task is seemingly endless.

I am trying to follow some of the basic principles that the professional home organizers use, but I have tailored the 'rules' to suit our family.

1. if it's broken, throw it out
2. if it's been replaced by something newer, give it away
3. if we have two of the same thing, get rid of one
4. clothing that Anna or Holly did not wear (or wore once) is not likely to be worn by Jasmine someday, so get rid of it
5. if I haven't needed it in the past year, it's just taking up space (like the steamer, for example)
6. if it's expired, it's garbage (like bug repellent)

These rules break down a little when it comes to things that are sentimental or may someday be useful.

Could somebody please tell me the rule for how many artistic creations I should be keeping as a lasting record of how creative and busy my children were throughout these happy years of their lives? Anna and Holly each produce at least 5 creations daily, some of which are confined to spiral bound books, but most of which are on loose paper. And Holly is more of a sculptor, so her creations tend to involve empty paper towel rolls and construction paper and a lot of glitter. In other words, they take up a lot of space and are hard to hang up in our ever growing art gallery. I love the pictures they paint and the practise 'writing' that they do, but I really can't keep it all. Before Christmas Partner-Guy brought home some empty photocopier-paper boxes for me to store their artwork in, and Holly had hers filled in less than a week. I don't want them to think I don't value their work, but I only have so much wall space on which to hang it!!

I am also deeply sentimental about things that I have kept from my own past. For example, I have kept all my binders of notes and essays from my university days. I want them because getting my degree involved equal parts blood, sweat and tears, and throwing them out would seem to trivialize how hard I worked. I have also reasoned that maybe they will be useful someday when the girls want to study Canadian History or Women's Literature or Psychology 101. In fact, these items fall dually into the categories of Sentimental and Someday Useful. I have also kept some of the remnants of my elementary school days, such as trophies I won, as well as year books and some projects I completed. I don't know whether or not to keep these things either.

In the Someday Useful category I have a few items of clothing that I have been holding onto. I have a long black dress coat with a fabulous faux-fur collar that I want to have shortened so that I can wear it more comfortably. I also have some great high heels that I loved to wear, but which I can't really see myself wearing again. Unless I have to attend a wedding. Do people still do that? Get married???

I am not over doing it with keeping baby items for the girls. There is a baby blanket, one outfit and the toy they each received for their first birthdays. The rest of the toys that people have given us I think I can let go of. I have no problem donating them to a drop-in or to the Parks 'n' Rec preschool program. Really, if they haven't played with it in 3 months, they don't care enough about it to keep. And Jasmine will not grow up scarred for not having played with a Mr. Potato Head.

The things I am really looking forward to getting rid of are, unfortunately, still in use. For example, I would love to throw out the HUGE BLUE STEREO, circa 1996, but how would we play CDs? And the high chair is huge and awkward and I hit my toe on it at least 4 times a day, but Jasmine is just not ready to sit at the table in a booster seat yet. And then there are the baby items that are just taking up space until they are again needed: the infant bathtub, the change table, the Jolly-Jumper. We have friends who just had a third child 8 years after their second. I wonder if they kept everything for all that time...

So this week I am taking the list of rules and applying them to my bedroom and my kitchen. I figure there are at least 4 boxes of STUFF that will be given away and at least 2 large garbage bags.

Next week I tackle the enormous task of convincing Partner-Guy to start to his edit his running shoe collection.

Clutter

I think that if I am to really find my authentic self, I will have to rid myself of the clutter. I mean real clutter, not just the jumbled thoughts in my head. Inside me is a person who is actually a minimalist, although you'd never know it if you saw my house.

We have so much stuff.

I am constantly looking for ways to organize everything. We have at least 15 large Rubbermaid containers of kids' clothes in the spare bedroom in the basement. They are organized by season and by size, from newborn to size 8. Of course, they're all girls' clothes, and we have been so lucky to receive so many high quality hand-me-downs from friends, neighbours and family. It'll be great to start getting rid of the clothes, but until we close the door on adding more children to our family, the clothes stay.

Then there's the 4 plastic-drawer-trolleys that house the girls' art supplies. Altogether, there are 21 drawers and 2 baskets. We have enough paint, paper towel rolls, styrofoam meat trays, felt letters, tissue paper, construction paper, glitter glue, stickers, markers, plasticine, popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners and crayons to supply a day care for a month. Actually, it's not the amount of art supplies that is a problem, because it really is good for Anna and Holly to let their creative energy flow freely. The real problem is what to do with the sculptures and pictures that they make everyday.

Toys. The numerous assorted toys that do only one thing, have a lot of pieces and don't really go with anything else for significant pretend-play (such as the Mr. Potato Head) are the items I find really annoying. These are the items that get played with only one time per month, but which then take a month to get put away because the pieces end up all over the house somehow. I would LOVE to get rid of all these sundry items, but I feel like the kids might miss them, OR if I give them away I'll feel guilty when I see the people who gave them as gifts.

The toys that get played with all the time are sets of Playmobil (we have the dinosaurs and the treehouse/forest rangers station), the Duplo and the princess dolls. Those three kinds of toys, along with books and crafts are what keep the girls occupied all day long. Everything else should be given away. Would it be ungrateful or disrespectful or just down right greedy to tell friends and family specifically what gifts to buy for our children at birthdays and Christmas? This is something I need to think about and approach very carefully.

As for my personal things, I am pretty good at editing. When I buy new jeans or shoes, an old pair of jeans or shoes leaves the premises. I'm not so good at getting rid of kitchen items that don't get much use (like the indoor grill that my mom gave me 7 or 8 years ago, and which I initially used at least once per week, but which has now moved to three different addresses with me and not been used again).

Sometimes getting rid of personal items is hard because of the sentimental value. Like when Partner-Guy and I were going through a bag of things that his mother gave him after his father died and he didn't want to throw out any of it, and I had to ask "Do you have any other ways of remembering your father besides holding onto his underwear?" I haven't lost a parent, so maybe that was not an appropriate thing to say at the time, but it is kind of a rule of thumb that I like to apply when keeping something of no use to me but that has sentimental value.


What to do with all the books, magazines and personal journals that I kept from when I was a child and adolescent? This causes me some stress, as I try to rationalize keeping all of it. Someday I might want to read them and remember who I was. Or maybe they will help me to understand who I have become. Or maybe my children will amused to learn about what I was into as a very young woman.

Nonetheless, I have committed to ridding our house of 20% of its contents this year. This is entirely do-able. Toys, clothes, kitchen items, relics of my past, old teaching materials. They're all on the list to be edited and disposed of. Even Partner-Guy has committed to the project, and has promised to get rid of some of his running shoes; since he has about 60 pairs, there have got to be at least a dozen that he's done with.

I think this is a valuable project, not just because it will make me feel less chaotic, but also because doing it now is a lot easier than trying to do it in a couple of years when we are ready to sell the house. I'm even going to try to help the girls to give away something old whenever they get something new. And I will try to model the same action.

The authentic me will hopefully start to appear as we clear away one garbage bag at a time.