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Archive for the ‘Getting It Together’ Category

Day 23 – Friday Five Update

Posted in 31 Days, Books, Cozy, Friday Five, Getting It Together, Mental Health, Resolutions, Work, Writing, tagged , , on October 23, 2026| 1 Comment »

Whew, this week.

Today, I’m anxious because I feel like I’m behind on posting on my Keeping House series. But I may just be operating from an old set of rules.

When I first started posting 31 Days series in October years ago, things were different:

  • There was an official 31 Days community that sent out prompts and encouragement. I attended local writing group meetups where we helped each other brainstorm and come up with post ideas (also there were snacks, which may seem irrelevant to the writing process but I assure you they were absolutely essential).
  • I had a job as a night desk clerk, where I was encouraged to engage in hobbies or studies (really, they were happy with me doing anything that would keep me awake at 4:00 a.m. when the students finally went to bed) any time there was downtime. There was a lot of downtime, and I had finished my degrees by the time I took the job, so hobbies, such as blogging, were the choice.
  • I only had one book club.

Now, I am pretty much doing 31 Days on my own, which is how most writing projects go for most writers. It’s not a bad thing; it just doesn’t have the built-in drive that community work does. I also do not have much downtime at my job now, and when I do, I use it to prepare for upcoming appointments so that students can use their time to ask questions and not feel like they’re interrupting me as I type up the notes I could have prepared beforehand.

And now, I have six book clubs.

So it makes sense that I struggle to write every single day of the month. Maybe that is a hint (and by hint, I do mean clear indication) that my expectations for my series should change.

Content-wise, I’m very happy with the series so far. I am still going to have plenty of time to say everything I want to say about keeping house. I have some rough drafts about a few more topics, and I’m excited to share them in the upcoming week.

Today, I am celebrating the ability to be flexible. To pivot when I need to. To honor my time and energy and not let former expectations that no longer make sense or serve my purpose sully my perspective on what I’ve accomplished. Flexibility is important for writing; it’s also important for keeping house.

Five things I’ve learned about keeping house as I’ve gotten older (and, ideally, wiser):

  • No one judges my home more than I do. When I have people over, they are just happy to see me. They like what I feed them, and they delight in my company. I don’t have to earn their approval; I already have it.
  • Having said that, it doesn’t matter if other people think my home is too messy. It does, however, matter what I think. My opinion of my home matters the very most. I am the person it most affects, and keeping house is first and foremost a kindness to myself.
  • A brush with mortality when I had cancer opened my eyes to how much stuff I accumulate but don’t really want or need. And if I don’t even want it, it’s likely that whoever is tasked with dealing with it when I’m gone won’t want it either. It’s never too early to start death cleaning.
  • My stimulus response is my guiding star. My ideal home is one that is stimulating enough to be interesting and cozy but neat enough that my brain isn’t constantly overwhelmed. In related news, my office is my next major project. It’s technically functional, but there are so many distractions. I think I’ll be calmer and better at my job when it is more organized.
  • I really am happiest when I’m surrounded by books, even if their arrangement is a bit chaotic.

I hope that you remember to be flexible and gracious with yourself this weekend (and always, really). You deserve your highest consideration.

I’m writing about keeping house for 31 days.

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Days 17-19 – Be My Guest

Posted in 31 Days, Cozy, Getting It Together, Home, Mental Health, Resolutions, Roots, tagged , , on October 19, 2026| 1 Comment »

Part of why I want my house to be cozy is to make it more welcoming to guests. I used to really love having people over, but I’ve gotten more particular about doing so in recent years. I don’t know that I’ll ever be interested in throwing large parties again, but occasionally I do have people over, or sometimes (rarely, but still), people just pop by.

First – no, thank you, on the just popping by. I’m gonna need you to text first and ask if and when I’m free for you to do so. I’m not a fan of surprises in general, and I want my home to be, as often as possible, the place where only things I enjoy happen. An unexpected visit is not one of those things.

However, as much as I do not want people to show up unannounced at my front door, I’d like the state of my home not to be the reason I hate it. There are so many better reasons to hate such a thing (it’s assuming, it’s inconsiderate, it’s disruptive, etc.). I’d like to go with one of those. I keep house just in case the unmitigated disaster of a surprise guest occurs, so I can at least minimize one of the things that make it terrible.

Second, there is the matter of my upbringing. I was the messy child who could never quite meet the standard set by my mom on how my space should look. I’ve healed enough in this area to say that the expectations I grew up with for how a home should look are the least important reasons for my wanting to keep house, but I would be lying if I claimed they weren’t still a part of my motivation. I’m still working through my desire to meet the expectations of my mother-of-yore (the current version of her does not give a damn, actually, which is upsetting in its own way. It’s just so unlike her. But I digress.). According to the voice in my head that sounds a lot like Joy Terry in her 40s and 50s, there is a way your home should look, especially if you are expecting people over, and I occasionally find myself measuring my home with that yardstick.

Really, though, I prefer a much more relaxed standard. I find that guests feel just as comfortable if my house looks lived in as they would if it looked magazine-ready (Pinterest-ready? Or is that outdated, too?). More to the point, I find that my guests enjoy my company more when I’m not exhausted and stressed from frantically cleaning.

[Aside: This is not a judgment on people who enjoy keeping a more pristine home. I probably love coming to your house. It’s so pretty, and you’re doing a great job.]

Keeping my home generally guest-ready allows me to focus on the aspects of hosting I enjoy more. For example, I love a good menu. I love planning meals and making grocery lists and finding creative ways to work within food budgets and arranging/decorating the table, etc. I do not, however, love having to include in that calculation all the preliminary cleaning I would have to do to make the meal happen.

One of my biggest goals for getting better at keeping house is for it to take me an hour or less to prepare my home for guests. No matter how much notice I have, I want stay ready to be a gracious host.

I’m writing about keeping house during October.

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Days 12-14 – Regular Rituals

Posted in 31 Days, Cozy, Getting It Together, Home, Mental Health, Resolutions, tagged , , on October 13, 2026| 1 Comment »

Today, I am talking about the main tasks that, if done regularly, make me the most satisfied with my home. I already talked about laundry on Sunday, and we will hear a little more about it on Thursday. I started off making these three different posts, but then I realized I don’t really have three days’ worth to say. Also, making one big post let me add a fourth and very important category.

Watering the Plants

There is nothing in my home that screams, “Neglect!” to me more loudly than a droopy or dying plant. Now, sometimes my plants droop just because they’re moody, and I’m not a plant whisperer by any stretch of the imagination (which you can notice if you look closely at the picture above). Even ivy is taking a gamble at being in my home. But most of my plants generally behave and thrive per my expectations if I pay them even the tiniest bit of attention on a regular basis. 

I used to not notice if my plants needed water until they drooped. Now, however, I have a little reminder by putting a goal on Finch that shows up once a week and doesn’t go away until I mark it done. 

Doing the Dishes

I don’t often wish for a partner. I used to yearn, but now, I’m pretty happy overall with my solitary life.

Until it’s time to do the dishes.

When dishes start to pile up, I start to fantasize about getting myself into one of those I-cook-you-clean situations. The main reason I don’t cook as much as I want is because I mentally calculate how many dishes I’d have to clean afterward, and it just doesn’t seem worth it.

This is the chore I’m prone to avoid the most. Unfortunately, it has a great impact on not only how well I feed myself but also how disgusting my home gets. So I’m getting back into the habit of making it a regular ritual. 

I’m not great at it yet, so on days when I work in the kitchen, the guiding principle is: Clean what I use, plus five. That is, clean every dish, utensil, and cooking implement I used that day and then add either five more items or five more minutes to the chore. I’ve been trying to do this at least 10 days a month lately, and my kitchen is slowly becoming manageable again. It’s not really clean yet, but at least I no longer regard walking into it with the absolute dread that I did when it was chaos.

Sweeping the Floors

This chore has become so satisfying to me. It makes such a huge visual difference in a small amount of time. In just 15 minutes, I can pretty much sweep my whole apartment. I try to do this at least once a week.

It’s official day is Saturday, but I find myself doing touch-ups of missed spots throughout the week. This is especially true of the weeks when Saturdays are busy and I end up skipping it. Even when I miss a whole week, though, my floors still look so much better than they did at the beginning of the year.

Cleaning the Bathrooms

This, too, is a once-a-week task. And when I say cleaning the bathrooms, I don’t mean deep cleaning. That is not a regular-ritual conversation. This is just maintenance.

A solid maintenance cleaning for the bathroom involves:

  • Cleaning toilet bowl and sanitizing all toilet surfaces
  • Spraying and wiping down the shower (sometimes twice a week, because my conditioner is slippery)
  • Sweeping and mopping the floor
  • Gathering the trash
  • Putting any loose items back where they belong
  • Wiping down the cabinet and the sink

This process usually takes me about 20 minutes in my primary bathroom and 10 minutes in the guest bathroom. I do each bathroom on its own night, and I clean them on days when I have somewhere else to go in the evening.

This is not a welcome-home–to-stay task. It’s a get-it-done-quickly-because-we-have-places-to-be task.

I come home from work and immediately tackle a bathroom while my brain is still in go mode, on nights when I don’t have time to overthink and talk myself out of it or get distracted by something else. Then I eat a quick dinner and go to whatever I am doing that night (e.g., book club, choir, etc.).

What are some of your regular rituals?

I’m writing about keeping house for 31 days.

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Day 8 – Why I Love This Book

Posted in 31 Days, Books, Cozy, Getting It Together, Mental Health, Resolutions, tagged , , , , on October 8, 2026| 1 Comment »

I love How To Keep a House While Drowning. The subtitle is “a gentle approach to cleaning and organizing,” and that’s just what I need. I am not motivated by what I should do or someone else’s standard. Frankly, I’m not even motivated by my own standards. 

I am motivated by grace and understanding and generosity, and this book is an abundance of those things.

In the first few pages, Davis starts in with this wisdom: “You don’t exist to serve your space; your space exists to serve you.” Many of my struggles with keeping house are based on my suspicion that I somehow owe my apartment something. But really? I am there because of my needs (to have shelter) and desires (to be cozy af). Therefore, it makes much more sense to approach it in ways that serve this purpose.

When I approach housework as a way of honoring my needs, my perspective shifts. What would make Future Me happy or help her relax? That is why I clean. That is why I declutter. Not to impress some possible guests but to please myself.

Davis also addresses the binary status of done or not done. The point of housework isn’t to mark something as “done.” Now, initially, this offended me to my very core. You know I love marking things off a checklist. But the point of keeping house isn’t to finish, but to keep it functional. If my expectation is that something is finished, I will get frustrated the next time I have to do it again. But if I change my mindset to functionality, the whole process softens into something more sustainable.

The third thing I love about this book is the statement, “Self-care was never meant to be a replacement for community care.” There’s a whole lovely section on this, but one of my takeaways is the reminder that we still need each other. I can do the best I can with every resource and ounce of energy I have and still not finish all the things. It’s not just OK to help each other; it’s critical.

Anyway, this is easily one of my top five favorite books on keeping house. Highly recommend, especially if shame and unreasonable expectations tend to immobilize you. This book will help.

I’m writing about keeing house for 31 days. You can browse the topic list here!

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Day 5 – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Posted in 31 Days, Cozy, Getting It Together, Resolutions, Revolution, tagged , , , , on October 6, 2026| 2 Comments »

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. It’s been the mantra of those who care for the planet and want to minimize the waste they produce for decades. It’s also three helpful hints for keeping house. Nothing gets stuff organized (or gone completely) faster than one of these actions.

Reuse is my favorite of the three. While my main goal for extraneous stuff is to get rid of it, of course, I also really despise having to buy something again to replace that thing I JUST threw away. I am the poster child for “But I might need it someday.” I really do often find uses for the random things I keep. So before getting rid of it, I look for ways to reuse it (stay tuned for Friday for some of my favorite things to repurpose).  

Reduce is my second choice, even though I think it is the best of the three. I wish it were my favorite. After all, the most efficient way not to waste the things that come into your home is to not bring extraneous nonsense into it in the first place. 

I’m just not very good at it. I mean, I have no problem with the things I’m super picky about. For example, I’m not going to impulse buy hand soap. I have the two kinds I like (one for my bathroom, one for the guest bathroom), and while I may stock an extra of each, that’s about it. Yarn, on the other hand…I may have an issue there. 

Reduction also looks different for different households. Take food prep, for instance. Ideally, all my vegetables would be fresh from the farmer’s market where the only packaging I use is the cloth bag I bring from home, and I would prep them for use the minute I brought them inside. But I got exhausted just writing those sentences. If that was the standard I tried to hold myself to, I would be constantly overwhelmed and end up in the drive-through more often than not, which creates the most waste with the single-use cups and utensils and wrappers (oh my). Getting most of my vegetables frozen is a compromise, but it’s better than the next likely alternative.

Recycling is the bane of my existence. I am committed to doing it. I know individuals can’t solve the major environmental crises caused by corporate greed and its inevitable consequences of environmental waste and bad practices and shortcuts (although we can vote with our dollar by not shopping with them whenever possible). And I know that a lot of what goes in the recycling bins (particularly the catch-all ones) ends up as trash anyway. But I adhere to the principle that if everyone did their part by throwing fewer things away, we could maybe at least keep the landfills under better control. I know we definitely can’t keep them under control if we don’t even try. So I’m going to continue doing my part, small as it may be, even though it’s among my least favorite chores. 

[Public service announcement – There are many things that need to be recycled or disposed of responsibly (i.e., not in the dumpster/trash bin), even if doing so is a pain, so please make sure you know the right place to take these items where you live.]

My beef with recycling most things is that it can’t just be done in-house. It involves a task and then also an errand. I hate errands so much. If I ever become inexplicably wealthy, errands are the first thing I’m going to outsource. I would actually hire a person full-time to run my errands for me if I could afford to do so.

If you live in a place where people will come and pick up your donations at your house for you? That’s nice. You should take full advantage of that. If I could just leave a box on the porch and have it magically disappear to a place I trust to use the items responsibly, recycling might become my favorite chore. So step one of recycling is to research the places near you that will do this for you. You may be surprised at how easy they make it.

But most of the local places near me that recycle used items don’t pick up from apartments. Alas. So I gather. And gather. And accumulate. And then…eventually…sometimes with weeping and gnashing of teeth…deliver to the appropriate location.

Maybe if I think of recycling as a quest it will be easier to keep up with. *ponders and plots*

I’m writing about keeping house for 31 days. Click here to see the topic list!

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Day 4 – Decluttering Games

Posted in 31 Days, Cozy, Fun, Getting It Together, Mental Health, Resolutions, tagged , , , , on October 5, 2026| 1 Comment »

A common characteristic of neurodivergent brains is that we switch attention easily and often. Some call it a short attention span. Some call it easily bored. Some call it multitasking (or if you’re me, rapid-succession unitasking).

Whatever you call this phenomenon, it can make menial tasks a challenge to complete (there is another beast called executive dysfunction that makes things hard to even start, but we’ll save that for another day). Most days, I don’t have a problem getting started on a cleaning project, but my follow-through often gets sidetracked by another task.

One thing I have found helpful in addressing this issue is to gamify decluttering/cleaning. I actually use this with most of the routine things that need to be habits (such as drinking water, remembering to eat, getting exercise, etc.), but it works especially well when it comes to housework, or anything that has clear start and finish points. When I turn decluttering into a game, it gives my attention span the challenge it needs to stay interested long enough to complete the given task.

Here are a few of my favorite games for keeping house.

Finch App

I loooove the Finch app. You have a character (specifically, a birb – mine’s name is Bandit). You can decorate its home and dress it up. You can send it on adventures. You earn the items you need to do all these things by completing goals, which you can customize. For example, some of my goals are:

  • Clean or tidy for ten minutes (x6 per day)
  • Drink 16 oz. of water (x5 per day)
  • Exercise for 3 minutes (x10 per day)

There are several more, and I change them based on the goals I am focusing on at the time.

In addition to getting to send Bandit on adventures and buy her cute clothes, I also use Finch to track my longer-term progress. For example, I track the number of days each month that I complete my 6 units of cleaning. If my history shows I cleaned for 15 or more days in a given month, I give myself a little pat on the back and possibly a small treat. Like, maybe I get a sausage biscuit instead of making breakfast one Saturday. Sometimes, though, just seeing progress is reward enough.

Decluttering Surges 

My brain likes brief bouts of intensity, and this game scratches that itch.  For a set period of time (a day, a week, but not more than a month, or I get bored and distracted), I perform a specific task once per a subset of that time. Sometimes there’s a preset task, sometimes there’s a preset time limit. The constraints are what make the game.

For example, on Saturdays when I am at home all day and have a lot of cleaning to do, I challenge myself to get up and tidy or clean at the end of each hour. For example, when the clock reads 1:50, I put down my book or put aside my writing or press pause on the show I’m watching, and see how much I can get done before the clock turns to 2:00. It’s a race against myself. It not only results in my home being a lot cleaner at the end of the day but also reminds me to get up and move occasionally.

Another example is the challenge I did when I noticed piles were getting out of control. For one month, I tasked myself with getting rid of one bag or box of stuff (or one item, if it was too big to fit in a bag or box) per day. It was simple but effective.

Spot Cleaning 

Sometimes stuff accumulates. Or it looks dusty. Or something is wrong that will just take a few minutes to put right. Sometimes my decluttering surges focus on one small area.

Take the shelf pictured above. It is designated as a space for mementos and knick knacks, but a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that it had also become a dumping ground for items that I was using in the area and just didn’t put away. A hammer and some nails, a hold sticker from the library, a coffee mug, etc.

So I set a 5-minute timer on my phone and got to work:

  • I removed everything from the shelf.
  • I dusted the shelf and each item that belongs there as I put them back.
  • I took the other items and put them up where they belong.
  • With the time I had left, I also dusted the shelf above it that holds the TV and moved the Christmas mouse figurine that was lingering next to it to my Christmas storage box (better late than never, I guess).

So in five minutes, I accomplished twice as much as I intended to. I won!

Spot cleaning is especially useful for those areas of my home that overwhelm me. I spot-clean my office a lot. It’s a small space that, unlike the rest of the apartment, I don’t use every day. It’s easy for it to become a dumping ground, and it doesn’t take long for it to look like it belongs on an episode of Hoarders. Such a sight makes me want to shut the door and run away. But I just got released to work from home three days a week, so it has to be functional. In the past month, I’ve made it my mission to spot-clean at least one shelf, one surface, or one square foot of floor per day, and the difference that has made in just a few short weeks is astounding.

It may seem silly to have to turn common chores into games just to get them done. But all I hear from that sentence is that they’re getting done, and any method that makes that happen consistently will always be welcome in my home.

I’m writing about keeping house for 31 days. Click here to see the topic list!

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31 Days of Keeping House

Posted in 31 Days, Cozy, Getting It Together, Home, Mental Health, Resolutions, Roots, tagged , , , , on October 1, 2026| 15 Comments »

When I chose cozy for my theme this year, my home was one of the main focal points of that goal. What I quickly discovered is that the cozy elements were already there – the comfy linens, the coffee and tea nook, the fairy lights, a little reading nest in every major room, etc. Unfortunately, they were often hidden behind clutter or overshadowed by household chores waiting to be done.

Before I could have a home that I (or the occasional someone else) could experience as cozy, the issues blocking all my carefully curated comfort zones had to be addressed. I’ve spent a lot of time doing that this year.

This month, I’m talking about keeping house. Not the pristine clean of my childhood, where you could eat off the kitchen floor with no adverse consequences (other than my mother yelling at you not to mess up her clean floor). But a reasonable level of clean. What most people would consider clean. The tidy kind of clean that instantly calms me when I walk through the door.

To be clear, I am not naturally good at this. I’m prone to stacks and piles and items left wherever they landed when I got distracted by another task. I have books and journals not only piled precariously high on the table by my reading chair but also stacked on the arms of the chair itself. I often have dirty coffee and tea mugs scattered everywhere. I have a chair in my bedroom that I usually cannot sit in because it’s full of discarded clothing. I organize files for an hour only to realize that, instead of organizing, what I have actually done is create 4,321 more piles of paper.

Even so, I deserve to have a home that feels cozy and peaceful. Even if keeping house doesn’t come naturally to me, I can still maintain such a home with a few handy tricks and routines.

This is not a do-this-for-a-month series. This is a talk-about-and-plan-it-for-a-month series. This is too daunting a project for me or anyone who identifies with my struggles to be successful in just 31 days. Also, we can’t just do it for a month and call it quits. Unfortunately, no kind of cleaning, tidying, or decluttering is a one-and-done deal. It’s a lifestyle. Apparently. This is an offensive fact about adulthood and physics, and I stay mad about it.

I am writing this series because focusing on cozy this year has worked. I have become a little better at cleaning and tidying this year, and I want to celebrate that a little bit. 

I also want to share the things I’ve learned in case it does not come naturally for you either. There are the things I’ve done throughout the year to reduce the overall clutter in my home and make it a cozier place to live. For the things that seem to have become routines, I will include how often I have to do them to maintain what I originally accomplished. 

While I myself am far from being an expert, there are those whose wisdom on the subject I consume voraciously, and I have several favorites. I find their books, websites, and other resources delightful. It turns out, I absolutely love reading about cleaning and tidying. People who really nerd out about it both fascinate and charm me. I will drop links in posts where their signature advice is mentioned.

Taking care of a home is often seen as fundamental to being a functioning adult. On this particular critierion…I’m alright (most days). I suspect that a lot of people can relate to that. That’s my main target audience for this series. Let’s learn together! 

I also would love for people who are good at keeping a clean, decluttered home pretty consistently to read and chime in. Teach us your ways!

You can subscribe to follow along day by day, or just come back occasionally to this post, which I will update as a table of contents as each day goes live. As with any general, prescriptive advice – take what you need and leave the rest.

[And yes, all the pictures in the series are of my actual home.]

All the posts to date:

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Friday Five – Forcing Fall

Posted in Alive, Andilit, Cozy, Friday Five, Getting It Together, Quiet, Resolutions, Seasons, tagged , , on September 25, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Alright. It’s time for fall. I’m tired of waiting. And by that, I do mean that I am wearing my boots and making soup and sipping hot apple juice (specifcally, Simply Apple or Sprouts brand) out of a tea mug in the evenings (my childhood’s answer to the predicament that we don’t have real cider here) and not waiting for it at all. Once again, I am bringing in autumn by sheer force of will. You’re welcome.

I have a fun (I hope) series coming up in October about keeping house. I hope that you will enjoy reading it as much as I’m enjoying writing it. I may not have enough content to last the whole month, but a daily post throughout October is currently the goal. 

I’ve also started my final curriculum for the year. I am ready to recognize that planning four curricula in one year was a bit unhinged. “Cozy” has been good. “Write a song and upload something to Bandcamp” was good (and a portion of it took a delightful turn that I didn’t predict, i.e., the upload being a wonderful group project). “Learn to play organ” was…ambitious and not at all feasible in the short timeline I gave it (what do you mean, my piano skills don’t completely translate?! Rude but ok). I’m still working on it, but I am appropriately humbled. 

As productive as these curricula have helped me to be, though…I’m so tired. I feel like each project is its own part-time job. And they’ve overlapped a lot, which makes it feel like even more work. So I’m trying to be more reasonable (which I despise) and gentler with myself (which I begrudgingly admit would be a good thing that makes being reasonable acceptable). 

Anyway…the fourth curriculum started later than planned and is going to extend into next year. My basic objective is to get my writing life back on track. I want to finish two projects – the aforementioned blog series in October and a second draft of my Fishbowl manuscript. But I also want to have a writing life that feels good and productive and creative and nourishing to me. One that is actually reasonable (ugh) for my current life and not just my imaginary life where I have no other responsibilities…like a job.

[Frankly, any one of the four curricula would have been more than enough progression for one year. But I’m already excited about the writing curriculum, and I’m not giving up on the organ (just relaxing about it), so we press on, and they will both just take as long as they take, and I’m also going to work on being okay with that.]

So that’s how life has been going. 

Here are some good reads from the last couple of weeks:

  • I enjoyed this reminder. “Seasonal living, to me, is about getting curious about those cues again and finding out what might happen when we let our food, light exposure, daily rhythms, and even our approach to rest change a little with the world around us.” Reading this sentence (and the whole piece) was like taking a long, deep breath.
  • I love Andi’s piece about learning to take up the space and time she needs, even outside the margins of her writing life. Great advice for all of us, especially those whose brains work differently than this world expects them to.
  • I adore Kate Bowler so much. I need this shirt.
  • I agree – The quiet life is the most underrated path to success! 
  • You are officially on notice – This is not only a Mamdani fan account but also an Abdul El-Sayed fan account. I just really appreciate people who listen and get shit done, and I would love to see what El-Sayed could do for our country.

I hope you have a great weekend, friends!

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Friday Five – Good Buys

Posted in Books, Bookshops, Cozy, Friday Five, Fun, Getting It Together, Home, Joy, Resolutions, Work on April 24, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Happy Friday, friends! This week’s post is weirdly shopping heavy, but I’m here for it. I mean, some of the implied shopping is books, so at least that tracks. 

  • Yesterday was Diada de Sant Jordi (Saint George’s Day), otherwise known as Day of Books and Roses. One of my coworkers surprised us with a selection of bookish stickers (“team whoever the villain is” is my favorite), bookmarks, roses, and a book of our choosing from her donation pile. 
  • Excited about Independent Bookstore Day tomorrow. I mean, every day is Independent Bookstore Day to me, and event days are crowded, so I’ll probably skip the festivities at my local shops. But I like the opportunity to celebrate them, even if from afar. I also love Modern Mrs. Darcy’s list of great indie bookstores around the world.
  • I took Montana Happy’s cozy living style quiz. Zero surprise that “whimsical retreat” is my brand of cozy (although I do like a garden, and also a house, not an apartment, is my ideal).
  • My current financial goal is to insert a pause on purchases. I am a quick decision-maker, which is beneficial in literally every facet of my life…except shopping. It urges me to buy things that, if I put just a little more time and thought into it, I might not want in the long run and thus regret buying. So this cute top is on pause right now. I want more spring/summer casual business clothes for work…but also need to reassess if this is one I really love or if it just checks that box (meaning there might be something else I want more). If I still love it in a week, I’ll take the leap.
  • Speaking of things I took off pause…these are the best under-skirt shorts I’ve ever worn. I have only worn them once, but it was on a super mobile day (i.e., I walked around a lot rather than just staying in/near my office, like most days), and they did not budge even a little bit. They’re also lightweight and super soft and low maintenance. I’m going to pause a little before purchasing more – give them a couple more wears to see if it was a one-time thing or if the quality persists after multiple washes – but if they continue to perform as well as they did the other day, Thigh Society can just take all my money. A good undershort is hard to find.

Enjoy your weekend! I hope you get to visit at least one indie bookstore (if that’s your thing)!

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Friday Five – Life and a Love Story

Posted in Alive, Beauty, Books, Bookshops, Food, Friday Five, Getting It Together, Mental Health, Poetry, Wonder on April 10, 2026| Leave a Comment »

What a year this week has been. I haven’t been this happy to see Friday in a minute. And I get to leave early to attend a program at the library this afternoon, so that’s exciting.

Here are some things I enjoyed reading this week:

  • I’m excited to add a life audit from The Good Trade to my goal review process. I’ve decided to incorporate little transition spaces into the year. Advent, for example, begins the church year during the same season the calendar year is finishing. Sounds like a built-in transition space to me. This will also help move my goal-setting into January, which I’ve been considering for the past couple of years. I could really use a soft launch for new/updated goals rather than a sprint in the middle of winter when all I’m supposed to be doing is cuddling up with books and tea. I think I’ll try that out next time and see how it goes.
  • I love this list of recommendations for National Poetry Month from Parnassus Books.
  • I am emerging from my meal planning funk. I’ve cooked a couple of old favorites recently, and I’m trying out some salad recipes that go beyond just greens and dressing. Natalie Gale (via The Good Trade) must have known I was struggling. I am more excited about this list of 99 healthy recipes (divided by dietary lifestyle) than I have been about figuring out what to make for dinner in a long time.
  • This list is very Good Trade heavy this week, and I’m not even sorry. Here’s some good stuff on the importance of cultivating soft skills, especially with AI becoming more prevalent. I especially like the reminder that these are not just things you have or don’t have – they can be learned! As a former communication instructor, I assure you that most people do have to learn these skills. Even those who have natural talent at influence or resilience or conflict management still have to train and practice that talent to get the most out of it. This reminder also helps me be more hopeful about my future, as teaching adjunct may be something I go back to when I retire from full-time work.
  • An otherwise terrifying week has been made a little kinder – a little more “oh yeah, that’s the point of living” – by the Artemis II crew. This is what happens when people who actually know and love the moon go up to see what more we can learn about it. We get a love story. I love that they carried the flag designated for the Apollo 18 mission. I love that they named a crater after a loved one. Before this week, I didn’t know that craters were formed when the moon protected us from space junk. I am happy to know that now. Wishing the crew a safe return home today. Go outside and say hello to Carroll tonight.

I hope you have a good weekend, friends!

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