Rob and William have had their first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine! Pfizer, if you are interested! (I find I am very interested, despite, as someone mentioned their nurse pointed out to them, never giving one moment’s thought to the maker of my flu shot.) They got them in the afternoon; that same evening/night, William had a little fever, a pretty bad headache, a pretty bad sore throat—but felt better by morning, and completely well by mid-day. Rob had no side effects.
On a completely unrelated topic, I am dealing with a bout of Possession Oppression. It crept up on me gradually, then in a rush, and I think part of the recent surge is because we’ve been talking about when we’re going to bring our housecleaners back, so I am seeing my house through their eyes.
Another part is that there has been this long pandemic time period when certain things were in short supply and other things needed to be stocked up on to reduce shopping trips, and we are still IN that time though it feels like it is lessening, but in the meantime there is a backlog, and also a bit of a problem of me failing to prevent myself from continuing to add to the problem. We WILL go through all the hand soap eventually, so this is not a matter of donating it or whatever, it’s more a matter of I need to stop buying more of it every time I see it even though it still falsely triggers a “HAND SOAP = PRECIOUS ITEM!!! PURCHASE!!!!!!!!” This may take time.
In this same category: my parents moved across the country, and they did not want to pack/move all of their cleaning supplies and laundry supplies and foil/baggies/wrap and so forth, and I WANTED those things and am GLAD to have those things and we WILL use them all eventually, but Right At This Moment they are a little oppressive in their multiple boxes of partially-used items when we already have a full supply of partially-used items as well as pandemic-level supplies of back-ups for those items. (I mention “partially-used” specifically to prevent the suggestion of donating these things to a local pantry. And anyway: we will use them! I consider them Riches! It’s just that RIGHT NOW and COMBINED WITH OTHER THINGS they are adding to the OVERALL feeling of oppression, and also to the feeling that our housecleaners are going to be side-eyeing the situation.)
Another element is that I’ve been feeling inclined toward certain Little Indulgences because of the pandemic. If I am at the grocery store and there is room in the cart, I am more likely to buy snack cakes for the children, or the weird new Oreo flavor. If I am shopping online, I am more likely to buy fun little things, too: a new conditioner! a new skin care product! a new nail polish! a pretty mug! some festive string lights! Combine this with the feeling of needing to Stock Up, and I am ending up with TOO MANY new conditioners, TOO MANY new skin care products, TOO MANY little pretty things and product samples and fun things to try.
And THIS leads a category of items I find very difficult to know what to do with, which is “Fun New Things I Tried and Didn’t Like, But Now They’re Partially-Used and Can’t Be Donated.” It’s the sort of thing where maybe I could ask friends if they wanted the things? But that feels a little wearying. And when I picture it reversed, and friends asking if others want their partially-used conditioners/lotions/etc., I don’t find myself thinking “Ooo! Yes! Fun!” Maybe if everyone brought their stuff and laid it all out and people could take what they wanted? But even that feels sort of…tiring…and also, we’re not yet getting together in person.
Another element is one I feel a little shy to talk about because it involves food/dieting. You may know that generally I follow a keto diet; now that I am maintaining my current weight, I take one day off from that a week, and on that day I eat EVERYTHING I WANT. This has led to something I consider a USEFUL DIET TOOL, which is that I never have to think “I can’t have that” but instead I think “I can have that on my next Day Off.” I will see something fun and anti-keto while shopping (new Pop-Tart flavor! weird appealing cereal! yummy-looking Spring Edition cookie!), and I don’t have to pine/suffer: I can buy it and put it aside and have it pretty soon. But partly due to the same pandemic shopping practices that lead to too many hand soaps and other necessities, and partly due to the same pandemic shopping practices that lead to too many conditioners and nail polishes and other indulgences, and partly that sometimes I want to try something that is only sold in a 2-pound pack, and partly that my Day Off eyes are much bigger than my Day Off stomach, I have ended up with embarrassing piles of candies and cookies and snack cakes. “Well, give the extras to the children!,” you might suggest, which is where I am forced to reveal that it has recently gone beyond that in scope. Like, it’s too much to give to the children. Clearly the main thing I need to do is stop buying SO MANY TREATS. And I WILL! I WILL! But also: what to do with a bunch of opened, partially-used treats that can’t be donated? Well. Part of this will be resolved naturally: I will stop buying so many; the levels will recede; the children will do their share; and soon perhaps I will be able to bring out the extras at get-togethers, or Paul and I will be able to leave things in the break rooms at work.
But last night it was all oppressing me so much it felt like I was on the edge of panic. Some of that was Night Sadness, and the only cure was to go to sleep; but then this morning I also tried to CHIP AWAY AT IT a little. This isn’t something where I can just go through and Fix It: there has to be the Buying Less element, and the Gradually Using It Up element, and so forth, and that will take time. But I’ve noticed that sometimes, even doing a relatively small amount of work, even an amount of work that might FEEL like it’s not worth doing because it would make AT BEST such a tiny insignificant dent, is enough to shift the line from TIME TO PANIC back to Okay, Okay, This Is Going To Be All Right.
Such was the case this morning. My OVERALL goal was “make even a small difference; don’t try to solve the whole problem right now.” Here were my more specific goals, all of which I accomplished:
• Go through the Treats Heap and see if anything is unopened and CAN be donated (sometimes I buy multiples of an item); put those in a bag for the donation bin at the grocery store. Move SOME treats to the Kids’ Treat Shelf; put some other treats aside to refill that shelf later. Throw away some treats. Sort the rest of the treats neatly into the mostly-unused cabinets in my little sunporch room, where it reduces the embarrassment I feel about the housecleaners seeing it, but also I can easily see what I have. Resolve to CONSULT THESE SUPPLIES before buying MORE.
• Glance into the bathroom medicine cabinet and throw out even just a few things: the beard oil I gave Paul for Christmas many years ago, which he didn’t like the idea of and never uses; the half-used sample of hand lotion I didn’t like the smell of; the once-used pot of a face treatment that maybe caused my weeks of itchy eyelids so I’m too nervous to try it again; a lipstick I never use. Gather up any unopened beauty samples I don’t want and put them in the gift drawer in case they’d work to put in with a care package sometime. Resolve to keep more on top of this in the future: it is worth it to toss just one item.
• Go through the bathroom-supplies cupboard and see if there are unopened things we don’t want, and put those in a bag for the donation bin at the grocery store.
• Take that conditioner I used twice but didn’t like and yet kept in my shower because it was more than I usually spend on a conditioner and I’d thought it was a treat and that I would love it, and put it into the kids’ shower where perhaps someone will use it.
• Commit to using up the six little sample bottles of shampoo/conditioner and three little sample bottles of body wash, because then they can be GONE OUT OF THE SHOWER and stop making it feel so cluttery.
THEN: I am going to TRY to avoid what is apparently a common United States Consumer Cycle, which is to buy too much, and then have the relief of DECLUTTERING and GETTING RID OF THINGS; but then the cupboards/closets feel so blissfully empty/available, and also we accidentally got rid of things we were actually using, so then we buy too much again. (Businesses LOVE this and encourage it: it is a very high-profit for them if we keep throwing away perfectly good things and then re-buying.) I will not expect to fully succeed (I am aiming for an ADJUSTMENT rather than a revolution), but I will attempt to bring some awareness back into my shopping, and I will try to think of it as a waste issue as well as a financial one. Fun purchases are fine!—but I will space them out a little more so that I appreciate them and don’t waste them. Treats for Days Off are great!—but I will space them out a little more so the supplies don’t get oppressive rather than delightful, and when possible I will buy them in smaller packages. Happy Fun Things Coming in the Mail is an utterly understandable desire during a pandemic!—but I will imagine where those things will have to be stored in the house, and make sure I want to do that; and I will try not to buy things just because they’re on sale or just for the satisfaction of having Things On Their Way. Getting rid of things is fine!—but I will try to make sure I’m not just alleviating panic by getting rid of things I will then re-buy. And I will continue to work, as ever, on not caring what the housecleaners think, since they likely couldn’t care less, though they would very likely appreciate a reduction in clutter even more than I would.