by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
We’ve just been through the holiday shuffle with all the craziness and all the traveling and all the consumption of yummy foods that we have now deemed untouchable. If you’re a parent, you know that holidays with kids can get really out of hand really fast.
This isn’t just about surviving the holidays, though. This is about surviving every day that’s A Special Day at all. This is for any day that means a change to the routine or something out of the ordinary or some kind of celebration or just one of those I-don’t-have-anything-left-to-cook-dinner kind of days.
What happens when you go through seasons like this—seasons where things look a little different, maybe—is that kids start thinking the exception is the norm. It happens so quickly—sometimes in the span of a few hours. The other day, we were driving home from church, and we passed a local pizza place, and my 4-year-olds started losing their minds about how we didn’t stop for the pizza and what were we going to have for lunch and everybody in this car was going to die of starvation.
We’ve ordered pizza after church one time in the last year. But because it’s something they love, and because it was so out of the ordinary that it has not lost is shiny novelty, they beg for this routine-that’s-not-a-routine every time we drive past the pizza place.
This is what The Day After anything looks like with children.
We run a pretty tight ship in our household. We have to, or we would be more insane than we already are. But anytime we go see grandparents or the boys are away for a weekend or one of them has a program at school that throws the nighttime routine off a little, they completely forget the habits we’ve built over the last six or seven or ten years, depending on their age.
This is astounding to me. I have a habit of stuffing my face with chocolate every Friday night, because Fridays are my cheat days. I missed a Friday night last month, but, unfortunately, my brain is not as pliable as a child’s, and stuffing my face with chocolate every Friday night is still a deeply ingrained habit.
Days after anything with children look wildly annoying, because we have to repeat in our robot voice the same instructions over and over and over again—please put your plate away, please put your plate away—because they somehow forget that this is a thing, due to the one night this week they didn’t have to do it.
But days after anything with children are also wildly fun and entertaining, because we get to relive memories. My boys have been talking nonstop about how their uncle came down from Arkansas for Christmas this year and how much they love him and miss him and wish he were here all the time to bother them while they’re supposed to be taking a nap. They go over and over and over that day we ate lunch at 1 p.m. instead of 11 a.m. and that night they stayed up too late baking cookies for the neighbors and all the exceptions we’ve had this holiday season. They relive the memories, and I get to relive the memories, too.
The best way to survive a day after anything with children is to embrace it for what it is: an opportunity to clarify your instructions ten billion times (because that’s how many times you’ll repeat them), a chance to streamline your routines in a way you might never have considered before, an invitation to sit with memories and see the exceptional world from the eye of a child.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this inside look at my life and what the day after anything with children looks like. Every Friday, I publish a short blog on something personal that includes a valuable takeaway. For more of my essays and memoir writings, visit Wing Chair Musings.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
A couple of weeks ago, a kindergarten teacher at my boys’ elementary school died tragically in a fire during the early morning hours before school. We received a note from the principal in the late afternoon hours letting us know what had happened and how it would be addressed the next day at school.
This was a first for all of us in our school community. Nothing like this has ever happened in this safe bubble in which we live. We have, up until now, been spared these hard conversations.
The morning after receiving this news, I walked my boys to school the same as I always do. We had told them about the tragedy the night before, leaving out the details that had come out in the morning papers and choosing only to tell them that a teacher they knew had died in a fire. My first grader stuck by me the whole walk to school, instead of running ahead like he usually does, and when we were almost at the schoolyard, he said, “Did she really die?”
“Yes, she did,” I said. I tried to grasp for something else to say, but there are moments that simply have no words.
“In a fire?” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“How did she die in a fire?” he said. I could tell that he wanted a bit of reassurance that it would never happen to him, but this was something I couldn’t give him.
“Sometimes fires start and people don’t know it until it’s too late,” I said.
“So she died before the fire got her?” he said.
“Maybe,” I said. “We don’t really know.”
That was the end of his questioning at the time, but I knew he would have more for whomever would be talking to his classroom.
This boy’s classroom shares a hallway with all the kindergarten classrooms, and every morning I walk him down the length of it to his door. This morning the everything about that walk felt different—the air, the smell, the silence. The heaviness waiting for us was almost suffocating. Every single 5- and 6-year-old waiting in the hallways for school to start were quiet for the first time in history, probably. Teachers were trying to hold it together. Parents were hovering by their children. I could not look anywhere without tears burning the back of my nose.
None of my three boys who are in school had this particular teacher. I only passed her in the hallways. I didn’t really feel like I was entitled to feel as sad as I did. But I’m the kind of person who can feel the heaviness and the overwhelming sorrow and see it on the faces of others and feel it as if it’s my own. I turned away many times during that walk, because I did not want people to see me cry even though I had not known this teacher personally.
But on the walk home that day, I started thinking about sadness. We live in a world where the proper thing to do is hide our sadness. That’s why there are so many people struggling with depression, which is just anger and sadness turned inward. We don’t talk about these hard places in life, even though they’re everywhere.
The truth is, this isn’t the first hard place my boys have come up against. Maybe it’s the first tragic death they’ve had to sort through when they’re actually old enough to understand death. But they lost a sister five years ago. They know what this feels like. I know what this feels like. It feels like hurry up and get over it and then we’ll talk.
We are taught to believe that strength and perseverance and hope do not include brokenness. But that’s simply not true. Our brokenness, our sadness—they are the precursors to becoming strong and mighty. We step into our cracks and we kneel down and we pour our attention on them, and that is what becomes the superglue that puts us back together.
We do this alone and we do it together.
[Tweet “Our brokenness & sadness are not weaknesses. They are how we become strong & mighty.”]
When we turn away and hide our sadness or our mess or the hard places in our lives, apologizing that we can’t get it together, what we’re doing is denying others the opportunity to step into our cracks with us. To come alongside us and say, Hey, you’re not alone. To take our broken pieces and and glue them back into place.
The opposite of turning away is turning toward. I know that sounds obvious. But what exactly is turning toward in a situation like this one?
It’s acknowledging our sadness, however deep it goes. It’s talking about our sorrow, however founded or unfounded it may be. It’s sharing our pain, our sickness, our burdens with one another and healing together—whether that together is with friends, family or people you just met who share your own pain or sickness or the kind of burdens you carry.
Maybe some won’t always take our brokenness the right way. Maybe sometimes they’ll call us names or shame us or make us feel like we’ve done the exact thing we should never have done. But the only way to survive the hard places is to open them to the light. The only way back to strength is to acknowledge how this thing has weakened us. The only way out is through the cracks.
[Tweet “The only way to survive life’s hard places: let them shatter us & then open them to the light.”]
I hope you’ve enjoyed this inside look at my life and my perspective on clutter. Every Friday, I publish a short personal essay that includes a valuable takeaway. For more of my essays and memoir writings, visit Wing Chair Musings.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
Every night around our dinner table, Husband and I ask a few questions of our boys, but the most important one, in our opinion, is this one: What are you thankful for today?
We do this because we want to teach our children the practice of gratitude.
Gratitude is a way of turning every bad situation into a good one. If you know me personally, you might know—although I tend to hide it well—that I’m kind of a glass-half-full kind of person. If it comes down to hope or not hope, I’ll always choose hope, but my anxiety sometimes makes it difficult to embrace every situation in my life with gratitude. That’s why the practice of gratitude has become so important to me.
We get into funks, and I know I’m not alone in this. We can go days, maybe even weeks or months, and all we can see is the negative—this isn’t going to pan out, why am I even trying that, the kids are never going to give me a break.
Sometimes, as Husband likes to tell me, this kind of thinking can create reality. That’s because it’s all a matter of focus. If we’re focused on the negative, negative is all we’ll see. If we’re focused on the positive, positive is mostly what we’ll see.
[Tweet “If we focus on the negative, it’s what we’ll see. If we focus on the positive, it’s what we’ll see.”]
So gratitude is important for our family, because I have a couple of sons who share my amazing ability to lean toward the negative when an undesirable situation presents itself. Practicing gratitude around our dinner table helps us take a disappointing day and stamp it as wonderful, great, spectacular. Or maybe just a little bit better.
When gratitude becomes a danger is when you have a kid who’s had a really great day. His gratitude list might go on forever and ever.
This has happened to us before. Our second son is a glass-mostly-full kind of guy, and he will find thanks in everything. Which is wonderful. And also the slightest bit dangerous, considering we might be tethered to the dinner table for a good part of the evening (and we have many other things to do!).
One night around dinner, he listed as his gratitudes: Mama doing the dishes, his brothers cleaning up his shoes, his teacher for assigning homework he could do in five minutes, his daddy for cooking a yummy dinner, his socks for keeping his feet warm, the dirt out back for making a really nice pile, his baby brother for tossing him a ball, the trampoline for helping him perfect his double air flip, and on and on it went. By the time he was finished, no one had anything else to say. He’s listened every thankful possible, and we just agreed.
It’s also delightful when you have a kid like this—because doing the dishes? That’s definitely not my favorite thing to do. But he will regularly thank me for washing his plate so that he can have breakfast tomorrow. This does wonders for a parents self esteem and persistence.
It’s not easy to name our gratitude for every moment. Some moments are really, really hard. But as we practice, as we make this a consistent lens for the way we see the world, we’ll find that it becomes easier and easier even in the moments that seem like they can’t be redeemed for anything good.
Gratitude—not just for things but for people—has the power to change the world. Who can we thank today? What can we list as our thankful, which will pivot our focus? How might we improve our homes, our relationships, our communities with the practice of gratitude?
[Tweet “Gratitude has the power to change the world. Let’s practice it until the world explodes with light.”]
I hope you’ve enjoyed this inside look at my life and how gratitude might change the world. Every Friday, I publish a short blog on something personal that includes a valuable takeaway. For more of my essays and memoir writings, visit Wing Chair Musings.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
Husband and I recently returned from a creative conference, where we got to interact and have conversations about all sorts of things with people we’ve never talked to anywhere but online. I found new friends, with whom I talked about miscarriages, plans for the future, faith, parenting, writing, society’s prejudice against women and many more deep topics.
If you know me at all, you know that I’m not exactly comfortable with shallow conversation. I like to go straight for the heart, and it doesn’t take me long to get there. I have one of those faces, I guess. And I LOVE hearing people’s stories. I love the connections I made with people in this community. I came home feeling exhausted but, at the same time, refreshed.
And this got me thinking about the value of community.
There is the community of my children. I live with seven males, including six of them 9 years old and younger. We have a lot of diversity just under the roof of our house. When I forget how different we all are, my boys step up to the plate to show me, and it’s not always easy. We fight, we resolve, we laugh, we cry, we dislike, we forgive, but most of all we grow. Because what community does is it shows us our sameness but it also shows us our differences.
We are all different. We come from different pasts, from different viewpoints, from different world views. Even the little people within my home have different ways of seeing their worlds. And what would I miss of the world if I didn’t listen to their thoughts or see from their perspective?
What do we miss of truth and thought and love and hope and adventure and philosophy and surprise if we are not engaged in community?
There is value in our differences. There is value in our sameness. But we will never know know that value until we find community.
[Tweet “There is value in our differences and in our sameness. Community shows us our value.”]
We live in a fast-paced society. I know as well as anyone how time can get away from us. It’s not always easy for me to connect with you, because one of my twins will likely be running away in one direction while the other is running away in a completely opposite direction. And our lives can feel like that, too, like two separate trains headed in opposite directions. Community is challenging to create and maintain, because our lives are so busy. How do we find community and connection in a world like this one?
Well, a couple of weeks ago, my boys went trick-or-treating. We’re not big Halloween people, but our neighborhood is safe, and it’s been a loved/hated tradition for the last several years. Husband and I had just returned from the conference I referenced earlier where I had talked to many different people, and I had not yet recovered from my deep conversations. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stay out long without crumbling.
I dragged my heels a little. I didn’t really want to go.
We only visited two streets, but at every corner, I saw someone I passed every day on the walk to my boys’ school. We know each other only in passing. But this night, we lingered at their houses for a few minutes and talked to them a little more. I learned one was a chiropractor, that another had the hardest class she’s had to teach in a while, that another hates the Texas Halloween weather, because she’s from Colorado and it was usually snowing by the time Halloween came around.
I learned that community can be forged in a night of trick-or-treating, if we remain open to it.
And that means that community can be forged wherever we remain open.
We become stronger in community. We are better together than we could be alone. So take a few minutes today and get to know someone. It’s likely they’ve been longing for the connection, too.
[Tweet “We are better together than we could be alone. This is the value of community.”]
I hope you’ve enjoyed this inside look at my life and my perspective on community. Every Friday, I publish a short blog on something personal that includes a valuable takeaway. For more of my essays and memoir writings, visit Wing Chair Musings.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
We’ve seen a lot of backlash in the last few days after Trump’s election to the presidency, haven’t we? Many of us have remained quiet, watching the disaster unfold. Some of us have entered the fight, our fists raised and ready. Some of us brought the fight.
My heart has been heavy in the days since the election, not just for my people of color, female, gay, underprivileged, handicapped friends but for all those who are hurting, on both sides, from the rift that has once again been forged between us all. I am not immune to the emotions of this aftermath; I, too, have felt the urge to unfriend a person who supports the candidate who was not mine, the person who is dismissive of the issues surrounding this election, the person who calls the ones who voice their concerns—some of them lovingly, some of them recklessly—whiners and complainers and sore losers.
I, too, have been filled with disgust by the male friend who says women should “get their panties out of a wad and suck up the news that we have a sexist president.” I, too, have been frustrated by the friend who painted all Trump supporters with a broad stroke and called them all racist, despicable, sexist, homophobic, prejudiced. I, too, have rolled my eyes at the evangelical Christian friends who say that they had a prophetic dream—God told them that this is the man who will make America great again.
I am not a politically outspoken, controversial person by nature. I like to walk the line, because, well, I’m not a big fan of conflict. I have never exclusively chosen one party over the other, even though I hail from a family that has always voted for one side. Some years I have voted Republican. Some years I have voted Democratic. There is no one party for me.
Maybe that’s why it’s been so easy for me to see the issues surrounding this campaign in a clearer, more obvious way than some of my friends. I don’t know. But I can say, with certainty, that this is not my man, we have work to do, and I am sorry.
Trump is Not My Man
Let’s start with this is not my man. I do not personally know Donald Trump. So there is that, and I admit that this could be a major flaw in my rhetoric—at least this portion of my argument.
I do, however, know the Trump who has campaigned for this presidency. I know the persona his campaign managers curated for this election cycle. I know the Trump who debated with a woman and had every opportunity to apologize for what he had said and done to women in the past (but, frankly, too few years ago), and instead dismissed his behavior as women being what they are (rather than who they are), men being men, talk being unimportant locker room talk—thereby telling every other man (not all of them—I know there are many decent and respectable men who would never look at a woman the way this Trump did) it was perfectly acceptable behavior to, essentially, objectify and sexualize women.
I know the Trump who has, even during his march to the presidency, never once edited out his racial slurs, bigotry, sexism, gay bashing, pre-teen-esque bullying of handicapped individuals and—perhaps more disturbing—never once had the decency or conscience to tell the public he was sorry, it was stupid, he will do better in the future in a genuine I’ll-do-better way (instead, his apologies have sounded more like my 10-year-old apologizing for “accidentally” going over on his allotted screen time because he doesn’t want to lose the privilege of screen time)—and because of this lack, he has shown every other person in America who believes black people are less than, Muslims should go home, women are inferior to men, gays don’t deserve to live, bullying is way you come out on top, handicapped people have nothing to offer society but burdens, that they are justified in their slurs, bigotry, sexism, gay bashing, pre-teen-esque bullying of those who are weaker.
I know the Trump who ran a presidential campaign on belittling, misunderstanding, pointing fingers, blaming and never taking responsibility in any genuine, heartfelt way for any of his mistakes.
And now he is our nation’s leader. Our leader. OUR LEADER.
Regardless of whether or not Trump is, in private, this person depicted in his presidential campaign is a moot point. This is who he has been in the public’s eye, to date. It’s not easy being a public figure. Even with what little celebrity I have, I know this. People don’t see the whole you. They attack and criticize you for the most ridiculous things. The public can be hateful and brash, and today’s hero could be tomorrow’s doormat.
But a public figure—especially when that figure represents the American public (like, say, a presidential candidate)—has a responsibility to the people. He has a responsibility to protect that public, to love that public, to uphold—even in his moments of privacy—the best interests and values of that public. From the day Trump signed up to run for president, his burden of representing that public began—and because of his questionable campaign platform, (maybe the strategy was to purport him as a laughable, uncaring, juvenile caricature? In that case, good job, campaign managers.), because he has never once taken responsibility for his (normally) societally unacceptable behavior, because he has never apologized for his rash and insensitive words to those who have been hurt by them, he has empowered every other bigot, misogynist, homophobe, xenophobe and bully in this country, shaking out the red carpet, nodding his head and saying, “Yes, as a matter of fact, it’s perfectly acceptable to conduct yourself in this way for you own ends.”
The bullies have been around a long time. We’ve always known that.
The problem is that now they’ve been empowered by the American public.
I’m not whining. I’m not throwing a fit. I’m not rioting or condoning violence or even marching to Washington (though I can’t say I haven’t seriously considered that last one). We’re dealing with facts here, and it’s not helpful to say this doesn’t exist, this doesn’t happen, all the Trump opponents are being loud sore losers. I live in the deep south. Racism and sexism and gay bashing and bullying are alive and well here.
So many people, in these days after the election, have dismissed the concerns of my people of color (POC) friends. Don’t think it’s real? I have a very good friend who has chronicled my family’s growing up with beautiful photos from the time my oldest son was 2 years old. I worked with her during my days as a reporter at the San Antonio Express-News, a large newspaper in Texas. This friend was at Starbucks the day after the election, talking with a friend on the phone. She was crying. When she finished talking, she stood up and headed out toward the parking lot, when the words of a man behind her stopped her in her tracks. “I’d be sad, too, if I had to go back to Mexico,” he said. She invited him to say those words, again, to her face. He declined without another word.
Here are some facts about my friend: She’s a light-skinned Latina. She was born here in America. She has done a great service to this country, both by working as a photojournalist for years, and, now, empowering girls on a daily basis through her work with the Girl Scouts of America. She is beautiful, intelligent, creative, strong, AMERICAN.
Now. The bullies have been around a long time. We’ve always known that. The problem is that THIS IS WHO HAS BEEN EMPOWERED BY THE AMERICAN PUBLIC.
Let’s just think about this concept, for a minute, in terms of parenting. I am the mother of several sons. Sometimes my boys catch me in the act of eating those Trader Joe’s dark peanut butter cups I’ve hidden in a drawer in my closet because (1) I don’t want to share and (2) I don’t want my kids to see me eating something that’s not good for my body. We are a food conscious family most of the time. We try to only eat what is grown from the ground, sustainably harvested and humanely butchered. But when my kids catch me popping that piece of chocolate, do you think our values for eating are upheld in that moment? No. The next time a friend offers them a peanut butter cup at school, they’ll think, “Well, my mom ate one that time, so I guess it’s okay to have this.” And then they’ll be introduced to the magic that is chocolate peanut butter cups.
This is a light-hearted example, I know. So let’s go for something a little more serious. Let’s say I tell my kid bullying is not kind, not desirable, not tolerated, in any shape or form. But I regularly bully my kid to get him to do what I want (Calm down. I don’t. This is just an example. We actually have a very democratic home, which some readers will probably say is the whole problem with the world. Ah, well. Can’t please them all.). What do you think my kid will do when he’s not with me on the school playground and he’s angry at another kid for not playing the freeze tag game according to his rules? That’s right. He’ll bully to get what he wants—because he’s seen from me that this is how you get what you want.
The fact of the matter is that what our kids see and hear from us, they do. Who we are, they become (scary, I know).
What the American public sees and hears from its elected leader, they give themselves permission to say and do (again, not all of them. There are good and decent people among us). Who he is, they become.
I’m not giving Trump too much credit. Trust me. I’m an eternal optimist at heart (though my husband would disagree). I believe, wholeheartedly, that we can turn this around.
But this is not my man. The Trump who has, to date, shown his face to the American public, is not my man. He—call it a caricature, call it a mistake—has effectively uprooted the values of the American public with a campaign built on all I’ve referenced above. If he can admit to as much, then perhaps he’ll become my man. If not? Well, that leads me to my next point.
We Have Work to Do.
“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality,” said Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a suffragette who worked tirelessly to ensure women had the right to vote. Our history books tell the long story of America’s journey toward equality. We’ve come a long way in our fight for women’s rights, civil rights, gay rights, handicapped rights, all sorts of rights, but, because of this 2016 election empowerment issue, we, unfortunately, have a lot of old ground to cover.
Another friend of mine recently told a story of her two Muslim friends who had soda cans thrown at them and were told to go ahead and pack their bags; they’d be thrown out of America soon. A black writer friend saw the KKK out and about in her area of the south (yes, it’s their right to organize, no it’s not their right to be a public menace and threaten black people). This is real.
I’m a white, heterosexual woman. I’m relatively safe—with the exception of the men who were empowered by the American vote to look upon women as sexual objects (I’d invest in a wardrobe of moo moos if I didn’t think there would be a disturbed man, somewhere, who would actually find that wardrobe attractive). But that means I have the greatest responsibility to this fight.
White people: It’s your responsibility to defend the rights of the ones who are scared, concerned, threatened, bullied, beaten, discriminated against.
IT IS NOT HELPFUL TO DISMISS THEIR FEARS AND CONCERNS.
It is my job to stand up for my light-skinned Latina friend and say that the sort of behavior we saw from the man in line at Starbucks will not be tolerated. It is my job to stand up for my POC friends, my homosexual friends, my handicapped friends and the women, like me, who feel objectified, sexualized, diminished and devalued. It is my job to put feet to a civil rights movement—to acknowledge what’s happening and not dismiss it as post-election tantrums or giving Trump too much credit or people whining and complaining and being the worst sore losers in the history of our country.
We all have a responsibility to our brothers and sisters of the American public. We all need to stand up—but that burden is even greater on the white woman, the white man and every person who voted for Trump.
Which leads me to my last point:
I’m Sorry.
I sensed all of this ignorance surrounding the ballot this year long before going to the poll, but because I’m not a politically oppositional person, because I was more concerned with my own popularity as a (relatively) public figure, I did not say anything. I did not say that this was not a vote for healthcare reform or abortion or all these issues we’ve been talking about for years and years and years. I did not say that this year’s vote was a vote for the nation’s values, the nation’s ideology, the nation’s identity. I did not say that the country’s values are much more important than a candidate’s business sense, wealth, bank account, success, ability to “make America great again.”
You see, sometimes it’s more complicated than Red and Blue. Some of us might have voted Blue our whole entire life because of the Christian values upheld (or claimed) by that side. Some of us have only ever voted Red, because that’s who’s been known to look out for the working man (and woman). But this election was about much more than religion and the working man and abortion and military strategy and healthcare reform and national debt and education.
This election was about who we are as an American people. This election was about what we really think about all those people we view as our “other”—those people with different skin tone, different nationalities, different beliefs and religious choices, different genders, different love interests, different physical capabilities. This election held our identity and the values of our country on the line.
My silence in the days before this election was a vote against this nation’s values.
It was my duty to say this before the election. To my discriminated friends: I’m sorry for remaining silent. Sometimes we get lost in a naive world where we assume everyone else sees what we see and knows what we know. My Facebook feed on the day after the election proved that theory wrong.
We can no longer vote for our values. But we can, by our actions, in our speech, in our standing up for the oppressed and our acknowledging that there is a problem, in our apologizing, in our taking responsibility like the big boys and girls we are, in our peaceful interactions with one another, still uphold the values that made this nation great to begin with: Equality. Love. Justice. Freedom.
It’s not easy to apologize and take responsibility for our blind spots and our insensitive dismissals and our mistakes. But it’s pretty simple, really. I’ll go ahead and start.
I’m sorry.
I did not vote for Trump, but my silence in the days before this election was a vote against this nation’s values. I did not do my due diligence in acknowledging what the vote was really about.
I will do better now. My “other” friends? Those of you who live differently, love differently, look differently than I do? I am with you. I understand your fear, your disappointment, your anger, your protests, and I am with you. I will listen, I will march, I will fight (peaceably). I will love you through words, actions and my mighty pen. I will do whatever it takes to make sure you are protected, served and treasured by this nation that is made greater because of you and your significant contributions to it.
“And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!”
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
Periodically throughout the year, Husband and I will walk around our house with a box or a trash bag, whatever is needed, and get rid of things. We do this because with six children, our house could easily become overwhelmed with toys, stickers, art supplies, rocks our sons decided to collect on the way home today, or, most recently, acorns that brought into our house the delightful acorn weevil larvae, hatched into our empty banana bowl. Good thing it was empty.
I’ve always been a person who feels stressed and suffocated in cluttered places. I like to have space. This is a personality thing, but psychology and neurology are both fields that have conducted studies about simplification. What research suggests is that when we simplify our homes and, hence, our lives, we find more energy, more pleasure and calmer attitudes. We also can create better without clutter. We can make decisions better without clutter. We can become better people without clutter.
There is this space on one of my kitchen counters, where my sons who go to school pile their school things. They have folders and papers and agendas and sometimes even random pencils, and, instead of putting these things in the designated places—because there are designated places—they pile them all into a precarious mountain that will most likely fall when one of them runs past it too quickly. Which is pretty much guaranteed in our home.
Every evening, when I’m done with my work, I have the pleasure of entering the kitchen, and the first thing I see is this pile. By this time, the pile has been knocked over several times, which means the papers are not so neatly stacked as they were, if they ever were, but are more like pinwheels, turned in ever direction. When I see this pile, my throat closes up a little. Clutter makes it hard to breathe.
But I’m not even just talking about the physical clutter of our lives. I’m talking about the schedule clutter of our lives, too. We live in such a fast-paced world, one where we find it necessary to do everything and be everywhere and keep going until we can’t go anymore. This is the road to success, right?
Wrong.
What simplification of our lives and homes does is it opens in us space enough to think more clearly and deeply, to spend more time discovering ourselves and the people around us, to sit outside on the back porch and linger over a dinner that all the kids complained about but ate anyway.
Our minds need space to consider important decisions in business and family and personal life. Our bodies need space to stretch out and move and not puncture our foot on an errant toy wherever we step (we’re still working on that one). Our lives need space to dream and create and grow.
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Earlier this week, I was working on the layout of one of my books. I was struck by the small amount of white space—when you’re laying out text in a text-heavy book, you don’t want a whole lot of white space, because it represents wasted space, or, in other words, wasted paper. But as I stared at the little bit of white space in my book, I thought about the white space in our lives. We need that white space. We need it more than the text.
In the next few weeks, Husband and I will be doing another purge of our house, because our oldest has a birthday in a few days, and Christmas is coming up. Grandparents have a really hard time not buying toys for all of our boys. So old toys will be donated or thrown away if they have no more life left.
This is a sad thing (everybody will miss that Buzz Lightyear with a missing leg), but it is also a wonderful one. We get to teach our boys what it looks like to intentionally create white space in their lives. We get to demonstrate for them just how much simplifying our home and our lives can open wells of creativity, connection, passion, and wonder.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this inside look at my life and my perspective on clutter. Every Friday, I publish a short personal essay that includes a valuable takeaway. For more of my essays and memoir writings, visit Wing Chair Musings.