the feedback i’ve received about the reality project falls into two categories. the first resonates most with me and goes something like,

“i love the reality project! it makes me feel better about the domestic disorder that hacks away at my sense of well-being.”

the second category of folks confess,

“i truly do not have alcoves in my home that are messy. messes make me crazy. i have to clean them. i have always been this way.”

today’s submission is from kathi, who seems to somehow fit into both of the above categories. she explains,

i do not function well in disorder. that  does not mean the disorder does not exist – it just merely gets moved around a lot.

who knows what separates those who put things away from those of us who simply step over the crap on the way to something else.  i cannot ponder this right now though because i am debating what is funnier — kathi’s picture below, or her cooresponding narrative.

kathi writes,

there is one corner of my house that doesn’t get moved around a lot. it truly is a “still life.” it contains:

• loose screws
• a vac steam machine that i fell in love with for two weeks and now never use
• a mannequin with a smart tote bag over her shoulder ready to go to town, except she lost her hair
• in the mannequin’s tote bag is a knitting project that i entirely forgot that i had started
• a clean air machine that never gets plugged in (we live in the los angeles area so we certainly could use this)
• a dustbuster that i have never used but it is plugged in and draining electricity
• a tool bag that i never returned to the garage after a project completed in november of 2010
• each of the four black attache cases (on the shelf above the floor) is from a different stage in my career. i will not be returning to any of these stages, so it’s silly to save the bags
• a magazine organizer (next to the attache cases) holding nine issues of architectural digest from 2008, all dog-eared with ideas i intended to recreate in my home – as if i (a) had time to read them a second time or (b) there were a chance in hell that these ideas could actually work in this life as we know it
• and last but not least, a hot glue gun, because i am always trying to keep things “together” despite the gravitational pull toward chaos

that poor mannequin! she has ideas, she’s creative, she’s handy, she has old identities tucked into little cases, she simply cannot finish all of the projects she’s started, she’s losing her hair, and despite her craftiest hot-glue-gun attempts, she can’t seem to fix those loose screws!

i love her. she is me.

the reality project continues, thanks to these pics from sharon in PA. the first introduces a prime breeding ground for chaos and shame: putting one’s house on the market to sell. let’s get a show of hands for all of those who have shoved a dress-up-purse full of baby bottle attachments and kids’ shoes into the oven right as the realtor and prospective buyers were pulling into the driveway. don’t look so smug. those of you who filled the trunks of your cars with this stuff are not much better. but i digress.

sharon writes,

when we were getting ready to move, we cleaned all the clutter off the fridge. i really liked how it looked and decided to keep the fridge in the new house clutter free. right.

of course, the upside about moving (once you finally trick a buyer into purchasing your old digs) is that packing presents a wonderful opportunity to purge your life of things including but not limited to:

• the heart-shaped crystal plate received 12 years ago as a wedding gift
• the baja hoodie you wore in eighth grade
• the dead battery collection accumulating in the sideboard drawer

but oh, how quickly the crap re-accumulates in the new house! behold this disaster atop the dresser of sharon’s ten-year-old.

sharon wants us to know that “the dresser knob on the left has not been hit by an engorgement charm. it just has a scrunchy wrapped around it, as do four of the five other knobs.”

thanks, sharon, for reminding me that i never want to move again. and p.s. i would give five scrunchies for a fridge that looks as orderly as yours does!

if you are reading this on break from ironing your underwear and fine-cleaning your bathroom tile grout, chances are, you could benefit from a lesson about the evolution and breeding habits of clutter.

thanks to gretchen‘s sophisticated time-lapse photography (read: two passing smart-phone shots), today’s reality project  post features two images of the same space.

kitchen -- SUNDAY

kitchen -- MONDAY

gretchen writes,

you know how sometimes you look around your house and think, “wow!  this place is a disaster – could it BE any more disgusting? i have to clean it up TODAY.” but then life gets in the way. let’s face it, when is cleaning up the constantly recurring mess more fun than spending time with your child, going to a concert, or just sitting down with a glass of wine because you are only one woman and you are tired at the end of the day? then when you look again 12 hours later (or so) you think, “hmm, apparently yes it COULD be more of a disaster.”

that is what this picture shows.

thank you, gretchen, for reminding us that just as rome wasn’t built in a day, neither are our colossal messes. you did the right thing in this situation. i hope you played with your kid, went to a concert, and had threeglasses of wine, all while sitting down! plus, as evidenced by monday’s shot, cleaning products can actually contribute to the clutter. we could all learn a lesson from you about priorities. 

speaking of priorities, read here about my friend susan, whose commitment to order involves a card catalog in her living room. but since she became a mother 19 months ago, her “chaos has quintupled.” we might all do well to take her advice:

nobody ever died from a messy coffee table.

the reality project  is off to a seamless start with pictures from carolyn. in addition to her responsibilities as a preschool teacher and a mom of two boys, carolyn makes and sells fabulous colorful aprons at the memphis farmers market, among other places. all this is to explain the scene you are about to behold:

carolyn writes, “this is the norm on any given day, and yes, we do eat dinner at that table every evening. all the crap gets moved around or just pushed to the end.”

the fun continues with this shot of the end table next to carolyn’s regular spot on the couch:

let’s play a game! can you spot the following?

• school stuff
• sewing stuff
• jewelry she’s taken off after a long day
• big cup of hot tea for the morning
• the “color swatch” that’s been on the wall for ages (color chosen and paint purchased ages ago, but it’s still not on the walls.)

carolyn, you win the prize for the most colorful take on chaos! and p.s. i will be contacting you about making me an apron!

wednesday marked the first day of hanukkah and the first day of december, and last sunday marked the first day of advent. my favorite local radio station began playing holiday music before thanksgiving, and a giant inflatable santa has been looming over union avenue since before the last pumpkin was procured from beneath his (slightly premature) air-filled feet. this is the time of year when i usually get serious about my spirituality.

in years gone by, i have read a bit of tillich each day, edited and published college students’ thoughts on advent, and spent time pouring over wonderful holiday stories by harper lee and truman capote. but those years are as i just described: gone by. there is no time for intense study, no time for ruminating on light in the darkness, no time to be so intentional about making room for hope and divinity and the dawn of new life. 

instead, there are santa beard christamas countdown calendars involving cotton balls and glue. there are cookie-baking parties and charlie brown specials. i think bonnie j. miller-mclemore says it best in her book entitled, “in the midst of chaos:”

“when people think of the spiritual life, they typically picture silence, uninterrupted and serene — a pastor’s study, a cloister walk, a monk’s cell. thinking of parenting, by contrast, they imagine noise and complication, dirty diapers, sleepless nights, phone calls from teachers, endless to-do lists, teen rooms strewn with stuff, and back seat pandemonium. by and large, these portraits are accurate. the life of faith requires focused attention that comes most easily when one is least distracted, while caring for children is one of the most intrusive, disorienting occupations around, requiring triage upon triage of decision and response. can one pursue a ‘spiritual’ life in the midst of such regular, nitty-gritty, on-the-alert demands” (2)?

when the holidays hit, there is no time to simulate the perfect conditions, tie up loose ends, or send grief away on a month-long cruise. my children are just as inclined to create poopy diapers and impromptu marker-on-wall illistrations on christmas morning as they are on every other day. there is no such thing as escaping the chaos in order to locate one’s spirituality. the meaning is IN the chaos. the chaos IS the pastor’s study, the cloister walk, and the monk’s cell. parents have the added challenege and opportunity to look for the extraordinary in the ordinary.

so that is what i’m going to do this holiday season. i am going to look for moments of deep truth and goodness in the midst of our particular brand of pandemonium. and then i am going to post about these moments in an image or phrase. if the bedlam that exists in your house should happen to contain a glimpse of divinity or insight, do share (themsrevolution(at)gmail(dot)com)! there’s no telling what we can find in the midst of chaos.

[source for this post can be found on the bibliography page located on the sidebar to your right.]

remember when i showed you this?

and this?

and do you remember when i blathered on about getting organized? my husband was excited when i revealed my plans to try out the reframe productivity system for creative people. however, many of you expressed your disappointment at my efforts to get my life in order. it seems that you LIKE seeing my disheveled mess of a life memorialized in photos and posted on the internet. furthermore, some of you have even confessed that these photos help you to feel better about yourselves. to this i say: a) you’re welcome, and b) don’t worry. there will always be plenty of chaos to go around.

today is day 16 of the program, and i am actually having fun with the process. my new file trays (labeled “do,” “file,” “delegate,” and “ideas”) assure that no stray papers ever hit my desk. my filing system is up to date for the first time since we moved into our current home (one year and eight months ago), and i now organize everything i need to do in this cute little vintage note card box:

now, instead of doing tasks according to when they pop into my head, i jot these little jobs down on cards and file them under the day on which i aim to do them. see?

yesterday, i began tackling my email inbox. if you are reading this, and you are wondering why i have not responded to the email you sent me in 75 B.C.E., it’s because re[frame] had not yet been invented back then. duh!

so now my office looks like this. it’s not perfect, and it never will be, but it’s definitely better:

and for those of you with appetites for other people’s slovenliness that cannot be satiated with the tangle of cords above, i submit to you my vanity:

this is where i like to store the occasional wine goblet and the toiletry bag i forgot to unpack after a trip to atlanta last october.

see, i told you that there will always be plenty of chaos to go around.

in light of yesterday’s post about the state of my kitchen,

i thought i’d string a few words together about housekeeping.

my parents, sibling, college roommate, husband, children, and friends know that i was simply born without the part of the brain that exhibits concern over the disorder of physical space and provides impetus to clean with tornadic vigor. this is unfortunate for reasons depicted above. i would argue, though, that this weakness is turning out to be a gift now that i am a parent, who is regularly called to tolerate not only my own personal chaos but that of the three other males (and four, if you count the dog), who live in my house.

but some messes, like the one in my kitchen yesterday, are magnaimous enough to defeat even my inner slob. and on those rare occasions, i have no choice but to put on some loud music, go against my very nature, and CLEAN. thanks to these words in barbara brown taylor’s an altar in the world, i am beginning to see that there is a special sort of dignity to be found in scraping smushed strawberries off the floor with my fingernail:

“i no longer call such tasks housework. i call them the domestic arts, paying attention to all the ways they return me to my senses. when the refrigerator has nothing in it but green onions that have turned to slime and plastic containers full of historic leftovers, i know my art is languishing. when i cannot tell whether that is a sleeping cat or an engorged dust ball under my bed, i know that i have been spending too much time thinking. it is time to get down on my knees. after i have spent a whole morning ironing shirts, folding linens, rubbing orange-scented wax into wood, and cleaning dead bugs out of the light fixtures, i can hear the whole house purring for the rest of the afternoon. i can often hear myself singing as well, satisfied with such simple, domestic purpose.

…this is my practice, not yours, so please feel free to continue calling such work utter drudgery. the point is to find something that feeds your sense of purpose, and to be willing to look low for that purpose as well as high. it may be chopping wood and it may be running a corporation. whatever it is, perhaps you will hold open the possibility that doing it is one way to learn what it means to become more fully human, as you press beyond being good to being good for something, in a world with the perfect job for someone like you” (120).

now let’s be honest. i’m not much into ironing, and the bugs in my light fixtures are there to stay. but after yesterday’s (eventual) kitchen cleanup, i could almost hear our house purring. i’ve been trained to look for meaning in sacred texts, good conversation, masters degree programs, and travels to far lands. but there is a lot of truth to be found when i’m on my knees, bringing order out of chaos within the four walls of our fabulously messy house.

[the source for this post can be found on the bibliography page located on the sidebar to your right.]

our little bird is into everything now, and he truly seems happiest when he is stair-climbing (if only this were true for the rest of us). the problem is that when the monkey went through this stage, i accidentally put a large hole in the wall when i was trying to install a baby gate.

we live in a different house now, but the situation is still the same: climbing baby, sheet rock on one side, iron rail on the other. we had a very fancy retractable contraption professionally installed at the top of the stairs when we moved into our house but repeating this elaborate scheme seems so silly when this works just as well:

yes, that is one of the monkey’s outgrown shoes that is ever-so-strategically used to keep the ladder from rattling around. 

our whole family, including the 3-year-old, has grown quite accustomed to climbing over this ladder no less than 30 times a day when we want to go up or down the stairs.

since this was the brainchild of my husband, i’m going to put it to you this way. the makeshift baby gate is

a) tragic

b) genius

c) all of the above

i pick c.

what are the makeshift fixtures in your life?

it was christmas eve, and my husband was at the grocery store stocking up for the following morning’s family gathering. young couple nate and nicole sat before me in my living room as they perused sample prayers for their upcoming wedding. i, their officiating minister, had envisioned a professional chat, wherein i would outline their choices for the service and the theological significance conveyed by each. i would pay careful attention to the dynamic and energy of the couple’s relationship so that i could craft an honest and fitting wedding homily for their big day.

i think it is safe to assume that nate and nicole afforded their minister many glimpses into their relationship during our time together but, sadly, i did not take note of any of them. instead, i held my fussy 11-month-old in the wake of his failed nap and tried hard to ignore his obvious need for a new diaper. the eternally gracious couple would have accommodated my need to dash to the nursery for a quick pants change, but such a trip would have left my three-year-old under the christmas tree, where he was already beginning to open countless presents, despite my sternest of mommy-stares.

when i was raised in a culture, influenced so heavily by women’s progress and the promise that women could “have it all” (a fulfilling career, a joyous family life, and time for self, others, and matters of the spirit), this christmas eve circus and the superhero existence required for such fullness of life were not what i had pictured. i am a full-time mother and a part-time minister, whose partner is as supportive financially, domestically, and emotionally as he can possibly be. even so, i confess that if this chaotic and often isolating juggling act is the picture of “having it all,” then i no longer want it all.

there is such a vast territory between the ultra-traditional women’s roles of long ago and the ultra-idealistic standards for women’s success that are still prized by our culture and dangled before us like distorted fun house mirrors. who lives in this territory? are there women out there who are blazing a new path to a more balanced existence, who are replacing these old models for motherhood with the creative hum-drum of their daily lives?

it is my hunch that many wonderful, creative women live in this territory, and i am hereby making it my job to highlight as many of them as i can. it is my hope that by putting our stories together, we could go from creating healthier lives for ourselves, to creating a healthier culture of motherhood for the world.

let the MakeShift revolution begin!

the first picture in this post was taken during my brother’s wedding, an experiment in chaos wherein i was the officiant, my eldest was the ring bearer, and my husband was a groomsman. the second picture reveals the mess my children made during the last dinner party i hosted. good thing our guests had a sense of humor!