But let's not waste words or time on that, lest this entry never, ever be completed.
1. I discovered the Unfuck Your Habitat website and tumblr via facebook about a month ago and I am now gently obsessed. I have the #UfYH tag open in a Safari tab on my phone so I can refresh it every day and look at people's before and after cleaning photos. It's funny - the site simultaneously helps me feel hugely relieved over the state of my dwelling (which is clearly and undeniably not all that messy, relatively speaking) and motivates me to follow the site author's advice and clean things up more often. Her rule of thumb is that any room that takes more than 20 minutes to reset to a pleasant state counts as messy, which seems fair. I'm still crap at remembering to take before photos of my own work, which then makes the after photos rather superfluous, but at least I am producing some before and after results. I don't think I'll be ready for my shelter magazine spread anytime soon, but a few areas of the house are the cleanest they've been in ages. I feel like this new approach is helping me to change the way I think about my messes in a small but significant way, to look for different ways to deal with them rather than continuing to move piles around my house. I'm also coming to realize that a lot of tiny, steady improvements ultimately add up to the same overall result as one big sweeping cleaning spree, and they take a lot less time and energy. (Plus it's not as frustrating when they inevitably don't last due to the constant creep of entropy.)
2. I recently read The Girl With All the Gifts and loved it, even though there were parts that made me literally squirm in my seat while I was reading. I didn't see the ending coming, either, which is always a nice surprise. I figured it wouldn't be all unicorns and rainbows but I did not anticipate the last turn it took. Five stars, wholly recommend. Unless you don't like fast zombies. Then, perhaps not.
3. Right now I'm working on What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. At least three times already I've had to assure my coworkers I was laughing at the book rather than at them. I'm thinking about buying a copy so that we have it on hand for the boys to read when they're older.
4. I discovered Manhattan Nest via a link on another blog, and I want to take a day off to sit on the couch in my pajamas reading every post in his archive. Then I want to hire him to renovate my kitchen and bathroom.
5. A friend alerted me to the existence of the #29daysofcomplaining hashtag / meme on facebook and it's pretty much the best new holiday tradition ever. I'm actually a really grateful person, but I still roll my eyes at the thirty days of gratitude posts, especially toward the end of the month where it's obvious that everyone's grasping. About a dozen people have already left comments to say they find the daily complaints hilarious, which was the entire point.
6. This happened and I couldn't put it on facebook because I'm friends with MB's mamaw.
7. One of my UfYH-inspired cleaning projects was to deal with the huge stack of preschool art that was living on our dining room buffet. I felt somewhat stymied because I definitely didn't want to save it all, but I felt a little bad about not wanting to save it all. Then I remembered that ages ago someone recommended an app for archiving one's child's precious creations. A cursory google search led to this article, and based on the descriptions I chose and purchased ArtKive for $4.99, the most I've ever spent on an app. I'm pretty sure I won't have any buyer's remorse. I took all of Nico's previously-enshrined art projects down from the playroom blinds, put everything into ArtKive, ruthlessly archived and culled the new stuff, and then hung up the new elite favorites. Done.
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