The beginning of the "junk habits" overhaul...

            Hi friends. I’m going to start this off by informing you that I am not a messy person, no matter what this post leads you to believe. Got it? Me, Hannah – not a messy person. Now we can move on.

            As I said in my last post, I live with my mom and sisters in the same house that I grew up in. I’m still in the same bedroom I’ve been in since I was about eight or nine years old. It’s been through multiple arrangements and three different wall colors. The furniture has stayed the same, with two exceptions: a bookshelf and a wall shelf, both added within the last six years. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with my room (other than it being a tad on the small side); but I’ll admit to feeling sometimes as if there’s nothing really right with it either. (I’m being a tad dramatic here, but doesn’t it make everything feel more interesting?)

            But here’s the thing: as much as I do love my bedroom, it is definitely very small. And as happens when you live in the same place for your whole life, I have accumulated a lot of stuff. And the thing with having a small area to do with as you please is that there isn’t a whole lot of room for this plethora of stuff. And so it starts to feel cramped. And cluttered. And dare I say it, messy. Now, some people may be able to live with a messy room. I know people who get mad when their room is clean because then they have no idea where anything is. Organized chaos, they call it. That’s all well and good – I can do a bit of organized chaos. It can be exhilarating, honestly. But I can’t live in it. For me, when I live in a space that’s cluttered, that isn’t organized and doesn’t seem clean, that’s how my brain feels. And if you’ll remember from my last post, I have some goals I’m trying to achieve this year. Goals are hard to achieve when you feel like you don’t have your shit together, and a disorganized room makes me feel like I don’t have my shit together.

            Since I’m trying to be all introspective and junk this year, here are the issues I have with my room:

·     There’s too much stuff. This is the overarching issue – too much stuff, too little space. The reason there’s too much stuff is because I am a packrat. I keep EVERYTHING. Case in point – behind my dresser, there are probably about twenty-five paper bags that I have thrown back there instead of throwing them out or recycling them, because WHAT IF I NEED THEM?!?!? (Spoiler alert: I’ve never needed them.)

·     Since there’s too much stuff, there’s stuff everywhere. On the floor, mostly, because any free space on top of shelves or tables has been claimed long ago. One of my more genius moments was when I realized that gravity made it so that I could hang clothes on hangers without having a closet by balancing the tips of the hangers on one of the two shelves in my room. #physicswinning

·     I definitely have a habit of just dropping things on the floor. Since there’s not a lot of room, it feels like nothing has a set place to go. So I get a bit lazy and just sort of put things wherever they fall. Definitely not the best habit I could have formed. This issue is really all on me.

·     All of these issues snowball and combine into me feeling like crap. Like I said, I’m not a messy person, inherently. And no one likes feeling like they’re living in squalor. (Again, a tad overdramatic. But hyperbole is one of my favorite writing tools, so you’re just gonna have to learn to love it if you don’t already.)

The "before" panoramic shot.

So how do I fix this? There are a few options. One – I could burn the house down. Bit extreme, really. Plus, it would lead to a whole host of other problems that I really just don’t have time for. (In case it isn’t obvious, this is a joke.) Two – I could just embrace the mess and try my very hardest not to let it bother me. This is not a good option, because if you know me at all, you know this to be pretty true: I cannot let anything go. There’s stuff that happened years ago, that other people have DEFINITELY forgotten, that I still freak out about. Elsa and I are pretty much exact opposites. (Though to be honest, I don’t think she’s as over everything as she says she is. But that’s a whole different post about the virtues and vices of Frozen, so we’ll move on.) Three – I could keep doing what I have been doing, which is trying to keep the piles on the floor contained to only a couple of main areas, cleaning up when I feel like I can’t even sleep in my room because the mess is too much, and doing a BIG clean-out two or three times a year, where I usually end up throwing out about half to a full bag of stuff I just don’t need anymore.

That third option has been my go-to for a while now, and on the surface, it works. It’s minimal effort with the most bang for my buck. But it doesn’t truly fix anything. It’s like putting a Band-Aid on a cut that needs a couple stitches – sure, it helps keep the blood from getting everywhere, but it doesn’t actually help your body heal. For whatever reason, I’m tired of getting out the box of Band-Aids. So I decided to make a bigger change.

So today (today being Saturday, January 14, 2017), I undertook the task of an overhaul. I spent four hours going through everything in my room, doing a bastardization of Marie Kondo’s de-cluttering tips from The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, where I pretty much just looked at everything, asked myself if there was really a reason for it to be in my life, and if that reason made me happy, and if the answer to either of those questions was no, I tossed it. (To be fair and completely honest, there were a few things I did not do this with. I found a lot of old photographs. There’s really no reason to keep them, other than they’re fun to look at occasionally, and there was room in my under-the-bed container for them, so I kept them. Same with a few other pieces of nostalgia from high school, and a journal I found that I kept during one of the hardest years of my life. This is why I say I did a bastardization.) (I also say I did a bastardization because I haven’t actually read the book yet. #oops.) I had to continually remind myself that not everything is as important as I think it is, and that it’s okay to throw things out, even if maybe one day in the future you end up needing the thing you throw out.

I got rid of a lot of stuff. Four trash bags worth of junk went into the garbage, and one trash bag full of clothes I don’t wear or even look at anymore went into the corner of the living room so that I can bring it to the Red Cross donation bins ASAP. I feel like I need to throw out more stuff, honestly. I had told a friend of mine yesterday that this was what my plans for the day were, and when I texted her to let her know I had achieved it, I told her that it didn’t feel “done.” But I think that I was just getting trash-happy. Throwing out more stuff just for the sake of throwing stuff out wouldn’t have ended well, I can say that with the upmost certainty. I also am quite annoyed with my cleaning job, just because it had the unfortunate side effect of me needing to go buy a new computer charger. (While I was vacuuming, some cords got tangled and ended up knocking my laptop off my bedside table. Originally I thought the fall had broken my entire computer, but it just broke the charger. All in all, a better outcome than it could have been, but it’s still almost $100 I would rather have not spent today. Damn you, Apple and your inconceivable prices!) But all in all… I feel accomplished. There’s a whole lot of clutter that was in my life this morning when I woke up that isn’t in my life anymore now. That’s never a bad outcome, really.

Here's the "after!" The picture makes it hard to tell, but it really is so much better than before.

This corner was one of my biggest problems before. Now... things have their own spots! Yay!

The trick now will be to keep it this way. I’ve found some places for things that didn’t have places before, and I’m going to try and make a conscious effort to put them there after I’m done using them. It will feel like a lot of effort until it becomes a habit, because that’s the way life works – habits can’t become habits overnight, no matter how much you wish they would. We’ll see how it goes.

I think that’s it for now. My stomach is growling, plus I need to go put the vacuum away. Alright friends. We’ll talk soon. (You’ve actually managed to get a second blog post within the SAME MONTH, so who knows? This thing might actually stick.) (Knock on wood.) Love you, mean it, bye.

January Jumpstart

            Hi friends. Or at least, I’m assuming you’re a friend. Why else would you be reading this blog? (You can’t see me, because that’s how computers work, but if you could, you’d see I’m winking at you.) Welcome to a blog that I’m almost certain will fall into oblivion within the month, but am trying out on the incredibly small chance that I actually keep it together enough to write here regularly. Just to get this out of the way – I am a notoriously bad blogger. Life always gets in the way, and if life doesn’t, my anxiety about not having anything to say helps out and gets in the way instead. I’m hoping that I can change that this time around. (Famous last words, am I right?)

            In case you just stumbled upon this blog, here's the deal: My name is Hannah. I’m in my early twenties, and I work as an assistant in the fourth grade at my local elementary school. I live with my two younger sisters, my mother, my grandmother, and a cat, in the same house I grew up in. Everything else you’ll have to learn as we go.

            I’m writing this on New Year’s Eve, but the chances are that you’re reading this within the first week of January. (There’s no way I’m going to have my shit together enough to post this tonight. Ha! The idea is laughable, really.) People get introspective on New Year’s Eve, and I am no different. 2016 was a big year for a lot of people, for a lot of reasons. It’s being lauded as “the worst year EVER,” though I think that there are definitely other years that could give it a run for its money. (Just off the top of my head… potato famine, World War I and II, Yellow Fever, the Black Plague… you get the idea.) Personally, the year wasn’t so bad for me. It was definitely… uncomfortable, at times, but when you experience growth, there’s bound to be some discomfort. And more than anything, 2016 was a year of growth. Just in overview – I tried my hand at substitute teaching due to the urging of one of my closest friends, and found that I loved being in a classroom filled with children; I left a job that I no longer looked forward to and went right into a new job that I did; I took a chance and applied for the teaching position I currently hold and adore; and I stopped letting the negative “what-ifs” affect me more than the positive ones. Big stuff. Good stuff. Like I said, 2016 was a big year. But just because it was a big year doesn’t mean that 2017 can’t be, as well.

            That’s meant to be a seamless segue into 2017 resolutions. But here’s the thing – I think resolutions are dumb. Everyone makes them; people rarely actually stick to them. They’re just something people make because they feel like they should. They’re a conversation topic, and rarely anything more. So instead, I’m making – get this – GOALS. A rose by any other name? Maybe. But there’s less of a “thing” about the word “goals.” Goals aren’t specific to any time of year. Goals are a thing that you can add to or change whenever needed. Plus, I feel so much more legit saying, “that’s one of my goals” in lieu of saying, “oh, that’s one of my New Year’s resolutions!” (Cause let’s be real, you can’t just say “resolutions.” People will think you’re talking about levels of pixelation.)

            So I have six goals for 2017. Hopefully, posting and talking about them here will hold me more accountable than if they just live in my room on a sheet of notebook paper (albeit very pretty notebook paper).

1.     Save that $! – Start a budget. Stick to it. Start a savings account, and deposit a set amount every month/pay check. (Along with being bad at blogging, I am also bad at money. Normally I would say #sorrynotsorry, except I really am sorry about it.)

2.     Go back to school! – It’s unavoidable, honestly. Teachers need degrees. At least, teachers who have their own classrooms do. It’s really not rocket science, no matter what your anxiety says.

3.     Create an all-around healthy life. – Help yourself out, girl. Cut out the maximum amount of junk possible – junk foods, junk habits, junk stuff, and junk people. None of it is doing you any favors. (Notice how I put an exercise goal in here without saying it’s an exercise goal, just so that I don’t beat myself up about not going to the gym all the time. I think I’m so smart.)

4.     Write more. – Write novels. Journal. BLOG (wink wink nudge nudge). Letters. Writing makes you happy, so do it, dummy.

5.     Make new friends. – Screw this “no new friends” shit. FULL offense, Drake. Having more good people in your life is never a bad thing.

6.     Overall, choose happiness. – Don’t let yourself get stuck. Do the things that make your heart dance, even if other people are telling you it’s dumb. You do you, boo-boo. Unless you’re drunk, and it’s sober people telling you it’s dumb. Then it’s probably dumb and you should listen to your friends.

So that’s that. My goals for 2017. Like I said, hopefully this blog post will help hold me accountable. Don’t hold out high hopes for this blog, though. I’m not. But hey, don’t people always say, “New year, new me”? Maybe that will hold true for me. (Again, you can’t see me [see above for reason] but know that I am winking at you.) Alright friends. Love you, mean it, byyeeeee.