End of year stats

As the year 2011 is drawing to a close, time for a little summary.
I have, per today, lost a total of 11.5 kilos in 2011 (that´s 25.3 pounds for the metrically challenged), going down two sizes in clothes and reentering the land of standard sizes.
For a period of about six months, my weight had been stalling, due to my being less careful about eating carbs. Only when I went back to eating the way that had helped me get rid of the first 13.6 kilos of condensable matter in 2010, did my weight move in a downward direction again.
So I know what my goal for 2012 will be- stick to my low-carb way of eating, and see how far that will take me towards my goal of no longer being overweight. It´s less than fifteen kilos to go, so, if I were to avoid hitting another big plateau, it would be entirely reachable within the next year.
What I did miss, sadly, was my goal of leaving obesity by the end of this year, but I am, even with the slight regain over the holidays, still less than three pounds away from that point, and I am confident that I will be able to reach it soon.

Happy new year to everyone!


Julia

Timely Xmas present

Wooo-hooo!
The running around for the final errands before the holidays seems to have paid off nicely- as per this morning I´m officially less than one pound away from being no longer obese!
Wishing everybody a similar surprise for the holidays, and "have a busy Santa", as they say hereabouts!

Julia

Loose ends of the year

That´s what I´m just tidying up at the office before I go off into my well-deserved Christmas staycation. I may be posting somewhat less frequently for the rest of the year because literally all of the Christmas preparations are on my back, so blogging will have to take a back seat, and I didn´t have any posts ready to schedule either. Right now, I feel like one of those Hindu deities with at least eight arms and one instrument in each hand, but I hope the number of my arms will be back to normal after some R+R .
Until then,

here´s wishing everybody a merry Christmas, Chanukkah, Kwanza, Winter Solstice, Festivus or whatever you celebrate, and a happy New Year!


Julia

Pesky plateau

It´s less than a week till Christmas and the extra-special meals that go along with it. I had hoped to break the barrier down from morbid obesity before that, but it doesn´t look like I´ll be able to make it any more, as my weight seems, once more, to be plateauing. Now this isn´t the first time that has happened, actually, I have encountered a plateau about every ten kilos down and at any weight I´d had for more than a couple of weeks. As I´ve gone down some ten kilos since this summer, hitting another of these should not come unexpectedly. From past experience I know it´s the time during which my body reorganizes itself around the lower weight, the time where the multiple chins and loose skin recondense and I find myself going down in clothes size in spite of my weight being stuck. But still- I had gotten so close! Less than three pounds from where I am, there´s the land of Just Overweight waiting, and me looking at it like a person on the wrong side of a river with no bridge. As it is, the high workload during the last weeks has been taking its toll on my dietary habits, resorting to pizza for dinner too often and having to dig into the pantry for pasta and rice because there was no time to grocery shop. So, I did go over my carbs, if not my calories, for several days in a row, and promptly regained two pounds. I´m not as vexed by that as I might be, because I know that filling the carbohydrate stores of the body back up will keep some water inside, too, to a tune of about two pounds, so, I know where the gain came from.
As I wrote before, the human body is a perfect accountability instrument.
Which is what I will have to keep in mind during the holidays, too. I am intending to stick to my guns as close as possible, which means leaving out all those starchy and sugary goodies, and hope I will be able to keep my weight and not regain. As I have taken some time off work beyond the holidays themselves, maybe, if the weather stays warm enough, I might even resume my morning walks that had stopped when the demands on my time at work became too big.
As I will be away from my scales for some time, too, being extra vigilant of my intake will be of the essence if I don´t want to have a rude awakening at the start of the new year.
Then again, I should not complain. I am, at present, twelve kilos down from what I weighed at the same time last year, and twenty-seven  from two years ago. At that going rate, I might even get close to being normal-weighted again by the end of next year. Provided I don´t fall off the wagon and stick to my caloric and carb limits, of course.
In the end, it´s perseverance that counts. I would never have believed that I could get my weight down to where I am now, given what more than twenty years of fighting my weight unsuccessfully had done to my metabolism, and the relatively slow speed at which I am going down again, compared to what some other big losers claim, is what I can do and keep up without stressing myself too much. Besides, what I also found is that my body would switch into starvation mode rapidly if I went too far below 1200 calories a day, so that, too, is a limit I have to respect.

Slow and easy does it. Sometimes, it even works small miracles.


Julia

No frost wardrobe

It´s getting colder hereabouts, and basically, it would be time to pull out the warm winter sweaters and jackets. Only this year, I have a little technical problem there. My warmest sweaters, those that only came out when it was really cold, were all from the time when I was at my top weight. Thus, they had become way too big, hanging down to my knees, so I donated them this spring so that somebody else might still get some use out of them. I thought, at the time, that it would be no problem getting new ones to fit me this winter.
Alas, I find myself in the wrong. I just made a beeline through the shops, only to find that this year´s fashion seems to be made for a somewhat warmer climate. Would you imagine I did not find a single warm sweater in my size? Same thing for jackets. I was looking for some cozy down jacket or something of that kind that I could wear whenever my usual long coat would be impractical, and all they had were jackets that were so flimsy and cheaply made that wearing them at temperatures below freezing would be a certain way to catch pneumonia.
I am, at present, quite angry at the fashion industry. If it weren´t for my vintage coat that still fits me, I would be out of winter wardrobe with no way to replace it. With me, that´s because I have condensed myself, but what, for example, about young girls who have outgrown their old jackets?  Every woman who doesn´t have an old coat to tide her over this year´s fashion is, by decree of the fashion industry, sentenced to one winter of shivering.
Hey there, fashion designers, just because winter is arriving late this year, that´s no guarantee it will stay that warm till spring!
Guess I´ll just have to take advantage of the fact that I still have a somewhat wider coat and a winter blazer in my former (bigger) size, and then put on layers to keep from freezing if it were to get cold. And hope that next year´s fashion will be more sensible.


Julia

Windy city

The first gusts and gales of the forecast storm are rattling the windows as I write this. The earflapped hat I bought yesterday has been doing me good service already on my way to work, and I intend to go home as soon as possible today, as the forecast by now is so bad that they are warning people not to go outside or drive if they can avoid it.
This weekend being the last before the holidays, I´ll have to get the menu planning and shopping done as far as possible. Once more, there´s ample reason to be grateful for my big freezer, because I have plenty of room to store and freeze the ingredients for Christmas dinner in advance. And, of course, there´s laundry to be done, and some paperwork, too. So, I don´t think I´ll be bored this weekend at all.
Which is as well because I´ll have to watch what I eat even more than usual if I want to get below that magic limit of morbid obesity before Christmas. I´ve been stuck for a couple of days now, and I just hope this isn´t another pesky plateau hitting just two pounds away from overweight. So, definitely no noshing on this weekend.
As we´re going to have MIL over for Christmas, I´ll not be able to do my usual routine over the holidays, which worries me a bit. After all, there´s that unavoidable family celebration in January, and I will be meeting some people who last saw me at almost my top weight, and whom I have barely spoken to any more since then, partly because of their hurtful reaction to me having become fat. I´m pretty nervous about meeting them as it is, and knowing  I were no longer obese would do wonders for my confidence when facing them.
It´s strange how those people who have absolutely no place any more in my day-to-day life still can get at my guts that way. If they were not related to me, there´d be no way I´d ever allow them to meet me again, whatever my weight. But the way things are, I´ll probably not be able to avoid it. I have even thought of praying for a blizzard or some other natural event that would allow me not to go there in January. But I don´t think I´ll get that lucky, so, I should better be prepared as well as possible before going there.
Until then, I try not to think of them at all.
After all, I´m not doing this for their sakes, but for my own.


Julia

Storm warning ahead

Looks like we´re going to expect one of the worst storms in the last years tomorrow. Luckily, the town I live in is situated at the bottom of a valley, so we might be spared from the worst, but still, this means that after two unseasonably warm months that felt more like spring than like autumn, winter is finally coming.
I´m glad that my car has been serviced recently, and I can be certain there´s enough antifreeze inside. We also have a parking lot in a closed garage, so, no danger of any shingles, branches or such hitting our car.
As for weatherproof apparel, I still have last winter´s coats which still serve me well and allow for layering sweaters and vests underneath.
Over lunch break, I went looking for a new winter hat, since the ones I already have are either not covering my ears or looking more than a bit silly. When I was fat, any hat would look silly over my then rather round face, but now that my face isn´t looking like the full moon with a double chin any more, I´d rather not wear these any more.
What I found was a hat shaped like a russian tchapka, with downturnable ear flaps, made from leather with a fake fur lining. The best thing about it was that, due to sales of winter garments having been poor because of the too-warm weather, the shops are already downmarking the winter stuff, so, I got it at a discount, too. At home, I´m going to treat the leather with leather spray, so this hat will also be waterproof. And I hope I´ll be able to wear it for some years to come.
We´ll see if the rest of winter is going to make up for the too-mild weather before. While I like a white Christmas as much as anyone else, I hope we- and all the other people visiting their families- won´t have to drive there through snow and ice.
Apart that, right now, at the office there´s a bad case of what they call December fever going round- everyone is feverishly pulling together loose ends in time for year-end statistics! Including myself, which means I have a bit less time for this blog than usually.
And I´ll have to get my Christmas shopping done this weekend, which means finishing the meal planning, too. Oh to be Robinson Crusoe...he had all his work done by Friday :).


Julia

Gifted necessities

One of the reasons why I hated having to make up a Christmas wish list every year as a child was that not only did my parents insist on me making up one, they were also fundamentally opposed to giving anything as a gift for Christmas that was even remotely useful or practical. To be fair, the things I needed, I got, but not for Christmas. As if wishing for a warm coat, or even some college textbooks, were an obscenity, while wishing for some utterly useless stuff  like another plush teddy wasn´t.
But, for many people besides my parents, Christmas gifts are not supposed to be sensible or practical, just pretty, or cute, or surprising. Picking out something that the recipient really needs and will use seems so- un-romantic by comparison.
What that means is that most of these pretty, cute and surprising things are clutter as soon as they enter the house.
Even worse is the "but there must be presents or it ain´t Christmas"-mindset that leads the giver to spend hard-earned money on -or even go into debt for- things that the recipient neither needs nor wants.
Economically, in that case you give away something of no value to the recipient and get back something of no value to you, meaning that you just sold the family finances short by the price of two pieces of clutter.

In my own family, I don´t ever want such things to happen.
The premise is simple: I do not ever want to give or receive a present just so that a present is given, which means that yes, Christmas with no presents at all would be perfectly fine with me.
On the other hand, to me, it is perfectly acceptable to pick out something you need and can use and chose that to be your Christmas wish.
So, for our grown-up Christmas, we will perhaps get some items we can use and put them benath the tree,or rather, in front of it  but we won´t take home any additional clutter.

Looking at those wish-inducing catalogues that make letterboxes overflow in December, what I have realized this year is that they are marketing a lot of things as "special Christmas sets" that are packaged to look most impressive under a tree (think ten colored-enamel matching pots of which, at most, four will see regular use, or that twenty-knife block for someone whose most-used cooking utensil is a can opener). Such things give the impression of being practical and useful, but they are also a form of clutter if the recipient doesn´t  need or use them. 
The positive thing about this is that by applying the rule of necessity to any offer in those catalogues, I have, once more, reminded myself that our household is, by now, so well-equipped that we really need, at this point in time, nothing new in the way of kitchen utensils or such, and very little in the way of anything else, and that, if I disengage the purchases from the holidays, I may even profit from some hefty after-holiday discounts on the things my family really needs. And that is better than having to wrap or unwrap them in time for Christmas.


Julia

Wants vs. needs

I just dropped off my car at the repair shop for the biannual checkup that is mandatory hereabouts. There are also some minor repairs that must be done before I get that sticker on the license plate, and the repair guy told me I´d get the car back tomorrow at the earliest because they will have to procure some replacement parts first- "we don´t keep all of the parts for the older models in stock any more".
What that tells you is that I don´t drive the most recent model. But, I have wheels. And they are paid for.

Which is more than a lot of people can claim.

It never ceases to amaze me when I see those big, latest-model, expensive new cars, and behind the steering wheel, there´s some waif of a twenty-year-old girl, or a male of the same age with heavy tattoos on his arms, dressed, invariably, in clothes with visible brand names on them, and holding the latest model smart phone. Now I know one shouldn´t judge a book by its cover, but most of those young people don´t look as if they were earning as much in a year as those cars cost. So, they are most likely paying through the nose for a car loan on an asset that has, just by being driven off the dealer´s lot, lost some ten to twenty percent of its monetary value on the day they bought it. Those same young people are patronising electronics stores, clothes stores, and they don´t hesitate for a moment to spend twenty bucks at a fast-food restaurant instead of cooking two or three home-cooked meals off the same amount. There´s a reason why someone dubbed the sixteen-to-forty-year olds the "advertising relevant target group".
In our consumerist society, a lot of people have forgotten- or worse, never learned- the difference between something you want and something you need. Even kindergarteners clamor for the most recent brand name dolls or clothes, and brand name logos on jeans or sneakers appear sometimes to be more important to the teenaged wearers than the garments themselves.
What these things create for the owners is an external semblance of wealth.
The story behind the scenes, most of the time, is a different one.
Consumer debt has been steadily on the rise for several decades, and the number of people who reach the point of having to file for bankruptcy before they reach the age of thirty along with it.
And then, when it´s too late, they are forced to learn and apply the difference between a want and a need.

Because most of those consumerist goodies are just wants.
Someone defined "needs" as "food, clothes, transportation, and shelter". While I agree with that definition in general, it doesn´t cut it when trying to determine what to cut out of a too-tight budget.

Food is a need. Eating out in a restaurant is a want.
Clothes are a need. Brand name tagged jeans are a want.
Transportation is a need. A brand-new Porsche is a want.
Shelter is a need. A five-bedroom-condo for two people is a want.
Being reachable by phone may be a need. The most recent I-Phone (TM)  is a want.

Come to think of it, most of the things we acquire are, strictly speaking, wants. If we could live without it, it is expendable.
Now if you can afford the price for a want, there´s nothing wrong with indulging. But by that I mean, can you pay for it in cash? Or do you have to put it on your credit card? Because then you really can´t afford it. You are instead betting on your future self to be able to afford it, whatever it is, plus cumulative interest, which can make those credit card purchases a lot more expensive than the price tag on the item.
That alone should be reason enough to revive that strange ancient tradition of saving up to buy something, because that will keep your future self from cussing you for being fool enough to pick up such a load of debt. Besides, you might even find you don´t want the item any more after a while. Guess what, it´s cheaper to find out the interest in a thing was short-lived before you have dragged it home to clutter up your habitation and mess up your credit card balance.

And the needs? If you remove the wants from the budget, you might just find you have enough to get on by. At the very least, you´ll have a bit more breathing space.

And always remember that the very best things in life mostly come without a price tag.



Julia

It pays to watch

For many years, the ups and downs of my weight were, to me, looking like the results of throwing dice- random and frustrating. Many were the days when I would have sworn by all the deities that I hadn´t overeaten, only to find my weight up by several pounds the next day. Less often, I thought I´d goofed, but weight numbers didn´t tell at all.
What that gave me was a feeling of having totally no control over my body. How else to explain weight gains that did not compute with what I´d eaten? As in overeating by one thousand calories, say, and gaining two pounds which would mean seven thousand calories if it were fat?
For a long time, the sheer helplessness of facing what looked like a totally randomized response pattern stopped me from even trying to recondense my excess baggage. I suffered from the effects of dragging around those 100 extra pounds, but I had no idea how to get rid of them. The only thing I knew was that the diets I had tried out until then had not helped. Quite the opposite. They only made me feel worse because, heck, one was supposed to lose weight when sticking to them, and I sometimes even gained.
The fallacy I´d fallen victim to, of course, was that a calorie is a calorie no matter where it comes from. Only when I started tracking how much of the macronutritients I ate did I see that there was indeed a predictable pattern to my gains and losses, one that depended on the ratio of carbohydrate calories to protein and fat calories. In other words, my weight  follows my carbohydrate intake. Many carbs, even if I stay under my daily calories, mean the scale goes up on the next day, and few carbs mean a maintain or a loss.
I´m not going on a soapbox here, but cutting down carbs is what worked for me. It also worked for DH, who has, just by eating the same things I eat, gotten down two pants sizes since May. So, in our totally non-randomized two-subjects study, we have found that keeping our carbohydrate intake below 30 percent on most days has enabled us to condense weight that, with more carbohydrate-loaden diets, no amount of caloric restriction short of starving ourselves would have moved.
This weekend, I put the counter-check to this into practice. We did, for the third Sunday in Advent, have some mulled wine, some lebkuchen with a cup of hot cinnamon chocolate, and dinner was a big portion of spinach-and-feta lasagna. In the end, I had about twice the carbs I eat ordinarily. And this morning, I predictably found myself up two pounds (not what the lasagna weighed).
While any gain is not exactly a reason for joy when you´re as close to an intermediary goal as I am right now (I absolutely want to be below the limit of morbid obesity before Christmas), I know this time that the nominal gain of two pounds is less than three ounces of fat, maximum,  and the rest is water retention from eating those carbs, plus what I still have inside me of the food I ate yesterday. So, today, I´ll cut waaay down on the carbs, drink a lot of water, and go back on plan in general. And that will be a lot easier now that I don´t have to feel I´m missing out on all the season´s goodies this year.
Besides, when looking at where those carbs came from, I could even see that the lasagna accounted for half of them, so if I had had either lasagna or lebkuchen and hot chocolate, not both, I´d even have stayed on plan. As I said before, I may eat every food, just not everything at once, and in moderation. After all, this has to be for life, because if I went back to what I always did I´d be back having what I always had real fast.


Julia

Unsaddling sight

Right now I´m wrapping up a week of sheer pandemonium (again) at the office, which is also the reason why I didn´t post lately. Just why everyone is wildly determined to get all things that only have been procrastinated about brought in order at a time when there is enough on everybody´s plate with things that absolutely need doing by December 24 or 31, is amazing me every year. Oh well.
One thing that did go according to plan, this week, was my weight. As per today, I´m less than one kilogram away from the point where I´ll no longer be morbidly obese. just overweight..
Once more, my body seems to be rearranging itself. I had to use the handicapped restroom (there was just that one) at a public building yesterday, which had a mirror fixed so that a person in a wheelchair would bee able to see themselves. To me, that mirror was reflecting back the upper part of my legs, which I had always avoided looking at because of the pronounced saddlebags I had. As we have only one full-legth mirror in the house, I hadn´t looked at them for awhile, even avoiding to look that way last Saturday in the dressing room.
So, when I suddenly saw them reflected back at me, I did a double take because...the saddlebags are almost gone! My legs still can bear to part with some condensable matter, of course, but there is, suddenly, a smooth line from my hips down to my knees, even without the help of spanx (TM) or such.
And I am wearing my brand new size XL pants. One thing that´s especially good about getting down to that size is that my old pants from the plus size store were more than twice as expensive as the new ones, so, keeping up with the decreasing sizes has just gotten a lot less pricey than it used to be, apart being less of a hassle because I can, now, shop at any normal-sized clothes store.
Not that I intend to go overboard with clothes shopping. This year´s wide-over-tight look is great for wearing last year´s size sweaters and jackets over my new pants, apart from the fact that they have only a few items at all in the jewel tones I like in sweaters. No way I´m going to turn myself into a grey mouse now that I finally am getting into the shape to wear form-fitting clothes again. So, I´ll wear what I have, and save myself buying  the transition sizes that hopefully would also be too big next year.
This weekend, I´ll go for another wardrobe raid- evicting the baggy trousers! I´ll box them up for the time being, but I most fervently hope they´ll follow the lead of my 5XL- jackets which, from that same clothes box, did, after some time, go directly to Goodwill.
If there´s one thing I have learned on my way down so far, it´s that I must not ever stop being watchful. Journalling every bite, and weighing in daily. Gaining it all back would be as easy as reverting to my old eating habits, that´s what I must never forget. And keeping it off is as easy as sticking with the things I learned about portion control and what not to eat that helped me get to where I´m now.
As a matter of fact, I have found out that it has become easier for me to resist the usual sugary and chocolate-y treats of the season. And whenever I start to think of eating some, I remind myself that the "goodie" in question will never make me feel as good as wearing those size XL pants, and then I´m not ready to pay the price of indulging my sweet tooth any more. I may have to have a Christmas without stollen or lebkuchen, but I will be having it in size XL pants, for the first time in this millenium.



Julia

Off the lists

For many years, I have more or less faithfully kept a running list of what I saw on the scale. I expanded that by adding the data from some even older weighing lists, and I do, by now, have a rather complete set of data back to May 2002, plus several fragments from 1992, 1990 and earlier, back to high school and the time before my weight struggle started in earnest.
What these lists tell is a classic story of how yo-yo dieting plus plenty of diverse stressors in my life plus my several bouts with binge eating disorder turned a small weight problem (medically, actually a non-existent one) into morbid obesity stage three.
What they also show is the times I quit journalling my weight, and the fact that these, of all times, should have been where I should not have closed my eyes to what was happening. Every gap in those lists corresponds to one of the major gains that ended up putting me at 110 pounds above my starting weight.
It wasn´t as if I hadn´t tried to reverse what was happening. Several times, I managed to get rid of some ten or fifteen kilos (20 to 30 pounds), only to regain them faster than they had come off, and then some.
I sometimes regret not having the complete data for all those years. There might have been some interesting things to be found out by analyzing that.
But what I can do is look at those lists and find out how long ago it was that my body weighed what it weighs today.
Er, that must be "what I could do". As per this morning´s weigh-in I have officially entered the uncharted areas, meaning that I do not have the data to tell when I last weighed what I weigh today. The only thing I can tell is that it must have been sometime around the beginning of 2002, which means that I am, right now, enjoying the body feeling I had for the last time a full decade ago . The next recorded data, apart one single glaring number from when I first went up to the 220s in 1992, will be from the eighties of the last century, from the time when I first went from normal to overweight. So, if ever I get there I´ll know that I haven´t been there since the days of shoulder pads and teased hairdos.
I have been morbidly obese for almost ten uninterrupted years.With every pound I lose, and with every ability that comes back, as in walking without crutches or putting on my own stockings, I realize how much these years have cost me in terms of quality of life, and I appreciate those abilities perhaps a lot more than someone who never lost them. I might have stayed inside that fat prison for life, missing out on many things that give joy, and suffering from ever more limitations.
I´m grateful that I have come out of it thus far, and I know that I will have to stay vigilant for the rest of my life to avoid sliding back.
And now, I am going for the limit of morbid obesity. It´s less than three pounds away!


Julia

Fancy pants

For a long time, purchasing trousers was one of the things I passionately hated to do.
Going into a shop, finding the rack that held the biggest size pants they sold, picking a pair and going into the dressing room. Avoiding the sight of my legs and b*tt in the mirror, stepping into those pants only to find they were impossible to pull up any higher than my knees. Stepping out of them again, putting the pants I arrived in back on, leave shop for another that might have a bigger size to offer. Rinse, wash, repeat.
When I discovered a line of plus size pants that would fit me, I quit trying on any others, just buying the same pair of pants over and over again, in ever-growing sizes. On the way down with my weight, still those same pants, this time in decreasing sizes. And the knowledge that, with successfully condensing myself, the day was near when the smallest size of those plus-sized pants would cease to fit me, and then what next?
As I am approaching the point of no longer being obese, the dreaded moment has arrived. Thus, on Saturday, I found myself standing in the middle of a dozen pants racks in a shop that stocks every garment in normal through plus sizes, wondering just which ones to try on first so as to not end up frustrated at the first try.
I actually didn´t have the slightest idea what size I need now, so, the way into the dressing room couldn´t be avoided this time. So, gingerly, I grabbed several pairs of size XL jeans and tried them on and...


...they fit! All of them, actually. I was able to pull them up, button them, and close the zippers.
Hey, I haven´t worn that size since the last millenium! I know, it´s still "X"L, but when you have had 3XL or 4XL in a brand that is also vanity sizing its products (meaning you have to add at least another "X" to realistically compare them to regularly sized brands), being rid of the numbers before the "X" is enough to make you dizzy.
So, I ended up taking home three pairs of form-fitting trousers, which ought to take me through another couple of pounds´ loss.
What I couldn´t resist, of course, was pulling out the same style trousers in my old size and look at them. Just seeing how big the seat of those looked made me cringe. That had been me. That was where those sixty-plus pounds had been. Holding up the ones that fit me now, I still have trouble adjusting to the fact that I really, actually can fit my body into these, but boy, it feels good to see them.
And wear them, of course, without those droopy bottoms, and with the knowledge that I am back to a size I have last worn before becoming obese.
This feels good.


Julia
 

Wreaths and decorations

When setting up my Advent decorations, I had been somewhat vexed by the fact that I could not find the little decorated wreaths which go over the bottom ends of candles to make them look more festive. I knew for sure that I had had one for every candle holder I put out, and I was fairly certain that I had not decluttered them, either. But they weren´t to be found in my living room cupboards, so I had already guessed I´d tossed them.
Yesterday, when taking the trash down to the cellar, I decided to look for them in the china boxes. Inside a waterproof chest, I discovered, not only the wreaths, but also a whole bunch of artificial flower decorations I hadn´t even remembered I owned.
Now, me and Christmas decorations has always been a mixed story. Christmas at home was always a bit of the "be merry, dammit" variety, my father being about the only one who insisted on there being a perfect feast, which absolutely had to include a real tree, oodles of decorations, and a multi-course dinner that kept my mother and me nailed to the kitchen most of the day, while my Grandparents and myself could have well done without all that ado.
As such things go, the likelihood of anything going wrong rises exponentially when you try to make things perfect, so, there ensued invariably some culinary or other drama which led to tears, door-slamming, and everyone feeling, not festive, but altogether lousy. The whole affair was so upsetting for me as a child, that, like clockwork, right when that gorgeous dinner was about to be served, I came down with stomach cramps so bad that I had to retreat to my room and couldn´t even eat any of the food served.
So, as soon as I could, I decided not to go there for Christmas any more. Which led to another round of drama, because visiting for Christmas was one of those "done" things my parents insist on.
For several years, I avoided Christmas by volunteering for emergency duty at the office over the holidays, that being a reason they had to accept why I couldn´t come.
I was, in those years, glad that I did not have to celebrate Christmasat all any more. One of my more memorable Christmas eves was spent at the office, listening to Gregorian chant on my computer, catching up with work, and enjoying the quiet outside. That was, actually, the first Christmas I experienced where there wasn´t any crying or door-slamming.
How my -otherwise rather intelligent- parents managed to turn the holidays into such a turn-off while claiming all the while that they should be beautiful, still escapes me.
For a while, I had become a veritable grinch. Anything to do with Christmas was, for me, taboo. That did lead to some tensions with DH, who did not have the same kind of Christmas memories I had, and would have liked to have our flat decorated for Christmas, while I flat out refused to have anything of the kind in view.
All through that time, my relatives kept sending me those decorations. Most of them, actually, came from my beloved Aunt, so, I didn´t outright throw them away, but I wasn´t ready to put them up yet. Just to humor DH, I still exchanged decorations for summer and winter, but I kept them relatively neutral, trying to avoid that christmas-y look.
Which is why all of those pretty silk flowers and wreaths were, years ago, unceremoniously dumped into that box and went down to the cellar, waiting for me to change my mind about Christmas.
When I found them again yesterday, I picked out the most beautiful ones and took them up to our flat, and spent the rest of the evening distributing wreaths to candlesticks and poinsettia bouquets to vases, all the while watched by DH who must have wondered who that woman was and what she had done with his wife.
Guess what, the flat looks good. Festive, joyful. And we are going to celebrate Christmas together, not perfectly, but perfectly our way. There won´t be any slammed doors, and there won´t be more than three courses to the Christmas dinner, but I will be able to try all of them. There won´t be mountains of unwanted presents, but the joy of being together. And that is, after all, what Christmas should really be about, isn´t it?


Julia

Rounding up the strays

One of the things I find when decluttering is that some categories of things have been distributed all through the flat. Take stationery- I had writing utensils and paper stashed away in four different locations, which led to several unnecessary double purchases because I couldn´t find the ballpoint pens or envelopes or whatever when I needed them, so I just went and bought another pack.
Only now have I managed to put all of my stationery in one place, and I think I won´t have to buy any for quite a while.
Another culprit, it turned out, was candles. After yesterday´s candle closet cleanup, I had that nagging feeling of having missed something. As indeed I had. Hidden away in the corridor cupboard was one decorative (read: too-pretty-to-burn) Easter candle, plus a plastic bag full of even more votive candles. Putting them into the candle closet made, for one, sure that I will have that Easter candle out next year instead of letting it languish in that closet, and the votives (which I had plain forgotten about) have a chance of getting lit, too.
And the corridor closet now holds only the two handmade pottery table sets I own which, by now, only come out for special occasions, plus some thermos coffee pots of DH´s, and two extra packs of paper napkins courtesy of IKEA. As for the latter, a napkin roundup is already planned. As far as I remember there are three places where I have some of those.I´ll see how much space I need for them.

Not having a designated space for things is obviously another big cause of clutter. Some of those hidden stashes came about when I had to do a quick tidying up, and did not have a designated place to put things. To get them out of the way, I just put them into the closest available space, which made the outward room look tidy and turned the inside of the closets into a mess.
If I want to avoid a repetition of that situation, every thing I own must have a place to keep it in.
Things for which I have no place where they can live are automatically clutter. So are things stashed away in unlikely places, because it´s not likely their existence will be remembered when such an item is needed.
Just the act of keeping track of things distributed all over the place creates stress.
Reducing the amount of items to keep track of, aka decluttering, plus finding permanent homes for the items I keep, reduces my general stress level considerably.
Rounding up the strays from different categories has allowed me to become conscious of things I tend to overbuy, and even get rid of some unnecessary extras, thus creating even more space to give a permanent home to the things I keep.
And then all I have to do is lead the strays back to their homes whenever I find them out of their places, and enjoy my uncluttered flat.


Julia