HOT MESS // Travel-Sized Toiletries

Every home has one: a stash of travel-sized toiletries.

I get it. I came of age with Honey, I Shrunk the Kids on VHS and 3 oz liquid restrictions on air travel. I’m hard-wired to find miniature toiletries both adorable and practical. 

We have good reason to keep a travel-size or two on hand for an impromptu trip. That’s a likely scenario, and we can avoid a last-minute shopping trip on top of packing and arranging a pet-sitter.

The challenge arises when we add to our stash much more quickly than we can deplete it, swiping every bottle from hotels or impulse buying tiny toothpastes.

Before long we could be showered and shampooed on our next 10 vacations, but we can’t fit our hairdryer in our own bathroom. 

We can free up a ton of space for our everyday essentials if we reduce and relocate the stash.

We can put toiletries on our nopping list and commit to using up every bottle and bar, especially during this era of limited travel and shopping.

Or we can donate the bulk of them . Many shelters accept unopened toiletries for survivors of domestic violence, runaway teens, and unhoused people. Toiletries can also go into Little Free Pantries for a neighbor in need.

 Then we can store the curated set of travel-toiletries in a pocket of our suitcase rather than keeping it in the prime real estate of our bathroom drawer.

HOT MESS // Free Shipping

Unpopular opinion alert: We should pay for shipping.

Adding a few more things to our online cart to qualify for free shipping drives impulsive and expensive acquisition. 

What about Amazon Prime? We can get free shipping even on single items! Won’t that prevent us from cluttering our cart, and subsequently our homes, with add-ons?

In a word, no.

First of all, Amazon Prime is not free shipping. It’s pre-paid shipping, costing $119 a year. 

A member needs to order 11 deliveries under $25 for that pre-paid shipping to cover what would otherwise be a typical $10/delivery shipping fee. That would mean spending ~$250 per year on items.

But the average Amazon Prime user spends $1,400 on Amazon each year in addition to their membership fee. 

Since they’ve already financially and mentally pre-committed to shopping on Amazon, they do so even when a local store might have better prices and customer service. 

They buy plenty of things they don’t need, things that end up being donated or discarded.

The average Non-Prime Member like me spends $600 a year on Amazon.  I’ll concede that sometimes the convenience of Amazon is unmatched. I just ordered a new router from the site, after reading dozens of reviews and comparing it to other models. (My order even qualified for free shipping, which gave my lizard brain a small thrill.)

Are we Non-Primers spending that other $800 elsewhere, collecting just as much future-clutter? 

Maybe, but that’s less likely. Time + inconvenience provides enough friction to curb impulse buys. 

Besides, while brick and mortar stores are highly manipulative environments, they still don’t have algorithms clocking your every click and suggesting other things you might buy, filling your various news feeds with targeted ads, calculating the perfect level of price discrimination based on your browsing history...

Amazon is not in the business of losing money. Prime is a wealth pipeline out of our neighborhoods and into Jeff Bezos’ massive untaxed fortune. 

Shipping has costs. We can either pay directly, or we can pay indirectly in the form of higher prices on items, more spending overall, more clutter in our homes, and less vibrant local economies.

HOT TIP // Waiting Period

We’re using things up, wearing things out, and craving some novelty in all this time at home. 

But before we purchase something new, we could benefit from a waiting period. 

A waiting period gives our turtle-like rational brain the chance to catch up to our hare-like emotional brain and determine just how needful our planned purchases truly are.

A rainy, boring Sunday at home prompted me to add several shiny objects to my shopping list, only for Tuesday-me to find those items kind of silly. Turns out I didn’t need twinkle lights and a new Kitchenaid mixer; I actually needed to get some sun and stop making cookies for breakfast. 

So how long should our waiting periods be? My vote is no less than 48 hours, if not longer for those of us prone to buyer’s remorse. Two sleeps hits the snooze button on stupid.

When time is up, we probably have a better idea which items were a fleeting impulse. Did an advertisement manufacture this need for us? Were we sleepy, bored, or sad?

Speaking of sleepy, bored, or sad….safe to say our emotional brains are a bit more *active* these days than in pre-pandemic times. We might be tempted to shop our way out of sadness, stress, or boredom.

While shelter-at-home is advisable for weeks to come, this version of life, like all versions of life, will pass before too long.  

If we impulsively equip our home office, home theater, home gym, home school, and home patisserie, we run the risk of inheriting a bunch of clutter from our pandemic-self when we get to return to living life in public. 

HOT MESS // Stalagmites

I’m hypervigilant about maintaining clear surfaces. Surfaces are not the place for storing nouns, e.g. food processors. Surfaces are for doing verbs, e.g. chopping vegetables. If we’re feeling hemmed in by our homes, nouns on surfaces are likely to be the cause.

Clear surfaces tend to stay clear. One object on otherwise clear surface stands out in stark contrast. By the time curfew comes around, it’s easy to identify that one item and return it to its proper home.

Cluttered surfaces tend to attract what I call “stalagmites.”

In nature, stalagmites form slowly but steadily, with each drip of mineral-rich water adding just a little bit more until the cave has a new permanent feature. 

In our homes, stalagmites form slowly but steadily as we toss one more item onto the counter, over and over again until we start to feel overwhelmed at the thought of whittling down the pile. We’ll end up with the mail stalagmite, the shoes stalagmite, the loose change stalagmite.

We shouldn’t place any single thing on a surface unless we’re okay with that one item attracting a pile. 

We shouldn’t start a pile unless we’re okay with that pile morphing into a tower. 

We shouldn’t start a tower unless we’re okay with it becoming a permanent fixture in our home. 

Keeping up with clearing surfaces is often much easier than catching up.

HOT TIP // De Facto Minimalism

This situation is imposing a sort of de facto minimalism on us all.

And not just because we’ve now had the chance to declutter the junk drawer.  

Because we’ve all had a shot in the arm of the clarity, gratitude, and perspective that comes from a crisis.

So, what do we truly miss? 

We miss our proper nouns. Grandma and Grandpa. The Public Library. 

We miss our verbs. Hosting friends for dinner. Camping. 

Where do our ordinary nouns fit in here? Put simply, things aren’t useless, they’re just not nearly as important as the people and activities that we love.

(Besides, the acquisition of things is fraught right now. We’re disinfecting packages. Going to the few stores that remain open is stressful, time-consuming. The hedonic half-life of new stuff is shorter than ever. )

For me, minimalism has always meant being very intentional and very appreciative when it comes my belongings. And in the past few weeks, I’m grateful that my things have equipped me to work, cook, connect, learn, rest, and distract myself at home.

I love my slow cooker and my coffee mugs, my internet modem and my desk chair. I love my books and my television. I love my comfy stretch jeans that give me the illusion that I’m keeping my ish together.

If we let it, this de facto minimalism might just reorient our lives. We can move forward with a deep appreciation for what we already have, and an even deeper appreciation for who we love and what we get to do when we’re together again.

HOT TIP // Most Valuable Pantry

Grocery shopping and cooking look different during this era of social distancing. I’ve embraced these shifts using what I already know: not so much about cooking, but about the You Need A Budget software. 

Y’all know I’m a YNAB evangelist. I love ensuring my finite amount of dollars satisfies my many needs and wants each month without guilt, stress, or debt. These days, I’m ensuring the finite amount of food in my home meets my needs while I cook more and shop less.

The key to thinking about “budgeting” my groceries is to purchase versatile basic ingredients that can be used in a wide variety of ways, the same way a fungible dollar can be budgeted towards any expense. A can of diced tomatoes can be “budgeted” towards pasta sauce, chili, salsa, guacamole, moambe, and/or tikka masala. A Lean Cuisine can only be a Lean Cuisine.

As a YNAB zealot user, I follow four rules for money, and now, for groceries. 

YNAB Rule 1: Give Every Dollar a Job. Don’t just have a pot of money called “Checking” and another pot called “Savings.” Allocate every dollar to a specific expense well in advance.

In the kitchen, I’m assigning every ingredient a job. I don’t just have “stuff in the fridge” and “stuff in the pantry.” Every item has a role to play in some future meal(s). I’ve assigned the ground beef to do double duty in tacos and bolognese. The spinach will go towards a salad and a casserole, plus it’ll get a cameo in fruit smoothies. 

If I can’t think of a job for some food item, I consult the internet. My “how to use up cream cheese” query led to both creamy mashed potatoes and delicious spicy bean dip, which will be in my meal rotation forever more. 

YNAB Rule 2: Embrace True Expenses. If we have an annual expense like an insurance premium, we can either pre-pay it by reserving a windfall for that bill, or we can set 1/12 of the total aside each month for the whole year.

I’m “pre-paying” for meals by buying large quantities of those items I’ll cook little by little. I use butter and garlic in plenty of recipes, so I pre-paid for many weeks of cooking with two jars of minced garlic and, ahem, ~numerous~ sticks of butter.  

I’m also trying to set aside a bit of prepared ingredients each time I cook for a meal down the road. Over a couple days of cooking different meals, I reserved some chopped onion, some roasted carrots, some frozen peas, some browned beef, and some of the aforementioned creamy mashed potatoes to become a “fully-funded” cottage pie. 

YNAB Rule 3: Roll With the Punches. Our budget is agile and adaptable. If an unexpected expense pops up, then we can reassign our dollars to cover the overspending. 

Rolling with punches in the kitchen means I’ve made a thorough meal plan AND I’m going with the flow. When my potatoes got a bit sprouty, I cooked them in place of the quinoa I’d planned to cook that day. When I accidentally scarfed all of the chili at breakfast because #pandemicrules, I adjusted and got on with cooking the next meal in the queue for dinner.  

I don’t treat a small hiccup in the plan as an excuse to throw in the tea towel and eat all of my “emergency fund” of frozen pizza, order take-out three meals a day, or bop over to the store during peak hours. 

YNAB Rule 4: Age Your Money. We avoid debt (paying for yesterday with tomorrow’s money) and instead strive for a nice cushion (paying for today AND tomorrow with yesterday’s money).

For me, Rule 4 now means cooking for as long as possible with food purchased once a month. 

I plan meals based on the inventory already in my fridge, freezer, and pantry. I prioritize cooking perishable items first, and I’ve strategically frozen fresh ingredients and leftovers to extend their use. I’ve adapted recipes, halving the amount for items I‘m running out of (chicken) and doubling the items I have in abundance (rice). I’ve used items past their overly-cautious sell-by dates but well within their true expiration dates. And when my fresh and frozen foods are depleted in a few days, I’ll grab a dusty can of tuna and those slightly stale crackers if it means delaying a shopping trip for another day. 

These Four Rules of YNAB always give me a sense of control, and I’ll take all the control I can get these days.

P.S. Absolutely Necessary Privilege Check: I’m still employed, and I’m teaching and meeting with organizing clients from the relative safety of my home. I’m healthy enough to head to the store and financially stable enough to stock up once I’m there. This is not the case for many, many others. I try to stock up courteously, e.g. getting 5 different kinds of beans rather than clear the shelf of all 5 remaining cans of black beans, leaving the next customer with zero. This way I can be one fewer vector of disease in the grocery store without hoarding resources my neighbors need, too.

If you’re experiencing food insecurity, please take advantage of the two new Pop-Up Pantries in Patterson Park.

HOT TIP // Prospect and Refuge

Academics argue that people need both “prospect and refuge.” Prospect as in expansive views of the outside world, refuge as in concealment and safety. To see, but not be seen.

I’d argue we need a bit more: we need to see, be seen, not see, and not be seen.

We might need prospect, refuge, public life and private life in varying amounts depending on our tendency toward introversion or extroversion. But we all need some of our life to be lived in public. We need encounters with other people, even strangers, to see and be seen. 

Our home can be our refuge and retreat from public life. We should optimize our homes so they’re beautiful and orderly, and then we should stop thinking about them so much and turn our attention elsewhere. 

Our homes can never meet all of our psychological needs, and we do ourselves a disservice fixating on our private lives at the expense of our public ones. 

We need to contribute to something bigger than our own selves, to take psychological ownership over something beyond our little island of private property.

Rebecca Solnit says it best: “The dream of a house can be the eternally postponed preliminary step to taking up the lives we wish we were living... It was as though all that realm of citizenry and public life had shrunk back and no one dared hope for a better society…they just tended lawns or refinished the kitchen cabinets.”

Next time we feel a need for new throw pillows, or even a new home entirely, we might challenge ourselves to consider if this emphasis on home improvement is misplaced. 

Do we actually have unsatisfied needs for public life and prospect?

Do we actually need better relationships?

Better neighborhoods?

Better nations?

HOT TIP // Heat Map

I often speak adoringly of my “small” rowhome, but my 960 square feet of living space would have been a pretty typical house for a family of four in 1950, when the average size of a house was 980 square feet.

It’s only nowadays, in the context of the average home size hovering around 2,400 square feet for a family of 3, that my home is small relative to the average.

How did families live in 980 square feet back then? How could they possibly manage without the other 1440 square feet?

Well, as it turns out, we barely utilize that 1440 square feet in our modern homes.

Researchers at UCLA mapped out where 32 families were in their homes during their waking hours. They realized that only about 40% of the homes are used with any regularity.

40% of 2400 square feet is…. 960 square feet. The exact dimensions of my home. 

If we were to “heat map” our own living spaces, where do we physically live?

We can investigate which areas of our home sit empty of people, collecting dust and unused stuff, while we pay to mortgage them, furnish them, heat them, and cool them. 

If we're feeling like we’ve outgrown our space, perhaps we can evict some stuff to free up some square footage for the people and activities that are more important to us. 

We can go to the public park, the library, the movie theater, the office, the bar, rather than try to fit a home office, a home gym, a home theater, a home wine cellar, etc. in our private castles.

We can fill our homes to capacity with people we love, not stuff we don’t. 

Less clutter, more community.

HOT TIP// How to Work from Home

Working on my business from home can be much more challenging than going into my classroom. Home is my retreat from work, plus it’s filled with all my favorite snacks and couches.

In light of social distancing, here are my best suggestions for actually working from home: Signals for our habit-driven brains, Space for our concentration, Schedule for our productivity, and Safeguards for our self-control.

SIGNALS

We can follow our typical morning routine. 

We can set our alarm clock for the same time, put our coffee in the usual to-go mug, eat the same breakfast, etc.

If we stick with all those habits that usually get us out of the door, our brain will default to “work mode” instead of automatically descending into weekend mode. 

We can get dressed. No, like, REALLY get dressed.

If we linger in our loungewear, we’re signalling to our brains that it’s time to be comfortable and relaxed, not productive and focused. 

We might not need to don our full pantsuits, but we should put on presentable could-leave-the-house-in-this clothing so we can better act the part.

Elastic waistbands should be used with EXTREME caution.

We can “commute.”

Commuting is a drag, but it also gives us time to ramp up for the tasks of the day. 

Working from home can feel very abrupt, but we can add in a walk around the block or even a trip up and down the stairs to give our brain some version of that transition time. We can even say “I’m commuting to work” aloud like weirdos to start those work engines. 

SPACE

We can set up shop in prime real estate. 

Where’s the ideal place for our home office? A clear surface with a supportive chair, natural light, and a door. If we can’t get that total package, we should approximate it the best we can. 

If we’re using a space that has a different primary function, we can use props to signal the transition from one purpose to another. For example, putting a mug of pens on the kitchen table means “work time” and swapping it out for a vase of flowers means “home time.”

We should avoid rooms with couches and/or televisions lest we fall prey to an accidental nap and/or Netflix binge. (See: Safeguards)

Working on our office is not the same as working in our office. 

We should definitely optimize our home office spaces, and I will totally help you do that. This weekend is a great time to get your space ready for telework on Monday.

That said, our work-from-home hours are not the right time to reorganize, alphabetize, and label all of our files.

If we can’t complete our office overhaul before the workweek starts, we can clear all but the essentials from our work surface, stash the rest (temporarily!!) in a box in the basement, and tackle the optimization project later.

SCHEDULE

We can block time for batched tasks.

Flitting between various tasks is inefficient and frazzling.

We can get a lot accomplished if we group similar tasks together and assign them a block of time in our day. We can make all of phone calls during the 9-10 hour, send or schedule all of our emails during the 10-11 hour, update our CRM during the 2-3 hour, etc. 

This is a useful practice when we’re at our workplaces, but it’s extra helpful when working from home so household chores don’t muddle our focus.

We can use the Pomodoro method.

We can set a timer for 20 minutes, during which time we must tackle a nagging task. 20 minutes is enough to get over the initial dread of it and move from procrastination to progress, and we often underestimate what we can complete in 20 uninterrupted minutes.

We can schedule breaks. 

Planning when we take a break from work tasks will prevent those non-work tasks like lunch and laundry from slicing and dicing our work hours into useless bits. 

And knowing we get to enjoy a brief respite at the top of the hour (eating all my leftovers) will help us focus on the final steps of the task at hand (finishing this blog post which is turning out to be much, much longer than anticipated).

We can plan for a quitting time.

Our home never closes, so we may have to tell ourselves when we’re off-duty. 

We can set an alarm on our phones to serve as the closing bell, and then use that alarm as a cue to “commute” back home with a walk around the block, a trip to the mailbox, an exercise routine, a mug of tea,or whatever we typically do after work is done for the day. 

SAFEGUARDS

We can add friction. 

I work upstairs and the amusement park that is my phone is downstairs, silenced. 

My TV remote is currently on top of my refrigerator, along with all the booze in my house. If I’m tempted to have an 11:30 AM happy hour/movie marathon, I’m going to have to get out the stepstool, which I’ve stashed down in the basement.

Adding these elements of friction will give our stalwart frontal lobes a chance to reel in our impulsive, pleasure-seeking lizard brains.

We can outsource our self-control.

In our home office, there aren’t any coworkers circulating, nudging us to close out of that 9th cat video.

Lucky for us, there’s an app for that. Several apps, actually, such as Freedom, StayFocusd, Self-Control, etc. We can tell the app what sites to block and for how long, preventing our future tired, bored, restless self from wasting two hours scrolling. 

We can anticipate distractions. 

We can implore/bribe the lovely children/child-like roommates we share our home with to leave us in peace, and hold firm when they attempt to sway us off course. A closed door is a clear but kind signal to buzz off.

We can add tasks that arise to the schedule during the appropriate block, not just tackle them then and there. What’s urgent is not necessarily what’s important. As stray thoughts enter my mind, I jot them down and dismiss them. If I don’t write them down, they will either be forgotten entirely or they’ll pester me relentlessly.  

We can hold ourselves accountable.

We’re probably good at making to-do lists, but working from home may require us to make a Done list. In addition to our plans and priorities, we can record where our time actually went, warts and all.When I write down how I spent my time today I’ll get to write “Wrote and Published Blog Post, 1.5 hours,” but I’ll also have to write “Impromptu Chat w. Husband about Merits of Marmalade, 10 minutes.”

Knowing we will have to write all of our activities down might just discourage us from indulging in the most pernicious and embarrassing time wasters. 

Stay healthy and productive, y’all!

HOT TIP // Tuition

Decluttering can feel like coming face to face with every mistake we’ve ever made. We purchased duplicates and triplicates of things we already own. We wasted time and money on impulse buys we never use. We equipped ourselves for habits and activities we never mastered. 

We’d prefer to avoid the physical representations of all that guilt and regret. No wonder we procrastinate getting organized. 

We can only move forward if we ask ourselves what these mistakes can teach us about how to act in the future.

Sam Bennett calls this “tuition.” Tuition is the price you pay for learning a lesson. Accidentally purchasing the world’s tiniest post-it notes taught me I either need to actually read the product specifications or I need to give up ordering things online. (I ultimately quit Amazon Prime.)

Marie Kondo talks about thanking each object that we declutter, either for its years of service or for the lesson it taught us in its disuse. 

Once we’ve analyzed our mistake and gleaned our lesson, we can either hold ourselves accountable for using up the item, or we can permit ourselves to let it go. Either way, we’ll do better next time. 

With gratitude towards our possessions and grace towards ourselves, we can get busy curating our favorite things.

HOT MESS // The Cost of Clutter

Clutter is expensive. And not just when we convert money into stuff.

When our house is cluttered, we buy duplicates of things we have but can’t find. We lose bills, tolls, tickets, and tax papers. Food expires in our pantry and spoils in our fridge. We buy more bins or hangers or vacuum bags or any of the other “solutions” peddled on infomercials.

Americans can’t afford for our homes to be disorganized, and decluttering has a great return on investment. In getting our house together, we can:

• eliminate the need for renting a storage unit and pocket that $120 a month, $1440 each year. 

• find household chores manageable without hiring a housekeeper for $100 twice a month, $2400 each year.

• sell some items to start an emergency fund.

• discover gift cards we can use for upcoming expenses. 

• unearth stashes of cash and coins and deposit them in our high-yield savings account.

• create a system for paying bills to avoid late fees and penalties. 

• realize we can live happily in a smaller house with a modest mortgage rather than “upgrade” to more square footage, higher mortgage payments, higher utility bills, higher taxes….

It’s ironic and counterintuitive, but the excess of stuff we accumulate to ward off scarcity is actually an obstacle to feeling like we have everything we need. 

When we have only the essentials, and every item has a home, we feel abundantly wealthy.

HOT TIP // 27 Things

There’s an old saying in Fen Shui: “When you feel stuck, move 27 things in your home.” 

While I’m no expert, I subscribe to Feng Shui’s most basic tenet that our homes and the items within them have energy which influences us, and which we can influence in turn. 

(Also, according to Feng Shui it’s okay that I have one zillion house plants.)

The so-called “magic of 27” suggests that interacting with 27 things in our homes can clear out stagnant energy and get some good vibes flowing again, bringing us more opportunity, clarity, and prosperity.

We can clear an item out from our house entirely, or simply rearrange it so we experience it anew. Sometimes this audition in a new space makes it clear that the item is really a keeper; other times, we get the clarity we need to give it away.

I love the target number of 27 because it strikes the balance between achievable and significant. We’ll truly feel a change after moving and/or removing 27 things, and yet we can do it relatively quickly.

I don’t support “just doing a little decluttering each day,” but I do appreciate that we can move 27 things when we’re feeling restless or stagnant to refresh our space.