The Last Box

It happened one week ago during the February break from school when I finally had the time to tackle unpacking the pile of boxes and bags that had been sitting in the corner of my room since the move in October.  They each contained a mish-mosh of last minute packing - tacks, bobby pins, the necklace I was wearing before the day before the move, a box of items from the desk of the job I'd left over a year ago.  Though I had been in my new apartment for over four months I'd yet to feel like I was really settled here and I blamed that pile.

I began on a Monday and over the next 24 hours I sorted, tossed and put away the items in the boxes.  There were things I'd wondered why I bothered to keep and so I put them into bags destined for Goodwill.  Others made their way directly to the trash bag, including some actual trash that I'd stuffed into a canvas bag at the end of the day.  There were some delightful surprises as well, forgotten pictures, a pair of earrings that I'd been missing since I left my old job and notes from a close friend.

It was after the box of office items that I realized what had just happened.  I'd flattened the now empty box and stuffed it into the recycling bin on the porch.  I came back inside to stand in the doorway of my room, hand on hips, surveying my space when it hit me.  I'd just unpacked The Last Box.

The...Last...Box.

In all of my adult years, in all of the places I have lived there has always been a Last Box.  With each move the box and it's contents changed but there has always been one that bore the title.  The one full of things I didn't quite know what to do with so I never really unpacked it or I would become so tired of unpacking I just gave up leaving one box unopened.   The box would be shoved to the back of the closet where it sits, forgotten until I move again.  

One year, two years, elevens years later it's discovery always leads to exclamations among my friends of, "Oh I have one of those boxes too.  Ten years it's been in my closet..."  and "oh, so THAT's where my grapefruit spoon went" from me.  

Perhaps we all have a Last Box...but for now my Last Box is no more.  For the first time in my adult life I have a fairly accurate mental accounting of my Stuff.  When I look around my room I see an excess of books, craft supplies, beach rocks, general clutter and too many pictures but no boxes.  There is no mystery of, "Didn't I once have a (insert item here)?" only to have it turn up years later when the Last Box is pulled from its hiding place.

I am sure there is some psychological explanation for all of those Last Boxes; something to do with commitment issues, or maybe needing to feel like one's options are always open, or perhaps it's just due to the frustrations that come from moving but I do know one thing.  With the Last Box gone I do feel more settled.  My space actually has SPACE and maybe I'm finally beginning to feel, at least within the walls of my room, like I'm at home.

The Verdict is Mostly in...

I’m about to say something that I never thought would pass my lips for some time but it’s true…

(...drum roll please….)

I am liking having roommates again.  Okay, at least I like these particular roommates – I don’t think I’d be liking it quite so much of they were, you know, douchebags.  In fact I like this new situation enough that in some ways it’s hard to believe that it has only been just over two weeks since I moved from my tiny, solitary apartment on the other side of town to my new home.   

I like that the humans in the house converse with the cats nearly as much as each other.

I like having slightly tipsy late night conversations by candlelight in the living room.

I like the half coherent “good mornings” muttered my way during the pre-coffee kitchen shuffles as I work at my desk.

I like watching movies on the couch and sharing my popcorn.

I really like shared litter box duty.

I like that we all have our own space and that space is respected.

But of course it has only been just over two weeks.  It’s still possible that they could turn out to be slimy lizard aliens living in disguise or closet collectors of all things My Little Pony but chances are they are simply decent human beings who are likable and easy to live with.

Things I Won't Miss...

(11 days until moving day)

It should come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog that I like living alone and in fact have a preference for it.  I also really like my cozy little Spinster Nest which I've called home for the past three years.  Having recently made the decision to once again share living space with other people I have been thinking a lot about all of the things I will miss about living here and living by myself.

BUT

I've also come to realize that while there are many things that I will mourn when I go (sniffle...I don't waaaaannnaa wear pants...sniff) there are some things I won't miss at all.  Like...

...the harmonica player who lives downstairs who seems to think that harmonicas are not loud enough on their own and must be amplified to floor shaking sound levels in order to be properly heard. 

...being the only person responsible for cleaning the bathroom. 

...the couple next door who argue loudly and regularly enough that when more than two days pass without a peep I ponder knocking on the door to see if they maybe died from carbon-monoxide poisoning.

...coming to the end of my three week underwear supply necessitating an emergency load of laundry only to find that I am out of quarters for the washing machine. 

...not having enough hands to pet three kitties. 

...being across town from my favorite pizza place

...if I fall in the bathtub it could be day before my body is found and by then my cats will most likely have begun to eat me. 

...should the zombie apocalypse occur it's just me and my Louisville slugger (I have it under good authority my roommates are well trained in zombie warfare).

...when I work at home and then dive right into school work there is a pretty good chance of my going 24 to 48 hours without a face to face interaction with another human being.

...baking cakes and cookies and being the only one around to eat them.

Wait.  Actually I might not miss that last one.

The Big Announcement!!! (drum roll please.....)

I have some big news to announce.  It is more than just big news; it’s actually a pretty substantial lifestyle change.  In fact it is a change I didn’t think I’d be making anytime soon, if ever.  No worries, this change does not involve diamond rings or diapers.  It does however involve boxes, packing tape and the possibility of a truck rental. 

I’m moving. 

In less than three weeks I’m leaving my cozy little spinster nest to take up residence across town in much larger apartment with two roommates.  You read that correctly, this champion of living alone is going to be sharing space with other living and breathing mammals that are not cats.   Why am I making such a move?

Like many folks in this country getting by has become increasingly difficult for me.  I am a full time student, I work part-time and I also earn some extra money through performing and my crochet work.  I make enough to cover my expenses but each month it has become more and more of a struggle to make ends meet.  It became obvious I had to do something to either cut expenses or increase my income. 

Option number one, taking a second job, would mean I could continue to live alone but it would be at the expense of my evening and weekend hours which would leave very little time left to write, dance or create.  What few hours I would have left would be given over to school work.  Option number two, taking a fulltime job, left me making an even more drastic sacrifice.  I’d be giving up a part-time job that I dearly love to make a return to the 9 to 5 grind and I’d still be faced with choosing to give up either my creative pursuits or school. 

Sacrificing those things that feed my spirit for the sake of keeping these particular four walls, which I’d not likely be home often enough to enjoy anyway, was not something I was willing to do.   So I was left with the option of cutting expenses which translated into looking for a more affordable living arrangement…which meant living with other people.  Thankfully a situation came along that will work quite nicely.  The space is large enough for the three humans and five (yes, you read that right) felines who will live there; the bedroom that will be mine is nearly the same size as half my current apartment, and I’ll be cutting my expenses by nearly a third.  Oh, and yes, I actually like the people I’ll be living with.

I love new adventure and find myself looking forward to this one too though after three years of solitary living it will be a bit of an adjustment.  I’ll have to remember to keep a supply of clean pants on hand and naked coffee isn’t likely going to be an option anymore but I will now have people to inflict my Spinster in the Kitchen experiments on share my Spinster in the Kitchen test recipes with and I can finally have another body to shove in front of me for protection when someone is hiding behind the shower curtain waiting to come at me with a butcher knife. 

Yes, I can make all sorts of adjustments and sacrifices (like wearing pants) to “get by”, but there are certain things I won’t give up.  Writing, dancing, learning and creating are the things that make my life something I live, not just survive. I'm not willing to give up living...

Small Space Living Ideas...

I am a fan of SpaceTV and subscribe to their YouTube channel.  My favorite features are of course when they highlight small space living.  Today I watched a video about an apartment belonging to designer Janet Lee who is the author of Living in a Nutshell (which I am about to add to my reading list!)

I love two things about this video 1) the mail panel next to her door which I think I am totally going to replicate and 2) her way of making things impermanent.  She mentions several times how she creates things with the idea in mind that she is going to move one one day.

Here is the video,  Enjoy!

Happy Blogversary to Me!

One year ago I decided to start writing a blog.  When Spinster Jane began it was completely anonymous.   I chose a generic female name to write under, Jane, and a fairly general topic…me and my experiences with living alone.  My main reason for keeping things anonymous was to allow Spinster Jane the freedom to find her voice (yep…I just third personed my blog pen name).  While I knew I wanted to write about living alone and choosing to remain single, I wasn’t 100% sure how to go about doing that. 

In the beginning all I did was write and I did very little in the way of promoting the blog.  Over the next two months I shared the blog with close friends whose editorial opinions I trusted.  I also began to discover that there was a lot of information out there about single living and was pleased to find that much of it was positive.   Blogs like Bella de Paulo’s Living Single and Eleanore Wells’ The Spinsterlicious Life, were informative and inspiring to read.  After another month or so of regular writing I finally started sharing the blog far and wide, where ever I could think of posting it and I slowly started making it a little less anonymous, even posting a picture of my very own face! 

I am sure that during those first few months 90% of my readers were friends and family but over time other folks began to take notice.  I was asked by Simone Grant of Sex, Lies& Dating in the City to write a guest blog post.  I was approached in the grocery store by a woman who recognized my photograph from the blog.  Most recently this blog was nominated for Best Blog in the Portland Phoenix Best of Portland Awards (and yes, if you want to vote for me you can do so here).  As my audience grew the blog developed too with regular features such as Spinster Nesting and Spinster in the Kitchen posts about ways that one can make living alone easier and more comfortable.

And so here I am, one year, 128 posts (well 129 if you count this one) and a domain name later, still writing, mostly about single living, frequently about my cats and occasionally about post apocalypse survival strategies.  Through this blog I’ve connected with some other amazing single living women around the world and I’ve rediscovered my own love of writing. 

So thank you to everyone who offered advice and support when I began this blog a year ago, and a giant thank you to those who visit and read the blog regularly.  While I do write because I enjoy the process (struggle?) of creating, I think every writer hopes that someone will read  the words they have written.  The fact that there is an audience out there for what I write is the butter crème frosting that tops off the creative cake.

Thank you.

Spinster Nesting: Hey!! Who Made this Mess and Who is Gonna Clean it Up?!!

“Organizing is a process, not an event.” – Laura Leist, professional organizer

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrggggggggggaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!  My apartment is a @!#%^!  mess!!!” – Spinster Jane

I realize that there is some amusement to be found in my sitting on the couch writing about what a cluttered, disorganized mess my apartment has become when I could instead be up doing the dishes, sorting my make-up, putting away clean laundry or some other organizational type task.  However, at the moment I’m not only feeling overwhelmed enough by the state of things that I’ve no idea which task I would actually choose first, BUT I’m also feeling supreme amounts of frustration.

How frustrated am I?  Frustrated enough that I considered cancelling all social engagements over the weekend in favor of taking the time to clean and this is my BIRTHDAY WEEKEND.  So, I need to let off some steam about the state of my living space before going to the extreme of become a cleaning obsessed introvert or simply dumping all I own into a giant trash bin.    

My view from where I sit includes a coffee table piled with ongoing craft projects, three bags of costuming from shows this past weekend that I’ve yet to put away and a basket of clean (and folded) laundry that can’t be put away as there is no room in my dresser.  I also know that there is a giant mound of dirty laundry in my bedroom and the sink is full of dishes.  My bathroom is a clutter of make-up, hair pins and empty contact lense cases.   At this point I really only like my apartment when the lights are off and my eyes are closed. 

I’ve numerous excuses as to why my living space is in this state…

…I’m a busy woman who works two jobs, attends school full-time, performs on the stage regularly and has a busy, busy social life.

…I’ve been fighting exhaustion for the past two months for which a solution was only recently diagnosed.

…I really just need one more bookshelf (which will solve all my clutter problems) or closet organizer (which will solve all my clutter problems), neither of which I can afford at the moment so why bother?

…it’s just such a big job and I don’t have the time to set aside a few days (WEEKS?) to do it. 

While the exhaustion might be plausible excuse for things falling into a worse state than they have ever been before, this has been a problem for several months and this isn’t the first time I’ve blogged about this before (12/12/2011).  In December I did a large amount of sorting and culling of the STUFF in my apartment. I did get rid of quite a bit of things and it did result in a higher level of organization, for a time, but it wasn’t long before things fell back into a generally cluttered state. 

Something must be done and it isn’t just about making my current space clean, it is about getting back into the habit of keeping it in such a state (because really, despite what stories my parents may tell about my being the messiest kid on the block, I don’t generally live like this).  So I’ve signed up for Self.com’s** 30 Days to a More Organized You which will send me one ‘get organized’ type tip every day for 30 days.  My hope is that the daily email with fill the role of nagging roommate.  I signed up on Friday and so far I’ve received two emails the first of which told me to make the bed (done!) and spend 20 minutes on one organizational task (I cleared off the dinner table…trust me, it took the whole 20 minutes).  If all of the tips are that easy then by the end of thirty days I should know where every pin, sock or cookie in my apartment is located. 

…or at least I’ll know where to begin looking to for them. 

**please note I am not endorsing Self or any other Conde Nast publication or product.  I chose to sign up for this particular service because it also allows me to check off when I have completed one of the suggested tasks which allows me to see that I’m actually making some sort of progress. 

Spinster Nesting: The Great Sorting

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful” – William Morris

One my New Year’s resolutions is to make the spinster nest more livable and that is going to mean getting rid of stuff.  Over the past two years of being in this apartment I’ve tried to convince myself that all that was needed was for me to simply be better organized, that all I really had to do was to find just the right bookshelf or the magical number of storage bins and my home would be orderly and clean.  It’s time for me to face the fact that the clutter and disarray that is my living space has a lot more to do with the quantity of stuff I own, and very little to do with the quality of my organizational skills.

Just to be clear, I’m not what you’d call a hoarder.  I don’t have years upon years of newspapers, magazines, tin cans or mail piled around my house.  What I do have is a sizable yarn stash, years of collected costuming, books upon books upon books and basically a two bedroom apartment’s worth of stuff that I am trying to cram into a very small one bedroom apartment and an overflowing storage space in the basement.  When I think back I realize that I really didn’t do a very good job of sorting things when I moved in, and since then I’ve only added to what I’ve already have. 

My home doesn’t feel like home…it feels like I live in a rented storage unit.  I want this to once again be my space, not my stuff’s space.  So I’m going to do something about it. 

I don’t plan to wait for January 1^st to begin what I see as The Great Sorting.  This week I have final exams for school, including a four page paper that needs writing, which will pretty much fill every moment of free time that I have over the next four days, but once that time is complete I’ve no excuse to delay beginning.  And truthfully, I don’t want to delay, the state of my apartment has been driving me crazy for months. 

I have given some thought to what criteria to use to rid myself of the objects that clutter my space.  I know if I let myself I will always find some reason to keep something because I might use it in the future.  Then I came across the quote above by WilliamMorris, a nineteenth century artist and writer.  I thought what better standard to use for deciding what to keep and what to pass on, throw out or donate? 

I honestly don’t remember half of what is in the boxes currently packed away in storage, and if I don’t recall what’s in them, and if in the past two years I haven’t felt compelled to dig them out and open them, how useful can their contents be?  In addition, from my seat here at the table as I let my gaze wander around my living room, I can count five objects that I like but which I’m certainly not in love with. On top of that I can think of several people in my life who would find those objects beautiful or useful; which means that I don’t really have a reason for keeping them, other than just to have them.

As with nearly everything else that goes on my life, once this process begins I will quite likely be blogging about it.  This sorting of things is going along with my sorting out other priorities in my life and as with any sort of change or transition I expect that both with bring up quite a few interesting things to write about.  So stay tuned…

New Additions and Exciting Changes at Spinster Jane!!

It’s Saturday morning and I awoke with wholehearted intentions to make coffee and then sit down to write for a solid hour.  I was successful on the coffee front.  The writing however was delayed due the talent that the authors of the blogs on my blogroll have for writing well about interesting things.  I’m now looking at the clock thinking that I have somewhere to be in an hour and though I am now well caffeinated, I am still sitting here in my jammies. 

I do think I have just enough time to share some ideas I have for changes I plan to make to the blog.  Spinster Jane, while it does have a lot of personal flavor, is about women living single.  I want it to not only be entertaining but also useful.  I’ll still be writing posts about my cats and my battles with the dirty laundry pile, but over the next couple of months you can also expect the following:

More Spinster in the Kitchen posts!  Cooking for one can at times be a royal pain in the spinster ass.  Most recipes make servings for four or more, and they not always easily dividable.  Just how do you calculate one fourth of an egg?  Frozen dinners are not only expensive and depressing but also generally terribly bad for you.  I’ll be upping the number of Spinster in the Kitchen posts to two a month, and will also start to include some guest posts from other fabulous single living cooks I know.

Spinster Spotlight!  I’m not the only woman in the world who is happily living the spinster life.  I am acquainted with many women who, due to choice or circumstance, have found themselves embracing solo living.  While you can read about my single living stories here any time you like, I want to share the perspectives of others.  I’ll be doing Spinster Spotlight interviews with single living women and bringing  their stories to you.  The plan is to bring you the first of these in January, 2012 so we can all start the new year with a bit of inspiration.

Spinster Nesting!  Beginning in December I’ll be including a monthly feature on living alone in a small space.  Living alone not only often means compromising on square footage, it can also mean finding creative ways to save money so you can actually afford to keep your nest for one.  I plan to share my ideas and experience with small space living including how to keep organized, how to decorate on a budget, how to entertain in a tiny space and more.

I’m very excited about all of these upcoming additions to the blog.  I hope you will be too…

Now, it’s time to put on pants.