You can go home again.

Yes, it is possible to go home again. It’s just littler.

I remember the first winter break I came home from college. I’d left my dormitory shower room, with its wall of sinks and room of showers and came home to my parents’ house … with its single, tiny, little sink and shower. The counter seemed made for midgets as I had to stoop over to brush my teeth. Were college counters higher because there were no children there? The whole return home experience seemed like a voyage to Lilliput.

In our last visit to New York, my sister Elizabeth and I decided to explore New Jersey. I lived there from age four to eight, and she was born there. We actually drove up to our old address. We had not been back there since 1962. 56 years.

Yet I knew the curve in the street! I knew where my friend Karen used to live! I knew this place!

Except that almost all the houses had sprouted second floors or additions. They were bigger, swollen over their lots. But not ours. Ours was the little ranch house I remembered. From the outside.

The current owner, Jen, let us in.

How could a family of six have lived in that house? Where did we eat? In the itsy-bitsy kitchen?? I do remember we couldn’t open cabinets or the refrigerator when we were all seated at supper, but how did we even walk through the kitchen? How did my mother cook in there? Did we ever have relatives over for Thanksgiving or Passover? There was no way a single other person could have sat at our kitchen table.

How did we ever fit? The dining room was our living room. That’s where the couch, TV, and Dad’s chair was. How did it all fit??? Even Jen couldn’t imagine it. I’m pretty sure I watched TV from the floor.

No wonder our main play area was outside or in the basement.

The full basement was acres and acres of interesting stuff to play with. My father’s workshop, my mother’s laundry area (with her ironing mangle!), the place where old interests died (the fish tank, for example), and my own personal area: under the stairs, with my father’s old electronics (an oscilloscope!). The basement was our domain.

If you asked me, I’d say we had to go down twenty steps to get way, way down to the basement.

At Jen’s house, there were seven steps.

I can still describe the bookshelves with the Golden Book Encyclopedias in the living room, the pink cement patio we used to chalk whole cities on (which is still there, under Jen’s deck), the Book of Knowledge bookcase behind the couch, my mother’s philodendrons climbing to the ceiling and serving as a room divider. I can close my eyes and remember Home.

So I sat on my couch, in my Anchorage living room, and looked around. I looked at the bookshelf full of books and the other full of games. At the pottery from Mexico, the painting from a silent auction, the flea market couch that’s been reupholstered twice. The lamps that fall over, the beanbag chairs and pillows I made years ago, the ivy that climbs up the fireplace wall. The three different colors I picked for the walls.

“Guess what I’m thinking,” I said to Tim.

“That our home is homey,” he said.

How did he know that? That was exactly what I was thinking.

It must have been the smile on my face.

Diagnosis of a Clutter Relapse

I’ve relapsed.

The symptoms are obvious: stuff is sitting in the middle of my floor. Stuff has taken over my lovely, uncluttered and well-organized space. How’d it get there? Where’d it all come from? What is it?

Projects
    Some are in process, so their junk has legitimate ownership of the floor. One has been completed and can get put away. One is income taxes and will soon get put away. A few others are between start and … decision-making. Somehow they ran aground, lost momentum, needed further processing. They’re in a holding pattern.

They need triage: Abandon and toss? Do the next identifiable step? Wait for illumination?

You see the problem, of course. It’s that “wait for illumination” phase. Projects are like that.

But if I apply the Marie Kondo rule – “keep only what sparks joy” – then I must admit, some projects just don’t do it. I’m not joyful about their state of incompletion, and I’m not sure I’ll be joyful about their completion either. It’s time to be relentless. My computer has a Force Quit option; I have to Force Finish or Force Quit.

Accumulation
    This is easier. I have acquired – yet again – potentially useful things in great quantity. The plastic containers that hold Costco mushrooms are PERFECT for mixing paste and assorted solutions for projects. I can’t bring myself to throw them away. I have a dozen of them. Okay, they’re all going to be donated or recycled tomorrow. I won’t even tell you what else fits in this category.

The pile of stuff I couldn’t figure out what to do with a year ago

• The cacao bean roaster I bought in Ecuador because it was incredibly cheap, lovely terra cotta, and was from our chocolate-making class. I do not roast cacao beans.

• The brass samovar from my mother’s house that is terribly tarnished and needs to be shined before I decide what to do with it. This would count as an incomplete project except that I know ahead of time that I won’t know what to do with it once it’s done because it is sentiment vs. I-will-never-want-to-keep-something-that-requires-polishing.

• The audio cassettes that I decided to keep because I still have a cassette player, but when the stereo got its new receiver, the cassette player developed a bad buzz but I didn’t test it until the Geek Squad guy had left and now I’m not sure what to do with it. This is a perfect example of a project running aground. It becomes so convoluted you give up … but the debris still remains.

This category may ultimately resolve itself because its persistence over time is making all of them Weights. They steadily leak Joy. I will probably rejoice when they get off my desk. If I don’t have to look at them, I may forget that I ever owned them. I have to grit my teeth and deal with them.

Paper
    There are three kinds of paper on my desk:

• Things to look at but not yet looked at


• Things to do with but not yet done with


• Things I don’t know what to do with

I rip bits out of magazines: links to look at, podcasts to check, interesting tidbits I want to remember or pass on. They hang out for a while; mostly until I can’t remember why I clipped them.

Right now, most of the papers on my desk have to do with finances. Post-election, I know I have to do something, so I’ve been looking at statements, reading reports, collecting articles. But, like the audio cassette player, I have reached the limits of my personal knowledge and expertise. I simply don’t know what to do.

What I do know: how much I loved my clean, empty-ish space

What I need to do: reclaim it

looking at it! Grit teeth, Force Finish or Force Quit, give away, remove, recycle.

Relentlessly. Ferociously! Joyously, maybe?

(I’ll let you know how it goes.)

The Newly-Naked Room

This is a story of dominoes. Not as in Mexican Train and lots of fun with a newly-discovered game, but as in one thing leads to another and Southeast Asia falls to the communists.

The asbestos abatement guys are gone now. They were thorough, clean, polite, punctual. They were terrific; it’s not their fault that I don’t want to go downstairs anymore, that I’m living upstairs with my laptop and paint on the dining room table. When I realized my granola was still downstairs, one of them even fetched it for me. Now I really don’t have to go downstairs.

I overheard one of the asbestos abatement guys asking another, “Why are we even doing this? It’s not a commercial property.” I refrained from telling him that the lady of the house is a fussy little worrywart who thinks asbestos abatement is a necessary part of carpet renovation.

If this weren’t a dominoes chain reaction story, if asbestos removal were the only activity, I’d tell you all about it. How they have to coat the insides of the rooms with plastic to make it airtight. How they set up big fans and suck the air out so they don’t breathe the dust. It makes an incredible racket so I didn’t stay around; I didn’t see the gas masks or white suits. I didn’t even see the portable shower they set up inside. They came and went through the laundry room window. They were so good they didn’t even squash the flowers in the garden under the window. If this weren’t a dominoes story, it would be a story of conscientious workers, professionalism, and great customer service.

But it is a dominoes story. The first domino: old carpet needing replacement. Other people do this. Their big aggravation is moving furniture out and back in.

Second domino: Replace some carpeted areas with wood. Oh, the existing wood is discontinued and has to be replaced to match, too? That’s the…

…Third domino. Followed by the fourth: wood installer thinks it’s getting too hard and quits at the stairs. Tim finishes stairs, furniture stabilizes, illusion of normalcy sets in.

Fifth domino: Pick out carpet. Realization that old carpet has to come out before new carpet can go in: furniture has to move out and in, then out and in AGAIN?!?

Sixth domino: Discovery that downstairs has vinyl tile under the carpet, that the adhesive attaching it to the floor has asbestos. Yes, many houses have it, but if you don’t disturb it and just cover it back up, you get to avoid the hassle the resident worrywart puts us through.

Seventh domino: Carpet guys tell us the carpet is “being made.” What does that mean? Is it like going into a restaurant and waiting for them to grow the lettuce?

So now the asbestos abatement guys are done, and the downstairs is naked to its concrete. There is NO WAY I am moving the furniture back in only to have to move it back out again. Moving furniture is not my preferred work-out routine. I can’t even tell if my aching back is from dead butt syndrome or furniture hauling.

So the furniture is going to remain in the heaps and piles where it’s been shoved. The downstairs is going to remain naked. The carpet Tim tore up is going to remain in its gigantic pile in the dining room, there to protect the new wood floors from the furniture moved out of the areas to be carpeted. Whenever the carpet shows up.

Which should be just about the time the summer visitors arrive.

A New (old) Thing

I ice skated when I was little, but when I did it again in college, I could barely stand up. Everyone says you don’t forget how to ride a bike, but apparently, you can forget how to ice skate. Much, much later, when Sophie was little, we faced a snowless winter in Anchorage. Without cross-country skiing, we had to pull out ice skates or we’d suffer terminal cabin fever.

Which is beginning to look a lot like this winter. So, after twenty years, I pulled them out again.

As we reach Solstice, things are very, very dark. Darker than other years, but I think that’s because I have three big windows that look out … on the dark. In my last office, I didn’t even have a window in front of me. I would go to work in the dark and not notice HOW LONG it stayed dark. I would leave work in the dark, not knowing HOW LONG it had been dark.

Now I know, and it’s A LOT of dark.

So just when I’m remaking my personality and trying to be a more generous spirit as my Third Third gift to myself and the people around me, I’m facing the dark. Dark = grumpy, but I’m fighting it off. So when Tim suggested ice skating, I didn’t growl, complain, or ignore him. I didn’t bury myself in a book, look for a DVD, or start on some chores. I went downstairs and pulled out the skates.

I remember when they first started clearing Westchester Lagoon. Families came out, little kids pushing chairs around to help them balance. Some fancy ice skaters, some just skating and talking. The air was crisp, people were smiling, coming together as some great winter community. Sophie was learning to skate, excitedly chattering away at us. Tim can skate backwards – he played hockey – but I was holding my own. I actually remember it as one of the truly Golden Moments of my life; all was well with the universe, with Alaska, with the winter, with our family.

The problem with remembering a Golden Moment is that they can’t be duplicated or repeated. You can’t walk into an experience expecting a Golden Moment. They have to sneak up on you unawares.

If you’re approaching your first time on skates in twenty years with a certain amount of trepidation, fear, and dread – but which you are disguising because you’re remaking your personality – and if you remember that glorious golden time, a sort of loss sweeps over you. I think sometimes Third Thirds have this: a time or place where memories rush in. Sweet memories, but memories nevertheless.

And then you have to get on the skates. I never fell! One circuit around, and Tim commented that I no longer looked like the Tin Man.

Two circuits around and I didn’t have to flail my arms around like a windmill.

Three circuits around and I felt smooth. Four circuits around and I felt punchy with sloppy legs. I remembered that I used to turn corners by overlapping one foot over the other but that seemed kind of elusive right now. But, hey, I skated! I’ll do it again tomorrow. And the day after that.

Dread was gone, replaced by exhilaration. By being outdoors, in the light. By conquering both fear and sluggishness. By identifying a New (old) Thing I can do and get better at. By setting myself up to be ready for a new Golden Moment (should it just happen to pop up and enter my life).

My house is in its Third Third, too

The carpet was the first to go. I’d meticulously cleaned every stain that appeared, every food item or glass of wine that found its way to the floor. Sophie’s weekly job was vacuuming, and she did it till she left for college, gleefully saying goodbye to the vacuum cleaner and spouting that “other mothers” had let chores slide over the years, why hadn’t I??

So the carpet was well-maintained and looked lovely…

                ...until it didn’t.

The first sign were little frays at intersections. Gradually, ripply waves started moving across its surface. It no longer fluffed up the way it used to after shampooing and vacuuming. Eventually the intersections became actual gaps.

The carpet is in its Third Third, too. No, it’s worse than that: the carpet is dying.

I decided the dining room carpet was going to reincarnate as wood laminate floor, like the kitchen. In fact, where carpet wears the worst, we’d switch to wood. Do the hallways and stairs, too. Look how great the kitchen is. Do it just like that!

Except that Pergo discontinued the color of the kitchen floor. If it’s all going to match, the kitchen has to be re-done, too.

This is what happens with remodeling. This is why I can only do remodeling every ten years or so, when the memory of the previous remodel has receded. Remodeling is like setting up dominoes: one job requires another which leads to a third. Soon your house is a demolition site.

First the tile guy did the entry way. I was trapped in the house till the grout set. Only that night did I realize, “Oh, we have a back door.” That’s what happens to your brain on remodel.

Last night, Tim ripped up a perfectly beautiful kitchen floor. I loved that kitchen floor. My hairdresser had installed it in her new salon and we got the specs and bought exactly the same stuff. It was indestructible, easy to care for, always looked great. Now it’s shards and splinters and I’m bereft.

The dining room bookshelves had to come out, too. Now all the books are piled in the living room. I’m thinking optimistically about how it will spur me on to further weeding and culling, taking books to the library as donations, putting the rest on the shelves all dusted and freshly arranged. I am trying to look on the bright side of piles and piles of books laid out all over the living room floor … but then the floor guys call to delay till next week. My optimism is fading.

After the wood floors, we’ll be re-carpeting the bedrooms and living room. Everything in them will have to be moved out … and moved back in. It’s all so daunting. And then it hits me: I had just switched rooms with Sophie’s old bedroom a few months ago. I’m going to have to move those dozens of tiny tea sets again!

A Room of My Own

For all the time we’ve lived in this house – 25+ years – my office has been a small room downstairs, off the laundry room. That’s where my drafting table, desk, and table sat. There’s a big window onto the back yard.

That’s where I wrote my newspaper columns, filed my papers, and scheduled radio recordings. That’s where I did calligraphy, kept my bookshelves, and stored my office and art supplies.

And every time I went down to it, I felt like I was walking down, down, down into a dungeon. Tim would turn the heat on early; didn’t help. It could be toasty down there, but it was still a dungeon. It was light and I had beautiful art on the walls, but it was still a dungeon.

When Sophie was five, we moved her to the neighboring guest room downstairs: a double-sized room with space for her “stations”: dress-up area, reading area, monkey bars across the ceiling. That made my downstairs dungeon a more pleasant place; I had company. I even set up the table in my room as her craft table to finish a project.

But it was still a dungeon. Eventually, a junk room. I’d just throw stuff in there because all I needed really was a little hole to get to the computer.

Five months ago, I decided Sophie-the-adult was no longer thinking of this place as home. So I moved in. I took over her desk, moved out her bed. Moved in my desk and drafting table – with no junk on them so they could actually be used for drawing and painting!

I even took Sophie’s tiny tea set collection in the display case and moved it piece by piece to my old room. I had to take photos of each shelf to make sure I placed them just so.

What I have now: three windows that look in three different directions; the computer, the printer, and the scanner all in the same room; a place to write and then casually walk over to the tables where I can paint.

I come down here when it’s dark, when the sun is shining, when it’s early, when it’s late. I come down here at three in the morning. I come down here because simply walking in the room stimulates my creative juices. I come down here when I have too many ideas upstairs and I have to start working on them … downstairs.

I am a conscientious shopper: I check Consumer Reports, I get references, I research and research. Except when buying a house: for that, the clincher is walking in the door and if it feels right and comfortable and welcoming, I know it’s right. Our house home is all that and more for me … except for that little room that was my office (but now which makes a perfectly pleasant guest room).

I love my new room! I love how it makes me feel. I can’t really empirically describe why, but it feels right and comfortable and welcoming. If in my Third Third I want to feel at home in my life and skin, then it’s only reasonable to feel at home in my room.

Best advice I ever got:

A hum is when your decision feels just right, when the choice you’re making matches with the whole universe. It’s a hum through your whole being.

A snag, on the other hand, is a kink. A stumble. A rough spot in the smoothness. You can try to ignore snags, try to pretend you didn’t notice them, but really, you KNOW. You know it’s not right. Period. A wise person taught me to listen to my hums and snags when making choices. They don’t lie.

My new room is a hum. My old room was a snag I should have listened to years ago.

The Third Third is a time to act on old, lingering snags and find the hum.