The Jouney of 100 Bags - Chapter 1

Chapter 1 – The Beginning

            It all started one summer day.  I looked around my cluttered, messy house and felt like I couldn’t breathe.  The walls were creeping in and I couldn’t find things.  I decided in that moment that something had to change.  My mental stability and joy were on the line.

            I did what I always do when my life takes a new course – I bought a book.  (Eventually I bought several books.)  The book, The House That Cleans Itself by Mindy Starns Clark was recommended to me by a good friend who also struggled with housekeeping and clutter.  As it turns out, the title was a little misleading, but it was a wonderful book with a clearly laid out plan that appealed to my logical brain.

            I began with a small space that was not in too bad of condition – the entryway.  I took before pictures, a very helpful strategy, and wrote notes about what I wanted to change.  Then I took everything out, and held every object in that area from coats to junk collecting dust on a small bookcase.  I sorted those items into categories: belongs here, belongs somewhere else in the house, trash, and give away.  During these early days I did not try to sell anything.  I did not want to slow the process of things getting out of the house.  I filled my first two give away bags just in this small area.  Then I deep-cleaned this area.  As a final touch, I rolled up the area rug that I usually just vacuum.  I took a picture of the dirt underneath, but that picture will not be published! As I took the items that belonged in other rooms to those places, I did not obsess about where to put them.  I just delivered them to the correct room.  I chose to focus on one area at a time which allowed me to see faster and more vivid results.

            The entryway was gorgeous!  I took after pictures and could not believe the difference.  It felt clean, open, even pretty.  We have a small bench for the children to sit on and take off their shoes.  Of course it was always covered in stuff and unusable, so when I was done I posted a sign: “This bench is for sitting people, not stuff.”  It made us all smile and reminded us not to drop our stuff there.

I vacuumed!

It's the last week of school - a busy and stressful time.  Tonight after dinner out I came home and every bone in my body wanted to sit down and vegetate.  Instead, I vacuumed.  This is a big accomplishment for a partially-reformed messy house-keeper.  (of course it's needed done for several days, so don't be too impressed)

In the last year I have put a lot of effort into cleaning and decluttering my house.  It's far from perfect, but much better on any given day than it was a year ago.  I even wrote a mini-book about it.  It's called The Journey of 100 Bags because I have eliminated one hundred kitchen-sized trash bags of stuff, not including trash and recyclables, from my house in the last year.   It's been an amazing journey.

I wasn't always messy.  I grew up in a cluttered house, but I was usually the one cleaning it.  I'm pretty sure my college roommates would attest that I kept my areas fairly neat and clean.  Even during the early years of my married life I had a cleaning schedule.  I think things began to spiral out of control when my first daughter was born.  It wasn't her toys or clothes or supplies that caused the problem.  It was my desire to spend every waking second with her.  In my mind bonding with my child was ever so much more important than cleaning house.  This seemed like a noble sentiment at the time, but in retrospect I could have used more balance.

I'm going to share one chapter at a time from the book I am writing.  I hope some of you find it helpful or at least entertaining.  I look forward to discussing it with others.

PS - Some of you are wondering why I am mixing everything up instead of writing separate blogs for OA, food, environmental concerns, and now cleaning.  The truth is that all these developments have entered my life in the last year and somehow they all fit together.  I think.

OA - Step 4 - where the work begins

A lot of people settle in with steps 1-3.  They become comfortable with the ideas that we have a problem and we have a Higher Power who can solve it.  However, that solution does not come without work.  That is where step 4 comes in.

Step 4 - Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

To me addiction is like an iceberg.  The part we see is the actual action (be it binging, drinking, gambling, etc.)  The unseen part of the iceberg represents all the reasons we indulge in our chosen addiction.  My trouble with food rested on many underlying causes and these had to be rooted out and dealt with in order to find healing.

The process recommended by OA looks at a couple areas. I'm going to discuss two of these.  First I analyzed my resentments.  I listed everything that made me angry.  It was a long list.  Most of my life I have been a pretty calm person, but when I 'put down the food' I was flooded with ugly emotions.  It was like PMS on steroids!  People explained to me that this was a result of all my undealt with emotions bubbling up.  I had bought peace with food for so many years and all those pains wanted a turn to get some attention.  So, I listed each person, situation, and anything else that upset me.  Then I analyzed why it made me angry and how it hurt me.  Lastly, I had to admit where I had been to blame in each situation.  Had I been selfish, dishonest, frightened, or inconsiderate?  As I learned, even when I was the victim, I usually had some negative response that had only served to make the situation worse.  I had to own up to my part of my own pain. 

For example, I was angry at my children because they were arguing and bossy at times and they didn't listen to what I told them to do.  I realized that I was allowing their very normal behavior to make me feel like a failure as a parent.  I thought they were making me look bad.  I was afraid they would turn out to be terrible people and it would be all my fault.  So, where was I to blame?  First of all I was indulging in perfectionism.  I was holding them and myself to unreasonable expectations.  Also, I was allowing myself to worry.  These are both self-damaging behaviors. 

In other situations where I was angry at someone I felt had deliberately treated me wrongly I found the resentment prayer to be helpful.  "(name) is spiritually sick.  God, please help me show the same tolerance, pity, and patience I would cheerfully grant a sick friend."  I was reminded that 'hurt people hurt people'.  If I could feel pity and compassion for someone who hurt me, it usually washed away the anger and paved the road for forgiveness.

The second big area to look at is fears.  I was instructed to list anything I was fearful about.  At first this confused me because I thought fear was a natural human response, not something to be rid of.  Eventually I realized that the danger of fear is that it keeps us from faith and action and leads to worry.  After listing the fears, I looked at why I had each fear and how it was affecting me.  I admitted that I was trusting myself instead of trusting God.  I prayed the fear prayer for each individual situation: "God please remove my fear of _______ and direct my attention towards what you would have me to be."  Fear turns our vision inward toward our own problems.  We need God to turn our vision back to him and toward our fellow man so the final step is to look at what God would have us be. 

Example - This year I had a fear of losing my job.  (This was not random.  There were things happening that made my position unstable.)  The 'why' of this fear was that I was afraid of financial ruin and I was basing my reputation/value on my job performance.  Also, I was afraid of being a failure as a teacher.  I prayed the fear prayer and looked for what God wanted me to be.  I realized that fear and worry would not help me keep my job.  I could apply the serenity prayer by making improvements in my classroom and then putting the future in God's hands.  I decided that if I should loose my job, then I would trust God to provide our needs in another way.

Some people find step 4 daunting.  In fact, many people turn away from OA at this point.  It's not easy to face your inner demons.  For me, step 4 was an intriguing journey of self-discovery.  It was not easy or fun, but it was interesting and it gave me a taste of the healing and freedom this journey promises. 

To anyone beginning this step I encourage you to press on at all costs.  The best is yet to come!

Why all the green?

I thought I might take a minute to try to explain why I've gone all eco-friendly lately.

Most of my life I was not too concerned with the environment.  I wrapped my babies in plastic diapers and didn't even recycle.  It just was not on my radar.  I thought that was fine for some people but not really necessary.  (In my defense, I lived in an area for 13 years that had no recycling collection available.)

So, what is all this 'green' effort lately? 

Well, it started when I was cleaning and organizing the art room.  I found myself throwing out bags of paper - old projects and ruined supplies.  A little paper here and there had never bothered me, but this seemed like a lot of waste.  It could be recycled and reused.  It was kind of like throwing away money or being ungrateful for my resources.  It took a little research to figure out what can and can't be recycled and what is available in my area, but we now save paper, plastic, glass, tin cans, cardboard, aluminum, and paperboard. 

So, recycling is pretty normal, but what's with all the reducing trash, cloth napkins, and considering a worm farm?

As I was researching and listening to youtube videos, I discovered that the average American produces 3 pounds of trash a day after recycling.  Also, we are 5% of the world's population but we consume 30% of the world's goods.  That is a lot of stuff and tons of it gets trashed way before its usefulness is gone. 

I ran across a group of people called zero-wasters.  There goal is to produce no trash.  They don't use disposable items, avoid overpackaged stuff, buy from bulk bins, and make homemade.  Again the questions of why comes up.  First of all trash is wasted money and resources.  Also, it goes to a landfill.  I used to think that meant all my trash got buried and eventually 'returned to the earth'.  (of course I knew it took forever for plastic to degrade, but I saw that as a necessary evil.)  What I learned is that our degrading trash is so toxic that modern landfills have to have liners to keep the ooey gooey juices out of the ground.  Also, it produces dangerous methane gas which has to be collected and dealt with.  I also learned that these protections do fail and they were not part of many landfills in the past.  So, landfills are problematic and from what  read incinerating is even worse. 

Recycling helps but it is an imperfect solution too.  Some items, like plastic, only downcycle into less complex substances.  Also, much of our trash is sent overseas since we don't have the resources to deal with it here.  (That gives me pause to think too.  America exports trash.  Weird.)  So, it's much more efficient to not make the trash in the first place. 

So, it's really the idea of waste that got me started, but of course global warming, the ozone, the ideas of plastic in our urine; these all factor in too.  Oh, and don't forget the lovely Pacific Garbage Patch.  Just the thought of that has me picking up litter. 

Well, those are the reasons I'm making my own bagels, washing and reusing the plastic bags I have, using cloth grocery bags, and a bunch of other changes.  So far I haven't driven my family over the edge.  It's like one big experiment.  Some things I like and others I write off as failures, but that's ok too.  I like moving in a new direction that just might be better for me, my family, and the planet. 

Meltdown at Walmart

Two weeks ago I had a melt-down at Walmart:

I am a recovering perfectionist. I am also idealistic. In my endeavor to eat better, create less trash, and be frugal I have been trying to eliminate single-serve, individually wrapped items from my grocery list. So, I took my daughter to the cracker isle to see if she could pick a replacement for the cracker sandwiches I had been putting in her lunch.  We compared prices, we looked at flavors, and we debated things that were actually cookies not crackers. Half an hour later I realized the crackers we had been buying were cheaper and the plastic wrapping took up almost no space at all.  If my daughter does not like the crackers we bought, they may end up in the trash anyway. Overall, it was a lose/lose situation. I felt like my goals were at odds with each other and went to bed frustrated. The next morning I came to the conclusion that I can only do the best I can do. I have had many victories in this journey. I don’t have to be perfect. Sometimes it’s best to do what works; sometimes it’s best to buy the chemical-laden, plastic-wrapped, yummy crackers.

OA - Step 2 and 3

Step 2 "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity"

Step 3 "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him."


So, I think it's pretty important not to get stuck on step 1.  Yes, I am powerless, but that does not mean I am helpless.  There is a solution.  I just have to look outside myself to find it.

I thought step 2 would be easy since I have been a Christian from a young age.  Of course I believed in a power greater than myself.  I even believed in healing.  The problem was being willing to let God work in His way not mine.  I had prayed to loose weight and get healthy so many times.  However, what I really wanted was for God to heal me AND let me eat whatever I wanted.  I never put Him in charge of my food.  I had to be willing to change.  (step 3)

I also had to look at what 'sanity' meant.  I discovered that participating in self-destructive behaviors (binging, hiding food, covering feelings with food...) was not a recipe for sanity or peace. 

Step 3 meant I chose to let God be in control of all areas of my life and trust that His way was better.  I let go of my way which was only bringing me pain and frustration and chose God's way even though it was new and scary.  Change is scary.  I like the comfort of the familiar, but the familiar was slowly killing me.  It was time to step out on faith into the new and unfamiliar.

Many OAers like to summarize the first three steps like this --

"I can't, He can, I will let Him."

OA - Step 1

Since I am blogging about different topics, I've decided to label my posts that apply to Overeater's Anonymous with OA in the title.)

Soon after I decided to abstain from desserts, I found myself getting very in touch with step one of OA -

"We admitted we were powerless over food, that our live had become unmanageable."

I was assailed by doubts (I can't do this), opportunities (just this one time, just a little bit), cravings (I had visions of chocolate-chip cookies dipped in Frosties), and emotions (all the frustrations and anger that I covered up with food came to the surface.)

The first month was tough.  I don't think I could have done it without all the supportive people who were in my life.  Family, friends, my sponsor, and even a website group I joined circled around me with encouragement and love.

When I first read step 1 I was hesitant to embrace the idea that I was powerless, but as I looked at my history with food, I saw that I had never been able to control my eating for any length of time.  I had searched for answers, tried diets, blamed others, and failed over and over.  I don't know if this is a disease or a genetic disposition or simply a choice, but I do know that my relationship with food was not normal or healthy and I had no control over it.

I also stumbled on the word "unmanageable".  I had just came out of a period of dark years of depression where it was difficult to get out of bed and move through each day.  That to me was unmanageable.  I was finally finding joy in my life and moving forward.  However, the food was a roadblock.  It kept me from facing my deeper issues and from embracing my life more fully. 

In step one I admitted my weakness but also my willingness to move forward.