{Seven} Media and Possessions

I’ve fallen a little bit behind lately in 7 so to make up for it, last week, Dr Hubs and I did both media and possessions week at the same time. And I am just now blogging about it 😉  I have a good excuse this time though.  I’ve been vegging, doing not much of anything the past week.  My epic 7 mile run was not just an epic fail; it was a legendary fail.  On Monday, I started getting some super sharp pains in my lower back on the right side.  I knew it was probably kidney related.  I called my mom, informed her I might be dying, and I sent this picture to her fb wall.

Mom and I have a serious problem with self diagnosing…

So I have kidney stones.  Lucky me.

at least it got me a 3 minute cuddle with E, which is longer than any cuddle I have gotten since he learned to walk!

Anywaaaaay. Back to 7…

Let’s discuss possessions first.  I hate possessions.  Ok, maybe not all possessions.  But I hate having so much stuff.  I really didn’t realize it until I had read 7.  I can’t stand clutter.  I can’t stand messes.  So my house is pretty organized and clean.  But if you look in a drawer, in a closet and heaven forbid you venture into our garage, there is ALOT of stuff.  It might be organized, but there is alot of it.  And it makes me crazy.

It makes me crazy because there is no need to have this much stuff.  There is no need for it to sit somewhere unused when other people really need it.  Do I really need to hold on to 7 different coats for just me?  Do I really need 3 sets of dishes when I only really use one?  Do I need these shoes that I never wear when someone else out there has nothing to cover their feet?  I have tried every brand of sippy cups for my child. Why am I holding on to the ones that he just flat out won’t use?  Why do I hold on to these bags that I haven’t used in years?

Why do I have all this stuff?!?!

Since I read 7 at the beginning of the summer, having all this stuff has really been bothering me.  When I got back home, I started going through closets, drawers, cabinets etc.  I am still not finished.

I plan to continue possessions week over the next few months.  I want to donate more, but this is phase 1.  Pictured is a collection of over 100 items.  The stuff on and around the coffee table, mostly household items and clothes/shoes, were donated to the Crisis Center, the same place I took those 3 humongous bags of clothes during clothes week.  The items on the couch, mainly books and stuffed animals, were taken to Goodwill.

Cali, snoozing with her Grandpa on the couch.

Cali, my husky, was recently diagnosed with chronic low grade pancreatitis.  So she has to go on prescription food, which means that her dog food cost just doubled. Yikes! So I donated her old dog food plus some pet supplies to the local humane society.

I also donated a stack of books to the church library, and intend to donate even more as I read them.  I gave away a bag of boys clothes to a friend.  I gave a few clothing items of mine to a friend.  And I have a huge stack of magazines that I am going to take up to the hospital for the Pink Ladies to give out to folks in the hospital.

And ahhhhhhhhhh.  It sure feels good to get rid of all this stuff.  1) Because it just feels good to not have so much. It feels less chaotic.  And 2) because it’s going to benefit someone else.

And because getting rid of stuff gives me that ahhhhhh feeling, I intend to continue going through our stuff and donating even more.  I told the girl at the Crisis Center to remember my face.  I will be back soon.  One week for possessions just wasn’t enough.  Plus it will be awfully nice when we do move (whenever that is) to not have as much to take with us.

Now on to media week…

We did not do a complete media fast.  We gave up tv and facebook for a full week.  I did “share” my blogposts to my fb page via the share button, but I did not log on to facebook.  Those are the two medias that we both find we waste alot of time on.

Thank goodness for the dvr so that we can waste our time on our own time…

We don’t normally have the tv on during the day.  I will occasionally turn CNN on while I am cooking and listen to it from the kitchen.  Our tv use happens at night.  Our evenings usually consist of feeding E, getting him ready for bed, cooking dinner, putting him to bed, then eating our dinner in front of the tv.  Every.single.evening. that we are home.  That has gotten old so no tv was actually very refreshing.

We actually ate dinner as a family at the kitchen table.  That was nice!  E was very happy to be eating right along side us. The trouble is that the Dr gets home so late on many evenings that its been nearly impossible for us to eat dinner as a family because by 6 pm, E is starving to death and vocalizing that he would really like to eat.  That or he is scooting the high chair across the house to wherever I am.  He’s not very subtle.  So he normally eats before we do, and we eat around 8.  We have been stuck in that routine for a long time now.  But it was really nice to eat together at the dinner table on the nights that the hubs got home at a decent time.  He is working from home on Wednesdays and Fridays so we are going to try to eat earlier in the evening as a family on those days, as well as the weekends.  Mixing up the routine! We are crazy like that!  I want my children to grow up eating at the table as a family, but our schedules just haven’t allowed it while the Dr is in school.  Maybe after graduation that will change.

Guess what.  No tv equals more conversation.  Imagine that!!  Cory always teases me that its when we are getting into bed that I turn on my motormouth and want to talk about everything.  He says to me “why didn’t we talk about this earlier!?” I say “Cuz I just had to watch Glee!!”  Ahem.  So anyway, we had more conversation earlier in the evening.  These conversations and time spent together makes for a happier and healthier marriage.  And a happier and healthier husband who gets more than 6 hours of sleep.  We intend to have a few tv free nights per week so that I can get all my talking done earlier in the evening, much to my husbands happiness.

Also please note, we also had several fierce Skip-bo competitions, in which I am convinced Cory cheats…

What about facebook?  I didn’t really miss it, but at the same time I did.  I missed not putting pictures of E on there for my family and friends, but at the same time, it was very liberating not getting on there.  I know I waste time on there.  I really don’t think facebook is a bad thing.  It has been a great interactive way for me to stay in touch with all my friends who have gone all over the country and the world, and my my family who are all 900 miles away.  Without facebook, ipad facetime, and windows live messenger webcamming, this 900 miles would feel like the other end of the world.  But it doesn’t.  All the technology makes being so far away so much more bearable.  So while I didn’t miss the distraction of facebook, I did miss the communication it gives me with my friends and family.

I have set myself some facebook limits.  When I am working on a project on the computer, (ie: finances, blogging, email), I must complete my project before I can log onto facebook.  I don’t sit and play on facebook for hours at a time, but I do check it frequently.  My ipad may ding with a comment, or my email gets a msg from someone emailing me via facebook, so I check that and then the next thing I know, I just spent 3-5 minutes on fb.  This happens multiple times per day. It’s a distraction.  Without fb as a distraction last week, I was so productive!  So rather than respond immediately to those comments/emails/notifications, I am going to limit the distractions by getting on less frequently and by limiting my time on there as well.  I have been doing that this week and it has been as equally liberating.

That’s media week and possessions week.

Thank you 7 for helping me figure out how messed up I am. 😉