bits and bants vol. 58
insert gruelling memoir title here - aka January vibes
Well, it’s January. And I think we’re all old enough to know that the calendar flip doesn’t lead to a magical new you. The fresh start can be a good mental wake up call. But I think I’ve started seeing January as a season over the past few years. It’s a season of maintanence, refreshing, sorting out, squaring away, and sitting in the slower pace. I don’t have any deadlines or a ton of to-do lists, but I do start seeing things that I want to stop putting off. I want to lighten the load without purging. I want things cleaner without going on a tirade. I want things not completely new, but refreshed.
January is the perfect time to deal with your home. There’s a reason so many people start the year off completely purging their homes and doing cleaning challenges. We’ve cleaned up Christmas and see our homes with new eyes and that’s a good thing. I semi-hush my home like The Nester, not going full out, but not immediately putting things back where there are empty spaces left over from Christmas decorations. I like to leave spaces empty for a while and then sometimes like to think if I want new things in spaces. Do I want the same things on shelves, the same trays, the same plants in the same spots? It’s nice to switch out things you already own for things from other rooms. I also have been hanging all the art I’ve accumulated in the last year. It feels so good to have things hung on new walls and changing the feel of rooms with different art. I’ve hung something every day this week and I feel so accomplished!
I like to repot houseplants in January, which isn’t technically the recommended time, but it’s the time where I have the least amount of plant related chores and I’m desperate to play with dirt again. Usually repotting means bigger containers so there’s a reshuffle of my many houseplants that happens. I also love buying houseplants in January and February. I have the greatest garden centre only five minutes away and it really helps me deal with seasonal affective disorder to go once a week to walk through the greenhouses. I won’t buy houseplants every week, but seeing what’s available and picking up a few new things for my ever growing collection feels like January to me!
While I don’t methodically purge and clean my house, I do start noticing places I haven’t touched for a while in January. Closets, drawers, random accumulating piles around the house are things I want to at least go through when I get a chance. The fact that it takes as little as five minutes to organize a closet that you’ve been putting off for six months is truly unfair. But in January I just start to think, if I have five minutes and go through this junk drawer then I get the reward of not having to worry about it for another year! Since moving I now run my life by the maxim of “Would I want to pack this up or should I just throw it away now?” And it really makes organization easy. Packing is the worst. If something is not useful or being used would I pack it up to a new house? The answer almost 100% of the time is no and it’s easy to get rid of!
Another thing that January somehow spurs me into action on is stuff we need that I’ve been putting off actually getting for no known reason. Towels, bedding, new kitchen utensils, all that everyday stuff you actually need but don’t intentionally buy. I bought myself extremely bougie sheets this past week because my duvet cover was actually in shreds. Does it feel a bit ridiculous how much good sheets and bedding cost? Of course. But I’m also a 40 year old woman and, damn it, nice bedding is worth it.
January is also a great time to do annoying yearly appointments. Is it deeply unglamorous, yes, but also then you don’t have to think about it in the fun months of spring and summer. January has become when I do all the optometry appointments for me and the kids, so I usually use that as a good excuse to get a new pair of glasses. Fresh year, fresh glasses. This is also a great time to get a haircut, new hair colour, fresh eyebrows, you name it now’s the time refresh!
Speaking of refreshing, now is a great time to add something you want to regularly have in your schedule. Do you have a hobby or class you want to start? Put it in the calendar now. A lot of people—who don’t have teenagers and 24/7 scheduling issues—find extra time in January so use some for something you want to start. With me and my scheduling issues I just try to use whatever pockets of time I get to just keep up with the basic hobbies I have, so it’s not really on the calendar, but I’ve gone cross country skiing twice this month when my daughter is taking her lessons. I take a book to hockey practices, and even my crocheting to basketball games. I’m still doing puzzles, and watching more than a little tv, and it’s fine because it’s winter. That’s all the excuse you need.
These things all feel like a lot of January vibes to me and I’m just plugging them into the small pockets of time I have because January has been really full on already with everyone doing something, school back in full swing, and the usual (is it usual??) teenage stress. I’m feeling pretty maxed out while trying to live in the season of January. What a title for a gruelling memoir that would be!
bits:
if you’re needing a piece to just rip through you, this is it!
enjoying family dinners is hard, and it’s ok if you don’t enjoy them, but you still have to do them. I definitely thought for years that dinners were extremely difficult and un-fun. But family dinners are so important so this post really helps by giving you ideas to make yours better.
reading, watching, what have you:
I have just three hours left of The Hunchback of Notre Dame to crush before book club tonight. I’m listening to it, and while I know sometimes that doesn’t make for the best experience I just did not have an easy breezy 40+hours to read this as a physical copy this month and frankly, I don’t know how people got through those brutal architecture chapters without 2x speed! I think I’m not in the best place to appreciate this book, I do love the medieval world creation, Esmeralda is just a perfect gothic character, and the melodrama is all very good. But an enjoyable experience it is not.
Just finished Much Ado About Nothing and went straight into Henry V. I really have appreciated being spurred on to keep going with Close Reads Podcast HQ and their bonus episodes because it’s been great and challenging at the same time.
I was fortunate to get a review copy of Bishop Varden’s new book of essays from Word of Fire, Towards Dawn: Essays on Hopefulness and it is really excellent as was to be expected!
I haven’t been watching anything! With sickness going through the house and different people going to bed earlier at night, and hockey and football on tv, and someone out at practices what feels like every other night we are in a rut. I would like something soapy and easy to get sucked into, I might have to resort to the new Harlan Coban on Netflix. Give me thy recs.
There was more but if I wait for it to come back we could be looking at weeks before I send out another newsletter. I will instead sign off and try to cram those couple hours of Hunchback!
what was going on with the French medieval justice system, anyway!?
think warm thoughts,
Christy
Your newsletter is seriously one of my favorite reads. 😎
Did not know Varden had a new book coming out. His writing is exquisite.