Purse downsizing -- is it life changing?

Tuesday morning I got inspired to clean out and declutter my purse after reading “10 Life Changing Minimalist Practices” by one of my favorite YouTube vloggers, minimalist Shannon Torrens. In it she wrote, among other things, how much it helped her to downsize her purse and that she didn’t even miss the things she removed.

I already wear my purse across my body like she recommends because that is better for my back and shoulders. But mine has gotten too heavy even so and gives me pain where the strap rests on my shoulder at the base of my neck. I could get a back pack style that would distribute the weight more evenly. Though I am concerned that would not be secure enough. Experts recommend carrying them in front which seems awkward.

I dumped all the stuff out of it onto my bed and started sorting. I was surprised how much junk there was. I didn’t think to weigh it until after I discarded the junk and removed a few extra hankies that were in there but they were light so it wouldn’t have made much difference. The total weight of the purse plus contents, was 4.2 pounds (1.91 kilograms). My empty purse weighs 1.2 pounds. That means there were 3 pounds of stuff in it (that is almost one and a half kilograms.)

I looked it up and the average woman’s handbag, including contents, weighs 5.5 pounds according to one article, and 6.27 pounds according to another. But the "ideal" weight, according to the USDA, is no more than 2.2 pounds. (I wonder why the US Department of Agriculture is studying the weight of women's handbags?)

Anyway, I separated out several things that I don’t need very often but I keep in my purse “just in case” and put them in a Ziploc bag to keep in the glove compartment in my car for when I need them.  I was amazed to discover that my little coin purse weighs 0.482 pounds (7.712 ounces). That is almost a half-pound of coins that I almost never need. I put it in the “just in case” bag as well. The total of all that stuff is 0.6 pounds (9.6 ounces).

That reduced my purse to 3.6 pounds. But I wanted to do better.

I weighed my wallet and keys since they seemed a little heavier than necessary and I thought I could reduce them a little.

The wallet was 0.820 pounds (13.12 ounces). After removing unnecessary business and "reward" cards and filing receipts I got the wallet down to 0.694 pounds (11.15 ounces). It’s probably heavier than average because it’s leather. (I got fed up with how quickly cheaply made wallets fell apart so I splurged.)

The keys were 0.422 (6.752 ounces). (That included a separate set for our RV.) That is too many keys! I decided to only keep keys in my purse that I will need when I am out and about. Other keys such as RV keys and ones I only need while at home--such as mail box and filing cabinet keys--I won’t keep in my purse. Hopefully that won’t lead to too many frantic searches or confusion. I also removed all but one key tag/rewards card—a couple I put in my wallet in place of the full-sized rewards cards that I was also carrying. I may not even need those since just giving my phone number seems to be enough at most stores. All those changes brought the keys in my purse down to 0.178 pounds (2.85 ounces). That reduced it by 4 ounces.

That got my total down to 3.4 pounds (1.54 kilograms). So now my purse is almost one-pound lighter than when I started. I might look for a smaller purse to get it even lighter.

So will it change my life? I don't know but it was nice to have less weight to carry around yesterday afternoon when I was out for a few hours. I had less pain in my shoulder and it was easier to find things too. I showed my husband later. He joked, “but where will you put the kitchen sink?” I think he was impressed :-)

The American Way

I was shocked to read a couple of weeks ago how much the Chinese government is using technology to track and control their people. Some say that by 2020 there were expected to be 600,000,000 face recognition cameras in China—nearly one for every two Chinese people. They will soon record all public spaces in China. Every inch of every street in Bejing is already covered.

These cameras are also being forcibly installed inside church buildings, including over their doors, offering boxes, and Bible-selling counters. (Persecution against Christians in China is increasing. Their government says Christianity is foreign and evil.)

Last Thursday I visited our car insurance company. I wanted help to set up their “drive safe and save” app on my new cell phone. Drive Safe and Save is an app that is “paired” with a “beacon” --an innocuous looking little square plastic thing-- that we put into our glove box and it tracks how well we drive. The better we drive the more discount we get on our insurance.

My previous cell phone did not have a compass so the app didn’t work on it. But my new phone is more advanced and has a compass so John thought I could probably get the app to work on it.

I called them on the phone earlier that day to ask how to do it. But when I pushed the button on the beacon like the girl said to do, its little red light didn’t light up and the app on the phone didn’t do anything. So, I went into the office to see if they could make it work.

The girl kept pushing the button and nothing happened. She asked me to check the trip log in the app to see if any of the trips were mine. The trip log shows a map and the route taken for each trip, and the time, date and distance. It also grades the driver for acceleration, braking, speed, cornering and phone use. It doesn’t show which car was used though. So, it was a bit of a puzzle to figure out if any of them were mine. (They probably have that info somewhere since they know how much discount to apply to each car.)

After analyzing the log as well as I could I determined that it was only showing my husband’s car. Hmm, I thought, if I was ever suspicious, I could use this to check up on where he was going.

After what seemed an unnecessarily long time, while she continued to push the button and asked me a few more times if any of the trips were mine, she finally said the beacon wasn’t working and she would order a new one for me. She also said if it was working it would have shown my trip to their office.

Afterwards I thought, how ironic, I was shocked by how the Chinese government is tracking their people’s every move, but I just spent all that time intentionally to make sure that my trips can be tracked. All for a discount on our car insurance!

Anything to save money, I thought, I guess that’s the American way.

Yesterday after I wrote that, I thought more about why we are so trusting as to let someone track our trips like that. It’s not really because we care more about saving money than anything else. It’s because we trust that our information will not be misused. Why? Are we just all hopelessly ignorant and naive? Well maybe we are a little. But generally, it’s because we don’t expect our government to use our information against us because, unlike China, our government hasn’t made a habit of doing that. Why is that? I believe it is because our laws and society, for the most part, are based on Christian principles. Things like honesty, justice, "love thy neighbor" and "do unto others what you would have them do unto you." That is the American way. Long may that continue!

For more on persecution of Christians in China:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/china-christians-religious-persecution-translation-bible

https://www.christianheadlines.com/contributors/michael-foust/china-installs-surveillance-cameras-in-churches-to-monitor-christians.html

Fear Not - Your Savior is Born!

The Sunday before Christmas John was in a play at our church. It was called "Fear Not - Your Savior is Born!" You can watch it here. It is just under 6 minutes long. (the only way I could make the video play was to make a Youtube video of it and include it here. Unfortunately, being Youtube it will then show you some other random video it thinks you might want to see next. It won't play it unless you click on it. If you want to see the play again you have to hit the refresh button.) Anyway here it is:

Like the angel said to Mary, Joseph and the shepherds we don’t need to fear because our Savior, Jesus, has been born. He is Immanuel, "God with us," the Prince of Peace.

As a Christian I believe that. He is my Savior. That's why I celebrate Christmas.

I do sometimes struggle, though, to banish fear, worry and anxiety.

We are told over and over in scripture not to fear. Just like when the angel, Gabriel, said "fear not" in the play it is an imperative. We have to choose to obey. That means it is possible. But it also means it is not automatic.

My fears don't just "wash away" in God's presence like a chorus we sang Sunday morning said they do. Not in this life anyway. In heaven they will. But in this life it is a choice and a battle. It's like exercising a muscle. It takes effort.

God is with us. He promised to be with us always and he said whenever two or more are gathered in His name He is there. He is there whether or not we sing songs about it first. If we are believers in Him he is with us. We need to believe it because he said it.

Believing that God is with me is not enough, though. I also need to trust that what the Bible says about God is true. He is good, and loving and compassionate. He is wise and powerful and faithful. In other words he is trustworthy! And by his grace I am accepted by him because of Jesus's death on the cross. He truly is my Savior!

Some Christmas Hi-Lights

We took down our Christmas tree last night (better late than never!). I was delighted that John also sorted through our old lights and get rid of some of the ones I don't like. We donated some old decorations we didn't want before Christmas too. This morning I've been packing away the other decorations and trying to fit everything in so it takes as little space as possible. There are still some things we are each undecided about. Maybe I'll put them in a separate box and see if we want them next year.

It seems like ages since Christmas. But I still want to post a recap:

It's my blog so I can! :-)

Christmas Day we got my Mom from her residential care home and my brother came over.

We had a semi-non-traditional Christmas dinner. I couldn’t bring myself to do a turkey and all the usual fixings when we just did all that only a month before for Thanksgiving and still have leftovers from it in the freezer! I also didn’t want the mess of a large ham like we had last Christmas. So, we had pork tenderloin instead--a small special (read expensive) thing that I have never made, or eaten, before-—maybe experiments aren’t a great idea, but I do seem to do that a lot.

John and I enjoyed it and it was easier to cook and not much mess. It seemed tender and easily chew-able to us. Unfortunately, my Mom’s Parkinson’s made it difficult for her to eat it. I guess it is a little less soft than poultry.  Maybe next year we will have chicken.

We had non-traditional versions of some other things too: roast potatoes, carrots and turnips in place of the usual mashed potatoes and gravy. We had gravy, just not mashed potatoes. For the sweet potatoes we used a recipe we have made before that is not as sweet as the usual desert-like American sweet potato casserole. It calls for grainy Dijon mustard, black pepper, cranberries and a little maple syrup. It may sound weird but it’s really quite tasty and not very sweet.

We also had steamed broccoli, cranberry sauce, and rolls--at least John and Paul did. I didn’t eat the rolls as they were not gluten free. I had enough other things that I didn’t need them anyway. In case you are wondering the drink is sparkling grape juice.

Desert was gluten free blueberry cobbler and vanilla ice cream. It was so much easier to make than pie! And it was still yummy. John found some (non-gluten free) miniature single serve pies from the grocery store that he and Paul also enjoyed.

I feel badly that so much of what we had was not something my Mom could eat easily. She didn’t complain much, but she didn’t eat a lot of it either. Some years I have made special pureed things just for her but she doesn’t seem to need it all the time so I was hoping she could cope with what we ate. But some of it didn’t turn out as soft as I expected it to. Hopefully I will have more energy next year to make sure we have some special things that are soft enough for her. This year fibromyalgia or hormones or both have been hitting me hard and I just didn’t feel up to doing all that this time.

I’m glad we could at least all be together and enjoy the time.

Here my Mom is opening a gift from a friend. We gave her our gifts a few days before Christmas.

For the last two years we "kids" have gone on an outing a few days before Christmas in lieu of gifts to each other. Our presence together is our gift to each other. At least that is how I see it and the guys are more or less willing to go along with it. 

We started at Nordstrom's Ebar, a coffee shop next to Nordstrom in NorthPark Mall. Next we visited "Gingertown" which is a miniature town made entirely of gingerbread and candy on display near Nordstrom during the Christmas season. The buildings are all designed and created by local design, engineering and construction firms. The money raised benefits the Children's Craniofacial Association. I just discovered a few other major cities have Gingertowns as well. Each one benefits a different charity. 

The next stop was the Trains at Northpark. It is a display of model trains that raises money for the Ronald McDonald House of Dallas and is open each year over Christmas and a little way into January. It "includes 1600 feet of track rolling from coast to coast on a whimsical rail journey across America." They even have "some interplanetary visitors from Outer Space!" 

We finished the day by going to dinner at one of Paul's favorite restaurants, Yama Sushi, on Forest Lane just a few miles from NorthPark Mall.

Here we are in front of Gingertown. 

The theme of Gingertown this year was Venice, Italy.

John and Paul enjoying the trains. In the background is a section of the Golden Gate bridge in the California section.

There is a section that replicates a few iconic buildings in Dallas. On the right is Reunion Tower. The low gray building on the left is the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. I wonder if the one in the middle is meant to represent what feels to me like the crazy number of construction projects, both road and building, we have here.

I love all the fun little figures and scenes. They hold still better too so it is easier to photograph them! Here are some characters from the Pixar movies Toy Story and Cars.

There is a scene from the North Pole. Santa and his reindeer are just taking off. His elves are gathered to see him off.

Another flying object has just landed bringing visitors from outer space. 

Some regular sized earthlings ;-) --ready to go eat dinner.

Painting the Hallway - Phase Two

Last week after Christmas John tackled the biggest job on my “John’s time off projects” list, Phase Two of Painting the Hallway.

This phase was the most challenging. There wasn’t as much wall space as the first phase but there were a lot of doors. Six in all and all dark brown with dark brown trim. Three room doors, two closet doors and the front door. Five of the doors we painted bright white. Even with primer it takes a lot of white paint to cover all that brown. We decided to leave the front door as it was because it is pretty, but we painted its trim. The walls we painted ivory.

It’s taken longer than we expected to finish the job. We hope to finish the last little bit tomorrow.

It used to be like a dismal cave but now, even with some of the tarps and blue tape still around, it’s pretty and bright. It feels like a different house. It’s amazing what paint can do.

In process. The linen closet after John sanded it. The little gizmo on the floor is an air filter to help keep the dust down. We still found dust at the other end of the house! The door way on the left is the hall bathroom.

The linen closet is behind John

Looking into the hallway from where I am sitting in my office. That white door really brightens up my view.

The hall closet across from the linen closet with my office and guest rooms on the left. Even with the mess on the floor it looks like a different place.

The linen closet. The pink tags are things that need a little more work. At least that was the idea. They keep falling off or getting moved as we work on things and then find more runs to fix or patches we missed. The place was riddled with them for a little bit. 

Deck the Halls with... necklaces?

I tried something different on our tree this year.

A few weeks ago, my friend Susan offered some necklaces to me that she didn’t think she would wear from her late mom’s jewelry collection. One of the ones I selected had a pendant with a pretty red rose on it.

Later I got the idea of using it as Christmas tree ornament. Last week when we decorated our tree I tried it and it did look pretty.

I thought of a few other necklace pendants I have that have sentimental value but I don’t actually wear. So, I put those on the tree as well. I want to get some thin red ribbon to tie them on with because the plane metal hooks don’t look right on them.

Here they are with the red ribbon:

The pendant from Susan's Mom

Here is one that John made when he was little for his Mum

This is from the necklace my Mom wore to our wedding

This is from a necklace that was my Aunt Carolyn's 

Now I am wondering if I might be able to re-purpose some other special things.
I have a large collection of refrigerator magnets I no longer keep on the refrigerator that are nice mementos from special places. And we have lots of shells sitting in bags and boxes that I have thought would make pretty Christmas tree ornaments if I could ever get around to doing something with them.

Later I looked at my refrigerator magnet collection. A few of them might be nice as tree ornaments, but not as many as I expected. They will take a little modification to make them work. I'm not sure they are worth it though. I was surprised at how little sentiment I felt toward them. Maybe it’s time to declutter them. I found a shell that would look pretty. I'll need to have John help drill holes in it to hang it with. I'm not making any promises, though.

This is my favorite Nativity scene. My parents had one like it when I was a kid. 

How is my new water habit?

It’s been 17 days since I posted about trying to drink more water.

It’s been surprisingly easy on most days to drink more than 64 ounces of fluids. In fact, most days I drank a lot more than that.

My average for the last 17 days was 97 oz per day.

It got more difficult to keep to plain water after the first day or two. But tea and coffee count too. I am giving myself grace. After all the point is to stay hydrated not to win an award for asceticism! (I usually stick to decaf or herbal teas and coffee when I have them.) I also drink a little juice with meals.

Busy days are hardest to keep up. That’s not surprising. I already knew that.

My lowest day was 82 oz. That was Thanksgiving Day which was the busiest day. It was over 64 oz. So, I exceeded my goal amount but during the busiest part of the day I didn’t drink much and got kind of parched. I’ve been told by various medical professionals that it is best to spread fluid intake out over the day and not load up a lot at one time to try and catch up. That is definitely a challenge when I’m busy.

I also noticed a pattern. If I don’t drink much one day then I drink a lot the next and then I don’t feel like drinking as much the next, and so on. Maybe that is OK if it isn’t too extreme.

For example, the day after Thanksgiving I drank the most--120 oz. That is a swing of 38 oz from the day before. It is definitely the widest swing from one day to the next. Usually the swings are between 8 and 16 oz which is probably more healthful.

Tracking my fluid intake is easiest when I’m home all day. The system I came up with is:

I fill a collection of 16 oz water bottles with filtered water in the morning and keep them on my counter. As I empty them I put the empties to the right and then when I get up in the morning I note down how much I drank the day before (counting what I drank in the night). Then I refill them and move them over to the left.

This was this morning. The bottles to the right are what I drank yesterday and last night. The bottle to the left was the one I used from to make my hot water this morning.

Here they are  refilled. The bottle on the right is the one I used out of for my hot water this morning. 

When I want some tea or coffee I pour the water from a bottle into my mug and then pour it into the electric kettle to heat. (The missing bottle is in my office where I am working to write this.)

I seem to drink about 5.5 of the bottles of water per day plus about 16 oz juice.

Usually there is one full bottle left for the next day so I can use that for my morning hot water before I count and refill the bottles from the day before.

Days when I am out a lot are definitely trickier. When I go out I usually take water from one of these bottles and then try to remember to put it back if I didn't drink it all. It's not very convenient. I may stop doing that. If I drink other things when I am out I just try to remember to note that down. I keep my notes in Evernote (an app that I have on my computer and phone)

It's been kind of fun to track all this for this short time. I probably won't do it for always. It does help me to remember when I see the visual reminder on the counter. It hasn't been hard to drink more than 64 oz. The trickier thing is to be consistent and spread it out evenly. I can definitely tell that busy days or days when I am out a lot are much harder to drink an adequate and consistent amount.

So it's nice to know that I am drinking enough.

What was disappointing is how little difference it seemed to make in my overall health. I was still having a lot of fatigue and fibromyalgia pain even on days when I was drinking a lot.

I did some research and have a theory. But I'll save that for the next post.