Give Me Clutter or Give Me Death

One of my oldest treasures. A small hand puppet with a wooden face. Bought at an antique shop 

in El Paso, Illinois when I was 12.

Thrift store finds, gifts and original art by my uncle Mark Mittlesteadt.

Tyler, Coltrane and I recently moved to Las Vegas. We ordered a 14’ U-Haul truck per A-1 Rental’s suggestion when I told them we lived in a 900 sq ft apartment. HA! I didn’t take a picture of the inside of the truck because I was too busy shouting expletives in my head out of embarrassment that I had so much freaking stuff, but it was packed, quite literally, top to bottom, front to back, side to side. My eternal gratitude goes out to Ben Mathews, Sean Poole and Andrew Pincock for their genius and optimism at making everything I couldn't part with fit.

Every family needs a Kewpie photo-bomber. And, yes, that shelf was so full,
it was bowing in the middle.

I’ve never been a minimalist. My bedroom growing up had walls covered in photographs and posters and bookshelves full of books and tchotchkes (don’t you just love the spelling of that word?), all of which was kept, boxed up and moved to my first married-person studio apartment. After crying for three days from claustrophobia, I parted with about a tenth of my things and had a garage sale. We moved three more times since then and again, only parted with a couple of boxes each time. Keep in mind, I had not stopped accumulating - when you see a street sign at an antique shop with your dad that says “FERTILE” on it, it must be bought and kept without negotiation. When your mom gives you a stack of vintage women’s magazines from the 1920s-60s, you accept them, savor that vintage paper smell, and giggle at the misogynistic advertisements for years to keep the past alive. And some things are just plain useful and I don't want to have to buy them again.

The creepier, the better, I always say. And that cookie jar was purchased by my
equally unique sister at a thrift store in Merrill, WI. Midwest thrifting is
where it's at.

Have you any idea how many articles, books, blogs, and YouTube videos are dedicated to the subject of de-cluttering and simplifying your life and space? There are times I feel bombarded by them, as if the only way to find happiness and peace is to get rid of all of your crap and create a home that is Architectural Digest magazine worthy. But, one day, I read an article that brought tears to my eyes about a woman who, with her family, had decided to build a small, eco-friendly home, which required some serious downsizing. She remembered telling herself how free and light she would feel at getting rid of things, but after her yard sale, all she felt was that she “deeply missed [her] stuff.”

Those boxes are full of wonderful, tiny things: doll parts,
keys, bird''s nests, dollhouse furniture and more! All
organized by type and labeled.

For the first time ever, my feelings about my “things” were validated. I love my stuff. I love my “Language of the Whistles” card table, my stuffed puffin with its leather beak and feet, my Yamaha CP-70 Electric/Acoustic grand piano that weighs a thousand pounds but is just too unique and weird and awesome to ever let go. These things are irreplaceable, make me think of my sweet and loving family and childhood, and make me happy when I look at them. And, inevitably, they will follow me to every residence until, upon my death, my children will have to make that difficult decision to keep it or throw it away.

Appropriately positioned, I thought.

Instead of feeling embarrassed while the missionaries unloaded our 14’ truck, I was excited to be reunited with my strange treasures and find a place for them in my new home. My stuff is awesome, my decorating style is eccentric and a little cluttered, but I like it. And to anyone who disagrees, I’m sad for you and your boring and editorially pleasing home.

Small Towns

My parents grew up in this tiny town in northern Wisconsin called Merrill. That should probably be the name of my next child, because of how much I love that tiny town.

Tyler and I moved into our apartment right as the weather was starting to get warm.  It’s the first place I’ve lived that has a window in the bathroom – this fact earned a 4 out of 5 in my mental quantitative pro/con list for moving. The smell of our clean, pink bathroom and open window on a cool, jacket-weather summer evening was the exact smell of Grandma Florene’s on E. 9^th St. in Merrill.

In fact, much of Rexburg reminds me of Merrill – the courthouse here, though not as impressive, sits right in the middle of town at a busy intersection. Both endure bitterly cold and snowy winters. Neither is particularly diverse. I once asked my mom what it was like to go to school in the sixties during the Civil Rights movement. She said, “I wouldn’t know. There weren’t any black people.” Rexburg has Mormons and not Mormons. Merrill has “Lutherns” and Catholics. People drive the speed limit and always say a genuine hello. If it weren’t for the college, only the accents (doncha know) could tell them apart.

Reminiscing about my visits to Merrill is like watching a movie that was filmed this decade, but that takes place decades ago. Everything seemed dated and more simple and quaint there. And it isn’t just a smell that brings on these memories. It’s the taste of dill pickles, the texture of cold, freshly cut carrot sticks and the fizz of A&W Root Beer that remind me of Ron & Queenie’s pizza night at Grandma Florene’s. It’s the feeling of my finger in the curve of my tiny Corelle cup while eating applesauce that takes me to Grandma Faye’s back porch with Grandpa, his oxygen tank and her book of Herald Tribune crossword puzzles. It’s the sound of shuffling a well-worn deck of Bicycle playing cards or shaking a bag of tiles that says, I, too, will teach my child how to play 500 Rummy and Scrabble so that one day he can pummel his own grandparents, who will have become ever-so predictable.

Three weeks each summer and one each winter spent Up North was just enough to consider Merrill another home. My two grandmas, so completely different in every way, loved me exactly the same. One through telling me endless stories about farm life and being married to the handsome Nemo the Great and the other through reminding me not to wear my socks in bed (your feet need to breathe, you know) and hours spent playing King’s Corners and Rummikub. My grandpa – Nemo the Great – with his suspenders and oxygen tank, smelled like tobacco and cute old man. I don’t have a solid reason why, but I knew he loved me, too, and that he thought I was someone special and important. I was only 11 when he died and felt so badly that I’d forgotten the card tricks he taught me and that I never got the real story behind why his thumbnail was shaped that way (unless he really did get into a fight with a bear . . . or grandma).

As of last November, my grandparents are gone and I no longer have a real reason to visit Merrill. I have oodles of pictures and clearly plenty of things to keep my memories intact. And even when my dad retires to Wisconsin and I pass through with my own family, it won’t be the same.

I’ll be saying goodbye to Rexburg soon, too, and will most likely have no reason to come back here, either. A visit for a sibling’s graduation might call us back for a weekend, but again, it won’t be the same. Perhaps I’ll feel just as nostalgic about this place when I open the window of our next clean bathroom on a cool, jacket-weather summer evening.

I Can Do Anything

People sometimes ask me what I studied in college. I usually answer, “Um, not sure. A little of everything?” I graduated two years ago and I still don’t know what I want to major in. Three colleges, five declared majors, seven years and ten semesters gave me two degrees in General Studies.

As a child, I told people I wanted to be a mom. In middle school I wanted to be whatever I was presently doing: a ski instructor while in Vail (ha!), a mathematician while in algebra class, an author while reading Harry Potter. High school was a place to begin specializing my interests but I found myself enjoying English, chemistry, calculus and orchestra equally (I am not as big of a dork as that sounded). College only proved to further frustrate my quest for that “thing” at which I was to excel. My sister had art, my brother had his own business, and I had student loans.

At 27, even as a wife and mother and part-time employee, I often feel unaccomplished. I have peers that are lawyers and doctors, teachers and engineers. I am doing the same thing I did when I was 18, only now I have to call a babysitter first.

In the last few weeks, I’ve begun to discover that a college degree is not synonymous with a person’s identity and that being a wife and mother, while not financially rewarding, is a huge accomplishment and enormously important. Also, I don’t have to choose a “thing” if I don’t want to (I don't). During nap and Netflix time, I choose many things and hope to choose many more things as my babe grows and experiences his own academic crises.

My things, future jobs and hobbies, are, in no particular order and not limited to:

Art teacher

Elementary music teacher

High School English teacher

Homeschool teacher (maybe?)

Piano teacher

Pianist

Violist

Guitarist

Cook

Baker

Cake decorator

Seamstress

Collage artist 

2D artist

Graphic designer 

Interior designer

Window display stylist

Freelance writer

Blogger

Editor

Photographer

Screenwriter

Nutritionist 

Herbalist

Naturopathic Physician

Health food store employee 

Personal organizer 

House cleaner

This list is overwhelming and I have a tendency to attempt tackling eight of these at one time, but as a master of General Studies, I’m clearly qualified.

Why Having a Baby Isn't the Worst

When I found out I was pregnant, I was . . . how should I put this . . . pissed. I’m not really sure exactly where the stress came from, but the Internet was not helpful. I subconsciously calculated that mothers of young children on Facebook and in blogs shared struggles and successes in a ratio of about 7:1. Posts about poop smears, complaints about laundry and restless nights seemed to far outweigh expressions of joy in motherhood. Or, the sentiments stood together: “My clothes are covered in spit up and my house is a mess, but [I say, cliché-ly] it’s all worth it!”

What I expected while I was expecting was a life void of freedom and friends and full of frustration and feces. But, may I introduce a voice of moderation about motherhood? I am aware that family planning, pregnancy, birth and postpartum experiences are different for everyone, but there seems to be a lack of optimism and ease about this subject and based on my first (and perhaps, somewhat unique) experience, I’d like to share some things that might balance the ratio.

•In the words of my mother: “Women dumber than you have been doing this for thousands of years. It’s just not that big a deal.”

•Pregnancy ends. Seriously. You think you’re doomed to be 30+ pounds overweight forever and then magically you can shop in the regular section at H&M again.

•Childbirth can be exhilarating and happy and kind of fun. It’s feministic and empowering and a great test for the mind and body. Kind of like speed walking or doing a crossword puzzle. Only harder and more fulfilling.

•People are really friendly to new moms. They bring you food and don’t judge you when you show up 30 minutes late to church.

•Newborn babies sleep ALL DAY LONG. There’s so much time to nap and read and eat and shop and work and clean and stare at your baby’s face and hands and feet and person.

•When newborns don’t sleep, they eat, make funny faces and if they’re anything like Coltrane, occasionally cry, but all of this can be taken care of in the comfort of your own home. While wearing a sports bra and yoga pants and watching Netflix.

•Cleaning poop and pee and spit up becomes just something to be done like showering, and pooping and peeing ourselves. Everyone does it and babies just need some help for a few years.

•Babies aren’t mobile and can’t really see or do anything for quite a while, so there’s lots of time to relax, have a life and create things.

•Babies are almost indestructible. Feeding, changing, holding, loving and talking to them are pretty much all that’s necessary for them to grow up and have a normal life.

When you have your own little person, you have truly never seen anything so cute and perfect and smoochable. You become so infatuated and overwhelmed by love that all previous worries just don’t matter anymore.

Maybe I just have an easy baby, maybe some people like to be “real” and share the good with the bad, but I wish I had had more positive things to read while I was hyperventilating about how horrible I thought my life was going to be. Good and bad always come together, but in the talk about babies, the ratio is ∞:1.

I have never ever been happier.

Neuroses: Volume I

I’ve always wanted to be one of those easy-going people that everyone admires, can depend on, talk to, etc. When I first started dating Tyler, my now husband, I consciously tried to come across this way. I used mascara as my only makeup, wore jeans and a t-shirt on our first date and genuinely enjoyed spending our evenings together sitting on the couch doing homework and eating apples with almond butter for dinner.

Shortly after we met, I changed my major from biology to music after walking out in the middle of a biology lab where my partner, Cody, and I had to determine some pointless connection between conifers and wolves. The thought of studying this and reading 600 pages about the functions of proteins inside the cell, at the expense of playing in the orchestra, was paralyzing. As a fresh, new music major, I felt I could finally relax, listen to some tunes and play the piano all day.

Ha! Just one month spent in a practice room gave me so much anxiety that simply looking at a piano made me cry. I started sleeping with my arms curled into my chest and my hands in tight fists. Upon entering a room, I would search for all possible exits in the event that I would internally explode and need to run away. I couldn’t contain the crazy any longer and this persona I had tried so desperately to convey quickly disappeared to reveal a neurotic monster.

This was not a new persona to me. The first time I noticed the “monster” was after my first break-up with my first long-term boyfriend. Then, as a missionary, she peeked her head out during the stressful summer in North Royalton with Sister Grimnes. This was the first time that church was not a relief from my stress, but rather a cause. Six months later, after contracting the chicken pox while training in a brand new area, she really came to life. Leaving the house was so utterly terrifying, I once begged the mission president’s wife to send me home so I could hibernate forever.

I still don’t really know Tyler’s deepest thoughts about the time he first met the “monster.” He married me less than a year later and continues to be married to me, so I suppose he wasn’t horribly shocked, but there are times I mourn for him. There was a time when brushing my teeth ceased to be just teeth brushing and became: “Are my gums bleeding? Oh no, I should start flossing. I have eight things of floss in my drawer, but I never use any of them. What a waste. And I don’t even have dental insurance. Cavities are so expensive, but they’re cheaper than getting a tooth pulled. Remember that time on Cast Away when Tom Hanks didn’t go to the dentist and then he was trapped on that island and then he had to bust out his own tooth with an ice skate that floated to shore in one of his FedEx boxes? WIIIIIIIILSON!!!!!” 

Since having a baby, I am certainly more relaxed about many things, but I accept that I will never be "easy-going" or dependable. I now sleep with my hands in a relaxed position and think of nothing while brushing my teeth, but I worry about other ways the “monster” affects my marriage and other relationships. I bet Tyler’s tired of hearing, “The salad dressings go in the top shelf of the refrigerator door, not the bottom, dear. But I still love you.” There are children starving all over the world, does it really matter how the refrigerator is organized?

My goodness, yes. (And you better spell “refrigerator” without a “d” or I will freak out.)