Someday Syndrome

Why Do You Live There?

Where you live plays a role in how you live.

Maybe your work led you there. Maybe you followed a spouse. Or you chose to be near family, or friends. Or you've always lived in the same area and have never thought about it.

Your choice of location affects your choices about space. It's more than just: an expensive city means limited space unless you're rich. The culture, the architecture and the aura of where you live all inform your life within the home.

Wherever I go, I ask myself: "Could I live here?" I do this even if I'm someplace for five minutes. And of course, the answer changes as I learn more about the place (e.g., I loved Bordeaux, but now? It's nice to visit).

This past weekend, I visited Huesca (liked it), Zaragoza (bored me), Tarragona (has its charms), and Sitges (way too touristy but beautiful). I actually find most of what I've seen in Spain dirty and in need of a serious makeover, and yet something draws me to live there (and no, it's not the Rompot).

The climate appeals to me, as does the complete alienness of the landscape. Yes, I'm often reminded of Floridian apartment blocks and strip malls (not a good thing), but I love the old parts of the old cities and towns. The narrow streets, the clothes hanging to dry out of windows, the café tables and chairs strewn about the edge of public squares, and even the slight seediness, all these things imply a casualness to life that I really like.

So perhaps Spain and I will make a good match. I look forward to finding out.

Someday Lessons:

• Make conscious decisions, even at the highest level.
• Does where you live match with who you are?

Room for One More: A Call for Help

Countries like Canada have a lot of space. Today I'd like to veer off topic a little bit and ask for some help creating space for one more person in Canada.

His name is Alvaro and here is a quote from a friend and youth worker who is trying to help this young man:

Alvaro's situation is quite desperate. This young man has been running for safety and security for the last 9 years, in a very long journey across central and North America escaping severe family abuse in Nicaragua that started when he was only 12 years old. He swam across rivers to cross borders, spent many months in detention in the US and lived off the charity of good people he met on his way, until he was refused refugee protection in Canada because the judge (who conducted the hearing over a TV screen from Calgary) didn’t think he looked gay enough for her and didn’t think it makes sense that a young boy managed to live such a dramatic story and survive (I guess in her Calgary suburb she doesn’t see much of what really happens in the world). Alvaro, is facing deportation to the US who will arrest him and then in turn send him after weeks in detention to Nicaragua (where there are still sodomy laws in effect and people do go to prison for being gay) for absolutely no fault or a crime, but for being the victim of abuse and injustice all his life.

The website is http://www.orangehabitat.com/alvaro

Because I'm not in Canada and cannot raise my voice to help out Alvaro, I ask that anyone who is in Canada please visit the website in the next couple of days and contact your MP and the Minister of Immigration Diane Finley.

Canada is not too cluttered. There's room for one more.

Thank you,
Alex

Smaller than Small

My tent arrived today.

It's small, supposedly a two-person tent. I put it together inside my apartment. Much easier than the heavy canvas tents we used to have growing up. I wouldn't even mind doing it in the rain.

There won't be any room in the tent for anything other than me (how it's called a two person tent, I'm really not sure). So that means, everything else I own will have to go in the car.

So I looked at a car today.

Actually I peeked into a Suzuki Vitara that had a for sale sign on it. I'm always amazed at how little space SUVs have in them. The back seats when folded flat stick way up. And I checked online. The Vitara takes a lot of gas.

I think I'm going to go with the first car I ever had: a Renault 5 (a Le Car to Canadians). There are still so many of them on the road here, some thirty years old and running fine. The best thing about a Renault 5 is the lack of electronics. Any mechanic can fix it any where.

A very good thing for someone like me who knows nothing about cars.

I loved my Le Car back in Toronto (more than a decade ago!). It had so much cargo space. Plus it was just fun to drive.

When I travel between HelpX hosts, I'm going to be living in a compact car and a tent smaller than a queen sized bed.

I'm very excited! I look forward to the challenge of paring down my life to that little space.

I haven't gone camping since I was a kid. Suggestions anyone?

Someday Lessons:

• Very small spaces require a lot of planning.
• Remember to ask for help when you don't know something.

Find the Emptiness

Organizing is easy when know what games to play with yourself. Creating space isn't just about getting rid of things or about re-arranging furniture. It's about changing your mindset, going from a half-full to a half-empty way of thinking.

Yes, that is the reverse of the usual. In terms of optimism, you want to see a glass half-full, but in terms of space, you want to see it half-empty.

As a child I played in forests a lot. Most woods have an undergrowth of brambles and branches ready to scratch and ensnare you. Walking through this undergrowth became much simpler for me when I stopped looking at the brambles and branches and started looking at the space between them. By looking for empty spots, I learned how to run through a thick forest without stumbling or getting scratched.

I created a half-empty mindset.

And how is this useful for creating space in the home? Quite simply.

If you enter a cluttered room and only see the clutter you'll likely feel overwhelmed, maybe even panicky. You'll back out of the room (or turn and flee), close the door and pretend that room doesn't exist.

Instead, if you walk into the room looking for a blank spot, for emptiness, you'll not notice the clutter as much. Go to that emptiness and expand it. Remove items around it, creating a larger blank spot. If you feel stuck, find another empty place and work there.

Keep going until the space is half-empty.

Someday Lessons:

• Organizing starts with the mind. Declutter that first.
• How you perceive life changes how you act. Practice different points of view.

Lunch Today:
Aoxa de veau at Bo Bar in Bordeaux

Organizing Recipes

Whenever I cook, I create space.

I cook like this: I look at what I have and figure out how to use it to make a meal. My Mom taught me to cook like this. She did it out of necessity – last minute cries of "Oh no! I didn't defrost the chicken!" required creative solutions.

I do it as a challenge. How can I combine these different foods into a harmonious set of flavours? I create space in my kitchen for the next round of flavours.

If you think of the rest of your life in the same way, you can come up with creative and effective organizing solutions. In the way I that look at fennel, roasted peanuts, rice noodles and limes and think "hmm, a Thai-like meal!", I also look at clients' spaces and find unusual combinations that suddenly make sense when pulled together.

I cook by tasting each ingredient in my imagination then combining them to see how they would taste together.

I reorganize space by looking at each type of thing and seeing how they all fit together in different combinations until I find the best "tasting" group. Sometimes the group is activity-based, sometimes it's person-based and sometimes it's based on the emotional response to each category of object.

Someday Lessons:

• Consider organizing your stuff in non-traditional ways. And "odd" combination might make the most sense to you.
• Look to other areas of your life where you create patterns for organizing ideas.

Lunch Today:
Chicken and Blue Cheese Risotto

Rethinking Space

During my last two weeks in Toronto, I was asked by a new Life Network show called Three Takes (airing in January in Canada) to contribute four organizing segments. For each segment, I had half a day to view the space, decide on a course of action, buy some supplies and get the space organized for camera.

Needless to say, there was no time to go through a traditional streamlining process. Instead, I focused on reorganizing each space to better fit the homeowners’ needs.

In each instance with about $100 in supplies, I was able to reorient the room in question so that the space looked bigger, held what was needed and gave the homeowners ideas on how to move forward and keep themselves more organized in that one space.

I was able to make major changes in a minimal amount of time and with a minimal budget because in each case (as with most of our homes), very little thought had been given to how the space was actually used. Familiarity doesn’t just breed contempt; it also breeds blindness. To paraphrase: A change is a good as a purge.

If a room in your house seems to never stay uncluttered, try moving furniture around and purposefully creating zones for things instead of haphazardly putting them into “temporary” storage spaces. Base the zones on need for access, size restrictions and primary users (i.e., stuff for the kids down low).

You’ll be amazed how quickly a major change can be accomplished this way.

Someday Lesson:

1. Creating space doesn’t need to mean purging; try reorganizing first.
2. When reorganizing a room, make purposeful decisions as to where things will go.

Lunch Today:

Leftovers (soup, bread, cheese). Dinner was a salad with a Mustard Yogurt Dressing.