Christmas 2018

Dearest friends, family, readers, and companions along the way,                                    
(Apart from the commercial, this might be an appropriate soundtrack to this year's Christmas letter: Tender Tennessee Christmas)

I am writing this from Sam's father's house near Cookeville, Tennessee.  This will be our third Christmas in Tennessee since Sam and I rediscovered each other in 2015.  His family is remarkably kind and drama-free. There are no drunk uncles, no long-standing feuds, no members treated like they are less lovable than the others, and all the bodies are well-hidden---at least in this branch. 

It has rained over 6 inches in the last week, and everything is soggy. Green moss shines thick on many tree-trunks along the roadways. The temperature is hovering in the upper 30s and low 40s (around 5 Celsius), much cooler than past Christmases here. We did have sun yesterday! But we are back to grey and rainy today.

Not unlike last year, I had five days of profound laryngitis, though it came the second week of December rather than over Christmas, thank goodness.  Just like last year, it was funny to watch people around me start pantomiming, whispering, and just stop talking in response to my whispering and pantomiming. I will call that deep empathy, and the desire to connect through mirroring, rather than anything reflecting the overall intelligence of my friends. We humans are endlessly entertaining.

Sam continues to work at Penguin Random House in the permissions department, though they moved his office from the lower West Village up to 55th and Broadway. The walk is longer than it used to be and nowhere near as pleasant, so he is more inclined to take the subway.  Nevertheless, we are grateful he has steady, secure work with a boss he respects.

Alison had nine exciting months at Mood Designer Fabrics, leaving before they began shooting the next season of Project Runway.  She enjoyed many of her co-workers and much about the job.  But the long hours and less-than-admirable employment practices of the owners saw her departing in late July. She misses the steady (low) pay but doesn't miss the fatigue and inability to do much besides sleep and work.

She (me) has turned her attention to her organization and clutter clearing business and is seeing a steady influx of work.  She (I, me) find this work deeply satisfying.  It feels pastoral and useful and seems to give the clients a real lift. Most of my work is in my hometown, a two-hour train ride from NYC, so I have been staying for two or three weeks at a time with friends and family in order to fit in as many jobs as I can line up.  I'm hoping to build my clientele in New York City, but so far my network is far too small there, and folks generally hire people they've heard great things about.

So if you live in New York City or have friends there and want to give my business a boost, please recommend my services!  New York City clients will get the first hour free in exchange for a positive review.  I need to get off the ground in NYC in particular.  The business is called Moore Magic Organizing, and the website can be found at MagicOrganizing.com. 

I also have clients in Pittsburgh and Kitchener, Ontario. If you live in one of those places and are curious to try my services, be sure to get on my list. I currently will be in Southern Ontario in mid-February and need more clients for that trip.  Just mention my new-customer offer and get the first hour for only $15.  

Since pretty much all my energy goes to earning enough to stop sinking deeper in debt, I don't have a lot else to talk about.  I'm not writing, sewing, singing, supply preaching, or anything else except for performing the occasional wedding.  I still love to do weddings, but folks will have to find me via word of mouth. The annual advertising costs are too much compared to what I can earn doing them. 

I long to write, but Maslow's hierarchy of needs finds me solidly in the lower four levels. I will just have to trust that one day I will again have time for writing that is not work-related. I do believe in a society where every member can have a lifestyle that includes time and energy enough for the enjoyment and expression of art.  I would love to be going to museums, seeing shows, and writing my novel, but that would require more time, energy, and money than I possibly have.  I feel mad about that sometimes. But the mad doesn't fix anything. So I get over it and move on.

As I age, I find I am growing increasingly sentimental. I have been enjoying spending time on ancestry.com, researching connections, looking for family resemblances in old photos, and discovering different places and homesteads where ancestors once lived. Family ties, history, and genealogy are freshly meaningful.  Time with children, grandchildren, and siblings feels much more important than, say, world travel (which I also love). All the signs point to me getting older. Hmm. 

The clock in the picture above represents a successful Philadelphia Chocolate company in Sam's heritage. If you dig hard, sometimes you can find old bottles embossed with their brand too. Croft and Allen Swiss Milk Cocoa was a going concern in the early 1900s, but the company lost everything in the Great Depression.  (Well, that makes a better story.) Actually, it was "badly mismanaged by an Uncle" and went bankrupt before the Depression. (Think Uncle Billy from It's a Wonderful Life.) Oh dear. Such is life.

I think about these ancestors---the lives they lived which were just as real as ours---their hardships and their triumphs, their great failings and the disasters they survived. I think about the many sacrifices some of them made so that we could have a chance at a decent life too.  I think about the ways that, despite their best efforts and expectations, their lives didn't necessarily go the way they had hoped. (Just like ours?)

But life goes on, and the wise ones continue to point us to the things that have real value: not wild financial success, expensive belongings, or political power; but a wealth of family and friends,  a rich supply of love, courage, and compassion, and the strength of personal integrity and authenticity. This wisdom is found in all the spiritual teachings in all the world: Use things, not people. Love people, not things. 

Underneath it all, the Creator of everything good and wise has never stopped speaking and never changed the message. May we continue to seek genuine peace on earth. We can absolutely make a difference in that quest because I can work on me and you can work on you.  The biggest change we can make in the world is changing our own hearts and leading by example.

With gratitude for all the amazing, creative, compassionate, funny, wise, and courageous people there are in our lives.  

That means you.  

With deepest love to our family, old and new, 

Sam and Alison Moore

Previous Christmas letters can be found here:
https://alisonlongstaffmoore.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-silent-christmas.html
and here:
https://cliffsidechapel.com/Christmas2015.htm

Principles of Clutter Clearing 3: Observe Your Work Style

I wish I could say that there is one perfect formula for how to organize, and if you just implement it, your life will be all better. 

But my experience is that each life is different. Each job must be tailored to the specific strengths and limitations of each person and situation.  So a big part of what we do is to assess how you are already using your space and then adapt and create ways that support you moving towards what you desire.

  

We look at what you are already doing, how you are doing it, what your goals are, and what habits or physical limitations keep you from your desired outcome.

(Frequently used items should be in easy reach. Store rarely used items on the top shelves, have a sturdy step-stool handy, or in some cases, do not use the top shelves at all.)

While there are general principles that guide how we help you organize, each one must be flexible. Each one has to respond to the client and the space.  Each one guides the decisions we make taking into account all the other principles, the client's work style, and the space we are working in.

(Tall people have their own challenges with standard-height counters.)

One client, let's call her "Emily," has a very visually motivated work style.  She responds to what she sees needs doing, and doesn't tend to get to things that are out of sight.  As an example, for Emily, seeing a broken toaster would bump her into ordering a new toaster, whereas seeing, "order a new toaster" on a list might leave Emily feeling stuck. Emily had written plenty of lists in her life but wasn't getting things done. So we adapted to her actual work style.

In Emily's case, how she worked clashed with the Feng shui principle of having everything tucked away and serene at the end of the workday. She discovered that if she stacks visual cues in her workspace, she plows through her to-do "lists" in a much speedier fashion.  Now she sets up her workspace each night with visual cues for the next morning, and now has little trouble getting started or getting through. She ignores the rule saying everything should be tidied at the end of the day in order to honor her need for visual cues.

So don't get bogged down in  organizational "rules." Be sure to adapt them according to how you actually work!  The "rules" are there to support you in getting where you want to go. They are not there to be one more thing you have to implement perfectly. "Perfectly" means adapting the concepts to work for you, based on how you already work.  It's magical.

Principles of Clutter Clearing 1

Principles of Clutter-Clearing 2

Principles of Clutter Clearing 2: Store Like Things Together

Okay. This one is easy.

It just makes sense to store your batteries with your other batteries, or your light bulbs with your other light bulbs. It makes sense to store your candles all in one place, or your hardware together in a certain area (sorted by type and easy to find.)

Then when you need whatever it is, you know exactly where to look.

But a lot of folks, in their rush to get through their days, just put things away "wherever", and then later can't remember where on earth they stashed them.

"Oh, I wondered what happened to that," or, "How did that get in there?" or, "Is THAT where I put them?" or, "I just bought more, and then I find the missing ones," ---these are the sorts of comments I hear all the time.

In a recent job, my client lived in an area that has frequent power outages. She kept a lot of candles, which I found all over the place. There were some mixed in with stationary and envelopes (which were also stored in several places), some in with her Christmas decorations (also scattered), and some, strangely, in with her hammers and nails.

Eventually, we got all of her candles in one location, along with her matches, candle holders, and flashlights. Now, the next time the power goes out she has everything she needs all in one place.

We also dug out lots of batteries, many of them expired. We settled on one place where they will now be kept, and now she knows just where to look when she needs batteries. (For those who need help remembering where you put things, there are apps for that, like Sortly, which has a free home version.) She also now knows how many of which kind of batteries she has; (all expired ones have been discarded).

We found a coffee can full of mixed hardware. We also found many baggies of screws, bolts, nuts, tacks, S-hooks, eye-screws, drapery hooks, etc. All of these separate little containers are now sorted into labeled drawers in one hardware unit. It is now easy to put things away with other like things, and easy to find a specific item when needed.

Save yourself time and money by keeping like things together in one place. You can do it!

And by the way, if you "can't" do it, you are not alone. Life has only so many hours, and many people don't leap into organizing things the first free minute they get.  That is why there are professional organizers like Moore Magic Organizers to support and accompany you through the process. You can have the better home you desire without the tedium. Give yourself the gift of organization.

Principles of Clutter-Clearing 1

Principles of Clutter Clearing 3

Principles of Clutter Clearing 1: Find the Beauty

Today's two-hour kitchen job used the "Find the beauty" principle. This artist has limited storage space and wanted help using it better.  She has cupboards and shelves full of things, many unused, and just needed some prompts and tricks to lift the space up.

"Find the beauty" applied in many ways for this job.  As we emptied her most troublesome cabinets, we found many genuinely beautiful things, tucked right out of sight. The gorgeous platter pictured to the left was down in a bottom cupboard.  One plate hanger and a picture hook later and it is now a featured art piece above her table. The colors match her kitchen decor perfectly.  Magic!

We found the sweet wooden caddie (that you can see in the picture) collecting dust in the back of a shelf. We cleaned it up and it will be perfect for brushes and pencils and other art supplies.

We do our best to work with what the client already has, suggesting purchases and products only if no other creative option is available.  The cupboard to the right consists of two very basic, tall narrow units. When we started, the unit with the door was on top, with the open unit on the bottom, leaning jauntily to its left.  We swapped the units around, putting the sturdier, more reinforced unit on the bottom.  We nailed the backing material back onto the open shelf and put it on top.  We removed the boxes of crackers and cans of tuna and baking soda, etc from the open shelves and replaced them with her eclectic and fun collection of mugs and teas. "Find the beauty," I say.  Put the messy out of sight and the visually magical where it can be enjoyed. Already the kitchen felt warmer and tidier.  The client was very happy.

Her own cupboards had hidden gifts of usefulness and beauty. Pure magic.

We washed up a bunch of dishes for her, swapped a few storage locations, and helped her decide what items she wanted to release.  We finished with another open shelf which is still a work in progress. 

As we removed item after item (including the dusty caddy from the very back) we uncovered an outlet.  I imagine the shelf was intended for a microwave. Our lovely client is not a microwave fan, but instead, she realized that she could put her electric pencil sharpener up there. It had been living on her kitchen table.

In the picture, you see the pencil sharpener tucked to the far left.  This was our last quick effort in the kitchen as we ran out of time. She has several lovely tiles she could mount on the wall, which would clean that visual up nicely. The one with Christopher Robin (yellow and green in the center) would look great on the left behind the canisters. We also found an amazing spoon in a drawer, and it is perched on the pewter cups while it "waits to see where it wants to be." 

I find this work fun, creative, empowering, and satisfying.  Find the beauty!

Principles of Clutter-Clearing 2
Principles of Clutter Clearing 3

Clutter Clearing as a Spiritual Practice - Part 3

Follow-Through

As I assist my clients, one of the main things I find myself doing is making note of what sorts of things are piling up, and why.

A big pattern I am seeing emerge is a lack of follow-through.

For most of us, a common pattern looks like this: we come in the door with an arm full of stuff and set in on the first available surface. Then we might run immediately to the bathroom or answer a call or text (or both at the same time), or respond to a pet or child or spouse, or otherwise rush to prepare for the next obligation in our overly busy day.  And while we intend to follow through on the mail sorting, and/or putting away the shopping, and/or putting away the random possessions that are returning to the house, we actually rarely get back to putting away that latest pile of stuff lying on whatever surface is nearest the door.

This is such a common dynamic for my clients, I am now surprised when I enter a home and don't find the inevitable pile of unprocessed mail, flotsam, and jetsam somewhere near the main entrance.  It takes mindfulness and a certain amount of self-discipline to return and process those things, and honestly, most of us don't often have the disposable time.

For myself, I have had to build into my expectations and time-budgeting the intention to process all that stuff shortly after getting home, and slowly this behavior is becoming a habit. Instead of shifting into the next gear the minute I get in the door, I choose to stay with all the things I've just brought in the door until they are all processed. Mail gets sorted into instant recycling, instant shredding, and the place on my desk where bills and such go to await my desk time. Groceries and shopping items get put all the way away including all the bags and receipts.

Done. All done.  It is a wonderful new pattern.

There are always days when I get distracted or way-laid or am short on time. Those days I often walk into our kitchen later in the day to find unprocessed stuff still sitting on the table.  Of course, there are those days!  But building the habit and intending to maintain it helps me reduce their number a great deal. (Also, we live in a tiny space, and there simply is no spare flat surface for dumping. We NEED the kitchen table for too many uses, so we have to keep an eye on the secondary dumping spots as well, which have a tendency to collect items moved quickly off the table. These locations---that space between the books and the next shelf, that corner of the desk in the next room---can collect unprocessed junk just as fast as any primary dumping spot. But the complete shortage of space certainly encourages better habits in managing the little we do have.)

This lack of follow-through can show up with dishes sitting in or near the sink, with laundry on the floor or near the laundry basket, with piles of items near the stairs waiting to go up or down (which we pass repeatedly without actually bringing them along). We have the intention to be tidier.  But we are missing some key step between our intention and our actual follow-through.  All too often the lack of follow-through results in a mound of neglected tasks still awaiting our attention. And as that mound grows to a mountain, the very size itself becomes a deterrent.

I don't think the lack of follow-through is necessarily laziness.  I think sometimes it is fueled by a habit of rushing, or perhaps it is some rebellious "I don't want to" left over from childhood.  Sometimes when I walk in the door, my brain decides I am "done" and I go straight to resting or playing, forgetting to finish the final steps of returning---the equivalent of the child repeatedly dropping the coat on the floor (though at age 57 I do at least hang up my coat). It is certainly a lack of mindfulness---not an immoral thing per se, but not something that benefits me either.  My auto-pilot just isn't very enlightened and I am often quite simply tired.

And yet it is when I am tired that staying present and completing the tasks of follow-through feel spiritual. Not only does it take mindful presence and a kind of surrender, but it also requires that I refuse to rush and to give my future self the gift of a clean and completed space.

There is some connection between good personal self-care and good care of our spaces. It is not linear or pure or black and white. Beautiful, wise, and creative people can be found inhabiting all sorts of spaces, from the very chaotic to the very ordered.

But for me, there is something spiritual about taking care of my surroundings, be they mine or simply a public washroom I may use. It feels like respect and care for the next person to enter the space.  It is an act of care for my future self at home and an act of care for some traveler whom I may never meet in the public space. They are connected for me. It is a way of living the Golden Rule, to show respect for the one who will follow me. It makes my soul feel good.

Follow-through. That thing the gym teacher harped on about. It turns out it is important in all parts of life, not just tennis or baseball.  Even if you are not interested in leaving the public washroom cleaner than you found it, do your own self the service of following through on intended tasks at home promptly. Don't leave them until "later" unless you are actually good at returning and finishing the job in a reasonable amount of time. (Several weeks is not a reasonable amount of time.)

And as you succeed and fail and succeed again, be kind to yourself.  This stumbling and wavering and returning to the plan again and again is exactly what the process looks like.

For the other entries in this series, see below.

Clutter Clearing as a Spiritual Practice - Part 1

Clutter Clearing as a Spiritual Practice - Part 2

Healthy Boundaries Series 4: Thoughts and Feelings

This is a series about maintaining healthy boundaries within relationships.

The guidelines stated in this series may challenge a lot of long-standing habits. It is my experience that these old societal habits are unhealthy and that these new boundary markers point us to healthier ways to navigate our interpersonal dynamics and shared experience. I recommend that readers consider these guidelines and try them on before starting in with arguments. The suggested changes are nuanced and will possibly threaten our collective go-to behaviors for judging and attempting to manipulate other people's choices.

These boundaries outline what is ours to control and what is not ours to control. They keep us in our own business and out of other people's business. Poor boundaries encourage us to spend too much time trying to manage other people's lives and discourage us from the hard work of managing our own. It is a spiritual practice to move increasingly into managing our own business and to get out of everyone else's. The more we do this work, the clearer we will also become in identifying what is our shared business, and how to navigate that as well.  Without this work, we will do poorly in managing shared or public business.

Credit for identifying and articulating these boundaries goes to Mark R Carlson, MS, MDiv, Marriage and Family Therapist in Huntingdon Valley, PA. USA

Healthy Boundaries Series Article 4: Thoughts and Feelings

This article might be the most immediately applicable and needed in the world today, given how much of our communication online is fraught with tension and poor behavior. 

Do not speak with authority about anyone else's thoughts, feelings motives, intentions, or desires. 

As this boundary is crossed regularly and egregiously in much of our public discourse, it is no wonder we may believe it is acceptable.  If everybody does it, then maybe it is something that is okay to do.  Unfortunately, jumping to conclusions about other people's thoughts, feelings, and intentions is one of the first weapons of the weak.  Yet, it is modeled everywhere, so we all tend to do it.

This is where I point once again to the Golden Rule.  If you don't like it when someone does it to you, don't do it to them.

Do not speak with authority about anyone else's thoughts, feelings motives, intentions, or desires. 

If you want any discussion to devolve quickly into defense and attack rather than productive dialogue, go ahead and tell someone else what they are feeling, meaning, or intending. Even if you are sure you know what is going on inside someone else's head, announcing it as fact is a violation. It is deeply disrespectful. It will get you in trouble.

This is a very hard boundary to honor, particularly when we feel ill-used or deceived. "You are lying to me!" crosses the boundary. "I do not trust your words," keeps you firmly in what you can actually know.  Then, if they come back at you with, "Are you calling me a liar?" The answer is, "No. You might be lying to me. You might not. I can't know. Only you know if you are lying.  But I do know I don't trust your words."

Can you see the difference?  You will be keeping your conversational boundaries clean when you stay out of the other person's business (thoughts, feelings, intentions) and in what you can genuinely know, which are your own thoughts, feelings, and intentions.

It is not easy. It takes practice.  It can be especially frustrating when the other person is not abiding by the same rules.  But it will leave you in integrity.

I know what you are thinking. "This is crazy!  This is too hard!" (Actually, I can't possibly know what you are thinking.  I can guess. I might guess fairly accurately. But only you get to be the authority on what is going on in your own head and heart.)

Here are examples of the sorts of statements one might find on the internet or in life. Can you pick out which ones cross a boundary, and which ones stay respectful?

1. "Releasing that news item today was politically motivated. The other party only did it to ruin our chances."
2. "Wow. That is not at all what I got from reading that article."
3. "If you think you have a right to have a gun, you are selfish."
4. "If you believe in taxation, you believe in theft."
5. "I cannot understand why you voted for Trump. Do you want to try to explain your thinking?"
6. "You forgot my birthday. You must not love me."
7. "What you just said made me uncomfortable. I need some time alone."
8. "You voted for Obama, therefore you are a white-hating, man-hating baby killer."
9. "I don't actually feel safe answering you right now. I need time." 
10. "If you would just do a little research you would know I'm right."

I hope that was easy. If it was, I suspect you are on the road to learning better civil discourse and healthier communication skills.

(Or maybe you already were. I can't know. But it sure made a snappy ending!)

Following are the other entries in the series:
Money
Health
Family of Origin

Healthy Boundaries Series: 3. Family of Origin

This is a series about maintaining healthy boundaries within relationships.

The guidelines stated in this series may challenge a lot of long-standing habits. It is my experience that these old societal habits are unhealthy and that these new boundary markers point us to healthier ways to navigate our interpersonal dynamics and shared experience. I recommend that readers consider these guidelines and try them on before starting in with arguments. The suggested changes are nuanced and will possibly threaten our collective go-to behaviors for judging and attempting to manipulate other people's choices.

These boundaries outline what is ours to control and what is not ours to control. They keep us in our own business and out of other people's business. Poor boundaries encourage us to spend too much time trying to manage other people's lives and discourage us from the hard work of managing our own. It is a spiritual practice to move increasingly into managing our own business and to get out of everyone else's. The more we do this work, the clearer we will also become in identifying what is our shared business, and how to navigate that as well.  Without this work, we will do poorly in managing shared or public business.

Credit for identifying and articulating these boundaries goes to Mark R Carlson, MS, MDiv, Marriage and Family Therapist in Huntingdon Valley, PA. USA

3. Family of Origin: Do not comment on someone else's family of origin, even if you are repeating something you heard an actual family member say. This applies to hometowns and countries too.

The boundary around comments on someone else's family can be a baffling one.  The clue that a boundary is being crossed is if an actual family member feels offended or irritated by our comment.

"I know I said that my brother is a jerk, but that doesn't mean you get to say my brother is a jerk."

You get to have your experience of your family. I get to have my experience of my family. Neither of us gets to comment with any authority on the other one's family without treading on thin ice. Outsiders do well to leave all commentary on what it is like to belong to a family to those who belong to it. This goes for hometowns and countries too.

This boundary springs from our sense of belonging and ownership.  It may even speak to a sense of identity.  If you criticize my roots, even if I also criticize them, I likely will feel a need to defend the place, because I once belonged there and come from there. It is part of me, even if I may have separated myself from much of what it stands for. Unless you come from there too, be careful what you have to say.

Do not comment on someone else's family of origin, even if you are repeating something you heard an actual family member say. 

The application of this boundary even to one's country became very clear to me yesterday. Apparently I "constantly" criticize the US, and often say how much better my experience as a Canadian has been than my experience as an American. (This is true.)  Apparently, this is very irritating to Americans.


But I am an American!  Why don't I get to comment?

I think I understand why, now.  I am "not allowed" to criticize the US though I am a US citizen because I am also a Canadian citizen.  In fact, I identify more as Canadian, which lands me firmly in the outsider category.  I no longer get to criticize the US as an insider, even though I was born in the US and currently live in the US. Because I identify as Canadian, my comments still come across as criticism from an outsider, which is absolutely offensive.

I'M SORRY!!!!!

My endless "negging" comes from grief and loss. In the public discourse, it just comes across as offensive. It belongs in my therapist's office or with close friends. That was very hard to hear at first because it came across as saying that the grief and loss and disillusionment were themselves shameful or invalid.

I needed to understand the dynamics of the boundaries and how my belonging/not belonging was perceived before I could see why others got to comment and I didn't. I needed to understand that I still get to have all my feelings, I just need to be more judicious in how and where I express them. Lesson (FINALLY) learned.  I am indeed sorry for how offensive my words may have been to those who have had to put up with them.

I put all of this here to show that we all make mistakes.  I put this here to articulate the "why" of these social dynamics, especially for those who are helped by understanding why.  May the naming of these boundaries make a difference in our shared communication.


Following are the other entries in the series:
Money
Health
Thoughts and Feelings