Mackenzie Carose

Are Nesting and Minimizing Compatible?

By Mackenzie 10 Comments

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My answer is yes.

But before I give my whys, lets define the term “nesting” for those not in the know. Here are two similar definitions from two different websites:

“Nesting is the act of preparing your home for your baby’s arrival, often fueled by big bursts of energy late in pregnancy”. – BabyCenter.com

“Nesting is the urge to clean and organize during pregnancy…to get your home ready for your new baby”. -AmericanPregnancy.org

Basically you are getting your home ready for your beautiful baby and making sure everything is ready to go when you come home with your new bundle of joy. Diapers at the ready? Check. Bottles ready to go? Check. Piles of paperwork that needs to be sorted through? Check. Wait. What?

Yes, I am in the nesting phase. I am making lists of what we need for the baby since it has been 7 years since my daughter was born so we are basically starting from scratch. I am slowly accumulating what we need and getting ready for our new arrival in a couple of months.

But…

I am also decluttering and minimizing things that have absolutely nothing to do with the impending shift in our family dynamic.

I am cleaning out closets. I am sorting through drawers. I am going through mountains of paperwork that seem to have accumulated over time. I am getting rid of things that no longer serve a purpose or are useful.

I am cutting out the crap.

And it is not just because of hormones and the whole nesting vibe that comes on about this time during pregnancy.

I am doing it because it needs to be done.

I am well aware of the sleep-deprivation and major life adjustment that comes with a newborn and the first few months of a parent’s life. I remember all too well that phase with my daughter, and there are days when you literally are in survival mode and wonder when was the last time you ate a meal.

With a baby and my older daughter to take care of, there will be zero time to declutter stuff that shouldn’t be here in the first place. There will be no time to minimize and be intentional about what is occupying unwanted space in our home.

So I am doing it now.

When I do get a burst of energy, I am tackling a project. When I need to take a break,  I take a break. But when the next burst of energy comes, I am in minimize-mode and getting things done. We live in a small apartment and anything extra that has no use can make our abode feel very overwhelming quite fast.

Any tips or tricks you have when it comes to minimizing your stuff? I’d love to hear about it!

Difficult Roads Often Lead To Beautiful Destinations

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14 months.

14 long months if I am being truthful.

I moved to the state of Oregon from my home state of California in July of 2014 and packed up the car and left in September of 2015 and moved back to California. Two vehicles filled with my husband, myself, our daughter, our cat, and whatever we could squash into the cars that would be taking us on our new adventure.

Living in Oregon didn’t start off difficult or even unhappily. This was our new road and we were ready for our new undertaking. We thought we were in it for the long haul.

But soon the road became burdensome.

As someone who already suffers from depression, I had no idea the toll that the endless days and months of gray weather would take on my already suffering psyche. There were other deeply personal issues that we were dealing with, that were also making life difficult in our newly adapted surroundings. My husband and I felt that this environment was truly taking a toll on our little family. We both had gained an inordinate amount of weight using food as coping mechanisms. He wasn’t happy either and wasn’t looking forward to spending another winter there.

That summer we decided enough was enough and we were going to move back to California that September.

And it truly has been the best decision.

I posted this on Instagram the other day because it reminded me of my life the past couple of years.

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Oregon was indeed a difficult road. For me. This is nothing against that beautiful state. Oregon is indeed gorgeous and I honestly and truly get why people live there and make it their forever home. I absolutely do.

But it wasn’t the right fit for me. Or my little family.

Living in Oregon was a difficult road but I believe it led us to a truly beautiful destination.

I am back in my home state in a city I love. My daughter is absolutely thriving in her local school. My husband has a job that he loves and that he truly gets fulfillment out of. We have made friends here in our local community and we have bonded.

And we have a baby on the way!  🙂

I feel that sometimes you have to go through the bull**** to get to the good stuff. Is everything absolutely perfect? Of course not. No one’s life is perfect. That is a fallacy. But I am happy, happier than I have been in a very long time.

And that’s gotta count for something, right?

Does It Even Matter?

By Mackenzie Leave a Comment

Why are we humans so attached to things? Serious question and I want to explore an answer.

Several years ago, my dad decided to clean out his storage unit and get rid of stuff and get rid of the storage unit entirely. Yay dad, right? Well, as he was cleaning out the randomness that accumulates in these facilities, he came across a bag that was full of my stuff. He dropped it off at my place and I went through the bag dutifully, thinking I was going to throw out whatever was in the bag. I mean, if I hadn’t seen what was in the bag in years, why would I need any of it now? Right? Sort of…

Amongst the debris of my life contained in this bag were sorority t-shirts and sweatshirts, my college sweatshirt, newspaper articles from when I was on the school newspaper in high school, and letterman patches from high school as well.

I got rid of my sorority t-shirts and sweatshirts because once you are not in college anymore, you don’t wear any of these items. Ever. So they went out the door. I sold my college sweatshirt online and the newspaper articles that contained my stories there in black and white… I read them, smiled remembering that time long  ago, and tossed them in the recycling bin.

But the letterman patches from high school? Here they are in all their glory:

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This particular patch, I received from being on the school paper. Simple enough.

This next patch I received, well you can see what it was for…

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I received these patches and I never had the desire to own a letterman jacket. Even in my teen years, I foresaw the actuality of wearing a high school jacket with all these random patches on it beyond high school as futile. A huge waste of money for something I would never wear past graduation day.

So I never purchased a letterman jacket for my random letterman patches. And yet, I still have these patches.

WHY DO I STILL HAVE THESE PATCHES?

Seriously, why?

Am I going to be in conversation with someone and we are speaking about high school and what a terrible great time it was, and I am somehow going to talk about my letterman patches and produce them out of my purse, like some absurd version of “show and tell”?

Am I going to have to prove to someone, anyone, that although I am older and have “mom-brain”, once upon a time I used to be smart? Smart enough for academic honors?

Who cares? Why does it matter? And yet, does it matter?

Even as I am writing this post, I still haven’t thrown away these patches and I have to ask myself why. It’s not because I have fond memories of high school because I don’t. Sure there are some fun memories I have with friends, but being a teenager isn’t the easiest thing under even normal circumstances, and my 9th through 12th grade years were extremely difficult for personal reasons. So no, I do not look at ages 14 through 18 through rose-colored glasses.

Do I miss the days of studying or being a part of something as tense and yet exciting as working on the school paper? No, not really.

I am going to play armchair psychiatrist on myself and give an answer that I believe to be the right one: I have held on to these patches because deep down, it proves to myself that I made it. I made it through the turmoil that was my life at that time and I didn’t let it break me. It is somehow a personal accomplishment for me that I was able to compartmentalize the crap that was threatening to bring me under, and get a spot on the high school paper. I was able to push through the chaos and still get good grades.

I. Made. It.

I made it. I survived. And these stupid letterman patches that continue to follow me into every place we move to, remind me of that.

So does it matter? Sometimes it does.

These patches are, for the time being, staying put until I am able to look objectively at them minus all the emotion that continues to swirl around in the lifeblood that makes up me.

I am not quite ready to get rid of my letterman patches just yet…