Escape from the black hole

This week I found a black hole in my bedroom.  I had an idea it was there but figured if I ignored it, it would go away.  But I have realized it was not going to go away without some work so I finally bit the bullet and dove into the black hole with my only goal being to come out alive.

What is a black hole you might ask?  According to Google it is a region of space having a gravitational field so intense that no matter or radiation can escape.  I have a slightly less wordy term for it - my closet.

My closet is this horrible place in my room that I just like to forget exists.  My life changed when I had to stop working.  I no longer use the business clothes that were the staple of my wardrobe for so many years.  Now I wear animal friendly clothing (pants and t-shirts that are sturdy and easily washed) since I never know when I might be dealing with a suddenly messy kitten or getting unwanted medication spat back at me.

I am pretty happy with where my life is now and do not miss dressing up to go to an office every day.  But for some reason, all these clothes are still hanging out in my closet.  Why I do not know.  Terms like "Someday", or "Just in cast" come to mind but that still does not justify keeping clothes I do not wear.  I knew in my mind that there was a lot of emotion behind hanging on to these "work" clothes.  No one wants to be told in their early 30s that they can no longer work and are "disabled".  It is a huge hit to your self-esteem since we live in a society that judges people not by who they are, but by what they do.

To be ready to let go of the old work clothes I had to come to a few realizations:
1.  I like who I am.
2.  I love what I do as an animal foster parent and shelter volunteer.
3. Even if someone waved a magic wand and cured all my health problems, I would not want to go back to the person I was when I had to stop working.
4.  I am not a big fan of shopping, but if I suddenly need dressy work clothes again, I was going to want to go out and get new ones.
5.  Most importantly, there are people out there who not only want, but NEED the dressy clothes that are just gathering dust in my closet.

So it was time to dive in, clean out, and send them on to where they would be appreciated - which I did.  It took a few different decluttering sessions and some hard looks at what I would wear and what I WISH I could wear.  And I did hang on to one or two things purely for sentimental value.  But I am thrilled to say that I now have three big trash bags with "work" clothes ready to be passed on to women who want them and more importantly, will USE them.

So now what?  What do I do with these bags?  Well if you are like me, they tend to sit around the house getting in the way while you find a place to donate them to and then actually remember to take them there.  Which means they sit for months and months.  NOT HAPPENING!

I was determined it was going to be different this time.  And it seems fate was on my side because in the mail that same week was a postcard from the New England Epilepsy Foundation saying they were doing a donation pickup in my area this coming week and explaining how to schedule the truck to stop at my house.

Wait...someone who was going to be in the area the same week I wanted to get rid of stuff?  And who would pick the stuff up?  And to benefit a cause I support?  (My nephew is Epileptic).  Sounds like a match made in heaven to me.  I jumped on the computer, went to their website and added our house to their scheduled pick up route for Thursday.  Now all I have to do is put the bags out by 7AM that morning and they will take it away.  I love it!

So if you have a black hole in your house, get ready to tackle it.  Do it in short 15 minute sessions and you will make progress.  And if you are having trouble getting motivated, schedule a charitable organization to come to your house for a pick up - just make sure that pick up date is a few weeks away.  Knowing that someone will be showing up expecting there to be bag to pick up is a great motivator.  My three bags of unwanted work clothes has grown to six bags of various types of clothes from the whole family.

I am so excited to have begun the slow process of transforming my closet from a black hole into a useful storage place.  I still have a ways to go because there is more than just useless clothes clogging it up and that stuff will either have to be donated or if I really need it, find a new home outside of my closet.

For now, I am satisfied that I have cleared two very big hurdles that have always stood in the way of a clutter free house.  I have learned to let go of things that are not useful to me without guilt.  And I have learned how to get rid of it in a way that can help others. 

Sunrise, Sunset

Recently I have been having trouble falling asleep before 3-4am.  This is nothing new to me.  I have always been someone who would rather stay awake until sunrise and sleep during the day.  (No I am not a vampire, do not be alarmed). Beside naturally being a night person, a lot of my health conditions are worse at night which makes it harder to fall asleep.  Now, I am used to this and do have medication to help.  The problem is that it does not always work and even when it does, it leaves me feeling like a zombie in the morning.  I just hate that feeling. 

For a while back in 2005, I was awake literally all night long, and would only fall asleep after sunrise.  This was also the same time that my doctor told me that working was no longer an option for me and my general health was horrible because of multiple chronic conditions.

I had told my doctor that the combinations of medication all my specialist had me on  made me feel horrible and I wanted to come off anything I could.  Don't get me wrong, I did not turn in to some new age lunatic who wanted to treat everything with tree bark or some such nonsense.  I am a severe asthmatic and know that there are certain medications that I need to keep breathing.  I also have severe allergies so I carry an epi pen.  And when I am in pain, I want pain medication.  I just wanted to be on the lowest level of medications I needed to keep my health stable without overloading my system with too many drugs.

Thankfully I had recently switched to a new doctor that believes in mixing traditional medicine with more natural solutions.  So when I told her I was have such trouble sleeping, instead of just upping my sleeping medication, she told me that I likely a circadian rhythm problem causing a sleep phase disorder and would I consider trying a sunrise lamp.

Huh?  Yup that was my response.  A very simplistic explanation of your circadian rhythm is your natural body clock that tells you when to sleep and when to be awake.  She explained that people like me, sometimes get their rhythms off kilter from side effects of medications like prednisone or just having trouble sleeping due to health problems.  So my circadian rhythm needed to be reset.  I needed to learn to wake up to sunrise and fall asleep to the sunset.

That's where the sunrise lamp came in.  It is basically an alarm clock that simulates sunrise and sunset.  You can program it to go off at the time you want to sleep and the time you want to get up.  It sounded a little out there but at that point I was willing to try anything to get some sleep at night.  So I ordered the lamp and started using it.  And imagine how shocked I was when it worked!  In less than a year I was able to stop taking the sleeping medication unless I was having a night where severe pain was keeping me awake.  Then I used both the lamp and the medication to get the sleep I needed.

After a while, my circadian rhythm was reset and when we moved into a new house, I decided to stop using the lamp.  (OK, truthfully, I packed it in a box while we were moving and promptly forgot it existed).

Recently, I had a very severe flare up of my asthma and spent a few weeks on prednisone.  I was back to not falling asleep until almost sunrise and struggling to get through the day.  After being annoyed and cranky for a while, I remembered the sunrise lamp and dug it out of storage to give it a shot again. 

For some reason, I was skeptical that it would help.  I know, I know, it helped before, but I was so much sicker then and I figured it was just a placebo effect.  Oh well, whether it is a placebo effect or not, it is working for me again.  I am slowly starting to fall asleep earlier.  But more importantly, the quality of sleep that I am getting is better than without the sunrise lamp.  How do I know?  Well, last night was the first day in the last month that I have forgotten to set the sunrise lamp and I have felt horrible all day.  And based on how my family has been avoiding me, I suspect I have not been the most cheerful person to be around either.  ;o)

So, if you are having trouble sleeping and are willing to gamble some money (the lamps are not cheap) a sunrise lamp might be the thing for you.  And yes, I know it still sounds like a bunch a new age garbage, but it works for me.

The lamp I use is made by sunrise systems.  I have the lamp and alarm all in one unit.  There is one that can be plugged into a regular table lamp which I have never used so I can not say how good it is. 

A word of caution: I believe this is a European based company.  The link above takes you to a photo that most closely matches my current lamp, but it is the European model.  If you decide to purchase a lamp like this, make sure it  will work with U.S. style plugs if that is what you need.  I believe the U.S. style lamps are available on amazon.com. 

And since it is now close to my bedtime, it is time to set my sunset and get some sleep.

Happy Sleeping Everyone!

What is that smell?

There are currently three cats in my household.  Doyle, my "baby" who is three years old; Charlie who is two years old (my 7 year old niece's best friend); and Nigella, a one year old former feral foster kitten who never really socialized enough to go up for adoption.

Doyle

Charlie

Nigella

I am an animal person and if my life and energy level were different, I would probably have dogs or bunnies or any number of other types of animals.  But life being what it is, cats are the best possibly pet for me.  Good thing I love them so much.

I am a big believer in the health benefits or having a pet.  They truly do help improve your state of mind and over all well being.  This is especially true for anyone with any sort of chronic illness, disability or anxiety.  Thankfully, I am one of the lucky few that still has the ability (and family support) that allows me to have my animals around me.

That being said - kitty litter stinks!  I would never put my cats outside, it is just not safe for so many reasons.  And since two of my three cats were born outside and were on their own for a few months, they have no desire to go out.  In fact, Nigella (who was outside until she was 4 months old) runs and hides when we open the door.  Since I do not believe in outdoor cats, I am stuck with the litter box.  Or litter boxes in my case since we have three (one for each cat).

The problem with litter boxes is that they smell no matter how careful you are about cleaning them.  The scooping and disposing of the clumps is annoying.  Even if you scoop the box every day (which is recommended) you still have to find a place to dump the clumps until trash day.

If you put it in your regular trash inside, the whole house stinks.  If you put it in the garage, the garage stinks.  And if you put it in the outside trash can you have to run outside in the freezing cold once a day (at least during a New England winter).  And for someone with severe asthma like me, this is always a problem.  The end result is that, although my foster's litter boxes are always 100% clean because they are babies and make a huge mess all the time, my own adult cats' litter boxes did not always get scooped as often as I would like.  My cats did not seem to mind, but I did.

Then, as I was roaming around the pet section of Target on Christmas Eve while waiting for my prescription for prednisone (severe asthma flare up on Christmas Eve, oh joy). I came across a solution.  The Litter Genie.

The Litter Genie is a litter disposal system that you can put the daily clumps in until trash day and according the the box, there is no odor and it is very easy to use.  I was skeptical to say the least.  It looked very like the diaper disposal systems we had when my niece was young that was annoying to use, did not contain the smell and that we stopped using way before she was out of diapers.  I also knew there was a similar product out there called a Litter Locker that had gotten reviews for being expensive, annoying and hard to use.

But it was Christmas Eve, I was short of breath and my niece would be heartbroken if "Santa" forgot to bring the cats something for Christmas.  So instead of spending $10 on cat toys that we so did not need (we have tons), I took a chance and spent $15 on the Litter Genie instead.

So what do I think of the Litter Genie?  I think it is a little Christmas miracle.  I love it!  It did take me a bit to figure out how to set it up initially.  But truthfully I do not know if that is because the instructions were confusing or if it was because I was doing it when I was lacking oxygen due to my breathing problems.

Once it was set up, it was small enough to fit in between two of our litter boxes, and so easy to use.  You scoop the mess, drop it in the top, pull the handle, the mess drops down and DOES NOT SMELL.  And since everything is contained in the litter genie, it means no ice cold trips outside which my asthma really appreciates. 

So far the only drawbacks I have seen is that at some point I will need to buy refill bags for the systems since like the diaper genie and the litter locker, it can not just use any bags.  But Target has a two pack of the refills for around $15 which is not too bad.  I have three cats and it has been two and a half weeks and I am still on the refill pack that came with the system so the bags do seem to last for a bit.  The second drawback may just be specific to my house.  Since I am now scooping every day (sometimes more) I am going through litter faster.  But that is primarily because I have a 19 pound Maine Coon cat who is not all that agile.  I have to make sure the boxes are weighed down with enough litter at all times or he tends to accidentally knock them over.  What can I say - he is not the most graceful guy but I love him.  :o)

Anyway, like I said, I am skeptical of all the "make the litter odor go away" tricks on the market.  My general feeling is, you have a cat, it has a litter box - deal with it.  And if you don't want to deal with it, you should not have a cat.  The love they give is well worth the hassle of the litter box.  But so far I am really pleased with the Litter Genie. It does make dealing with the litter box easier.

In fact, I plan to go out and buy two more for the areas in my house where I keep foster kittens.  Note:  you do not need multiple genies.  It does have a handle that makes it easy to carry from box to box and it is not that heavy.  But since I found a coupon for $10 off the system on the Litter Genie Website (making it only around $5 for the whole system) and carrying anything can be hard for me when my health conditions flare up, it is just easier to have more than one. 

The best indication to me that it works was a conversation I had with my roommate the other day.

She said, "What is that smell?"
"The litter box", I said. 
She replied, "But the litter genie thing stopped the smell."

Well yes, but only after you scoop it.  So I went and scooped. Bye bye cat box smell. 
Hello Litter Genie.

Buried Alive!

Now that I have a better handle on my email inbox I have decided that it is time to try and get control of the avalanche of paper that has taken over most of our house.  Whether it is notices sent home from school, newsletters, updates, bills, important notices, or the dreaded "junk mail" we seem to be inundated with reams of paper all the time. The problem with that is we have to figure out what to do with all this paper.  And we are very bad at this in our house.  We have mountains of paper that just sits in our house waiting for us to go through it and figure out what to do with it.  And quite frankly, it is all too overwhelming to deal with right now.  Maybe sometime I will come up with an idea that will help me deal with the avalanche of old papers in my house but not now.

Instead, I decided to try and figure out a system to deal with any NEW paper that comes in the house from now on.  The new system is nothing revolutionary - just get mail sorting trays for each member of the family and sort it as soon as it comes into the house.  And make sure that junk mail goes right into the recycling bin.

In order to do this, I needed to get mail sorting trays.  So what kind should I get?  Where to get them?  Should everyone have the same one, or different ones for each person?  And wait a minute, these things are expensive and I don't have money to spare.  For a minute it looked like my organizing venture was doomed.

But then I thought -  these trays were just for our family and were meant to reduce the stress of clutter around us.  They did not have to be Martha Stewart worthy.  Just just had to work.  We could just make trays.  We must have something in all this clutter that would work.  And then I hit on the perfect thing.

For those of you who don't know me, my family and I foster kittens for a local animal shelter.  We love doing it and love helping the high risk kittens that come through our home.  Because we take the odd cases we have kittens in our house pretty much year round.  That means we have canned kitten food in our house all the time.  A lot of kitten food.  Cases (and cases) of  kitten food. 

We recycle the cardboard cases in a variety of ways.  They make good temporary litter boxes for kittens who need to be in a crate for a few days.  They also make a good tray for containing the mess of paint, glitter and other art supplies during kids craft projects.  And of course, they can go right into the cardboard recycling.  So when preparing yet another empty case to go into recycling it occurred to me that with a little work and some markers, these could be turned into mail trays.

So yesterday, I sat down with tape, markers, stickers, computer paper and my 7 year old niece and went to work.  The funny thing is that what started as a way to avoid going to the store and spending money on an organization system that might not work turned into a fun family project.  And in my humble opinion the end result is better than anything I can get in a store because it truly reflects the individuality of my family.   Here they are:

Front view

Side view

Will the system work to help control the incoming mail?  Only time will tell.  But if nothing else, we have fun.  And that makes it worth it to me.