Give It Away Give It Away Give It Away Now

As I explained in yesterday's post, I've had some extra time over the past few weeks. My schedule will also be slightly less jam-packed between now and our vacation next Friday, and I have big plans to continue my rare productive streak.

One of the biggest things I accomplished so far was pulling together a ton—and I do mean a ton—of clothes, purses and toiletries for a few different charities my mom volunteers for. My parents were here a few weekends ago and my mom asked if I had any purses I no longer wanted because she was working with a group called Handbags of Hope. This awesome organization pulls together purses filled with various toiletries for women in shelters or who have fled dangerous situations and took absolutely no possessions with them. (There are many nonprofits like this one around the country, by the way... and hint hint.)

My mom asked the right person. Not only did I have several purses wasting away in my closet purgatory, but I had over a dozen of those random makeup bags that you get "free" with your purchase at various makeup counters. These things were seriously multiplying on my bathroom shelves, and I was thrilled to clear them out and know they'd be going to someone who actually needed them.

And the toiletries? Oh lord, don't even get me started. This is a little embarrassing, but I clearly have some sort of kleptomaniac blood running through my veins because every time I stay at a hotel, I take all of the toiletries home. All of those mini bottles of shampoo, conditioner, lotion, mouthwash, body gel, soap—you name it. And we travel a lot. So over the years I accumulated literally hundreds of bottles, boxes and packets of various toiletries. My reasoning was that we have a lot of people stay with us and that it would be nice to offer our guests a selection of bathroom amenities to choose from. But at this point someone could stay with us for five years straight and not run out of shampoo. It was ridiculous.

So I spent a few hours over the course of that weekend going through my bathroom closets, looking under the sinks and rummaging through every other random place I've squirreled this stuff away and came up with several big grocery bags full of loot for my mom to take back with her. Now I wish I would've weighed all of it because it was insane! All that's left now are a few small baskets for each of our guest rooms that look something like this:

 I think our visitors are gonna survive AND still be so fresh and so clean when they leave our place.

Next up was the biggest task yet: cleaning out my clothes closets, since my mom mentioned there were other groups she worked with that were holding clothing drives.

I've been freelancing from home since 2007, yet for some reason I still kept all of my very nice suits I wore for The Man, along with a ton of high heels and more businessy stuff that I haven't touched for years. I just never had the time—even on weekends—to go through it all and decide what I should give to charity and what I should keep. But now I finally had a huge motivation to do it: I had a few hours to spare because my parents were watching Desmond all weekend and they were going to be nice enough to actually haul everything to the various nonprofits for me and get me the tax receipts I need. I HAD to get it done.

I went crazy paring down my closets. It felt so, so good. I kept my three favorite suits, but all other outfits only relevant to The Man went bye-bye. As did sweaters I hadn't worn in at least two seasons, pants that didn't fit anymore, shoes that were uncomfortable, pajamas I'd forgotten about, and so on.

We piled it all into my parents' SUV and FILLED IT. We filled an SUV with clothes, purses and toiletries!?!?

We gave away that much stuff... and my husband still needs to rummage through his closets! We're going to have so much extra room around here, and we can feel extra-good about it. Words can't describe the relief I felt at getting this done.

I hope I've inspired you to do the same if you've been feeling like you need a good spring cleaning. Now is the time! 'Cause it's spring—duh!

- e 

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

So.

It's been a while since I've posted, and this time I actually have a good excuse—or several good excuses, as it were. Two of them can't be shared publicly right now, so I'll have to keep you in suspense on those for a bit longer. But one update I can talk about is that—after 6.5 years of writing movie reviews, blog posts and social media musings—I am no longer freelancing for Redbox. It's only been a few weeks since I stopped working for them, so I'm not even sure it's completely sunk in to me yet. I was a contractor for Redbox longer than I had a "real job" anywhere else, so I guess the adjustment is going to take some time.

I had four months to prepare for my last day, but clearly change is harder than I'd like to admit because I didn't get off my butt and proactively try to secure another film reviewing gig like I should've. And now because of the other stuff going on that I can't share just yet, it probably doesn't make sense for me to try and find a more permanent critic post until the fall. So you can expect to see more movie reviews here on According to e in the meantime, starting this week.

As I was stressing out about how I was going to replace the income I've lost from Redbox, another wonderful opportunity fell into my lap, much like the Redbox job did back in 2008. I must've done something damn cool in a past life for this type of thing to happen to me so many times. Or maybe it's just really good luck?

My new gig will start in a few months and is still social media and writing-centric, but it's not really public-facing—meaning that I won't be sharing links of things I've written. So my hope is to eventually find a way to balance the new client work and my other client work, start reviewing films for a new outlet and also post frequently on this site in order to keep the ol' creative expression flowing.

Now that my personal update is out of the way, I'll be back with commentary on totally random topics starting tomorrow . . . until I leave for Ireland and Northern Ireland next Friday. Westeros, here I come!

- e

I'll Stop Procrastinating... Tomorrow.

Yesterday I enjoyed several hours of "free time" where I didn't have any client calls, appointments or deadlines. I had work to do, mind you, it's just that none of it was due yesterday.

So what did I do? I wrote a long blog post. I did a bunch of annoying administrative things. I went to the gym for a full hour. I took a shower. I got lunch at a nearby restaurant (a very rare thing indeed, as usually I just snack, per my post last week). It was a nice day.

But today—and likely the rest of the week—I'm screwed. On top of the work I knew I'd have to get to today, five other client-related projects hit this morning. And now I'm cursing myself for not being more productive yesterday.

I always do this. And the reality is that I know I'll never stop. I am very, very good at justifying lighter days even though I know doing so will lead to a stressful and packed remainder of the week.

What I've learned about myself is that I work best under pressure. And since I don't have a boss per se, that pressure needs to come from me. I know that if I actually turned in crappy work or made a ton of mistakes when trying to hit a tight deadline, I wouldn't put myself in this position. But that's not the case—I am more creative, more focused, and more on my A-game when I have a ton of stuff hanging over my head.

But recently I figured out that I do enjoy having my nights off. By that I mean that for at least two and a half years after Des was born, I would work for several more hours once he was in bed after I'd already put in a full day. It sucked. I like to wind down each night with a TV show or a book, and I'd made that impossible for myself. So lately I've managed to find this seemingly perfect balance: I'll let things pile up until I really HAVE to get going on them... but never so much that it trickles into my sacred 8 - 11 p.m. Me Time zone.

There are days I wish that I could just find the motivation to do my work as it comes in and keep things even-keeled throughout the week. And who knows, maybe one day I'll prefer a more well-paced schedule. But for now this "intentionally stressing myself out" strategy seems to be working.

And with that, I better get busy...

- e

Getting Things Done

I survived the weekend!

In preparation for Saturday's party, I was on my feet Friday from the second I woke up until close to midnight. I got a FitBit the week prior and it's kind of sad to know that I've already likely hit my lifetime high: nearly 17,000 steps on Friday thanks to running between floors and cleaning like a maniac.

But it was all worth it, and I'll post some party pics on Baba G and Me later this week.

As I mentioned, one of the biggest pre-party/pre-vistor stressors was the painting project I decided to have done in the two days before my relatives arrived, like a genius. But that, too, worked out beautifully.

Here's what my office cubby looked like before:

And here it is now:

I am beyond ecstatic about the upgrade. I mean, I spend the majority of my day, every weekday, sitting here. And while I've always been a big believer in the power of your surroundings to affect your mood and productivity, I let myself wallow in that complete mess for three years.

Which led me to wonder this weekend, "Why? WHY DID I WAIT SO LONG TO DO THIS?!?!"

I think it's like anything else I put off (which is a lot). There will always be a better, more convenient time. We're planning to rehab our entire house in the future, so I always figured it was stupid to spend money on anything that would eventually be totally redone. And even though we have a lot of visitors, no one really is ever staring at this little corner of the floor—except me.

But the reality is that we're not going to do any construction on our place for at least five years, possibly more. And between now and then I would have still been here every day, sulking about how crappy everything around me looks. Now I'm excited about it and proud of it and look forward to coming up here each morning.

Granted, by the time it hit somewhere around 10 p.m. on Friday night and there were still stacks and stacks of papers everywhere I kicked into "Just Hide It!" mode and now I have no idea where bills, tax documents and other important files are... but hey, it LOOKS nice and clean right now. My new project is to go through each drawer and cabinet and closet and find all of the stuff I hid and then actually take care of it right then and there and create a new filing-cabinet system in the process.

Because if there's anything this experience taught me—or reminded me, rather—it's that it just makes everything worse when you put things off. If I had simply kept this place clean on a daily basis by taking five minutes to straighten up at the end of each day or by doing things like washing guest towels and sheets immediately after people left, I wouldn't have been miserable on Friday by trying to cram and get everything ready before the latest round of visitors showed up.

So I'm taking my own advice for once and have loads of laundry in right now and will get our guest rooms ready TODAY for the five people we have coming to stay in less than a month.

Now wish me luck in finding all of my bills before they're due...

- e