Smoooooothie

Right now, my favorite smoothie is Banana-Raspberry.

2-4 bananas (2 large, 4 small, 3 med, etc)
1/2 cup raspberries (I use frozen)
1/2 cup water

Blend.
Inhale.

The raspberries really cut the sweetness of the bananas and make the texture not as "banana-y". It's also a gorgeous pink color.

Normally I don't drink smoothies without greens but am trying a few new recipes. Another one I'll be trying is Banana-Mint which is just bananas and mint. It sounds tasty in a strange way.

-=-

Work is dissatisfying. I'm trying to make it a good place for me and some days are such a struggle. In the grand scheme of things, I don't want to leave and start over but there are moments (a lot of them!) where I feel I have no choice. I just wonder if I'll ever find a place that I can be happy at. Am I asking too much?

-=-

I used the Inbox Zero method on both my personal and work email inboxes. They look a bit bare now .. it feels nice on one hand and scary on another. Anyway, going to work on keeping it that way - though I've never felt I have a problem with email. I'm the type of person (always have been) where if I haven't touched it in a couple months I'd delete it. Now I'm just going to accelerate that a bit.

Of course, using gmail for everything means that nothing is really deleted. It's just not viewable in the main box. If I need it, I can retrieve it. On one hand, I had to say that it's an interesting way to handle email (the way gmail does) but it is really wasteful too. Who needs gigs of email?

Crazy.

This all goes along with my annual nesting months where I get the itch to clean and organize my house. My goal this year though is to KEEP my house clean and organized. Every year I go through this phase where I start doing Flylady and I get into habits of cleaning and then one by one they drop by the wayside and I'm back where I started.

I really do like having a clean and organized house, it feels really good but I don't like doing it all the time. What I don't get about myself is that if I follow Flylady, I'll spend LESS time cleaning overall even though I'm doing it on a daily basis than if I just crisis clean when I finally get fed up.

The psychology of change and habits must be an interesting field of study. I found a website the other day Unclutterer which in some ways makes me giddy with "oooh pretty!" and terror "oh my god how can they live like that!" I've grown up in a house that was clean but cluttered. My Mom has always had a lot of stuff and in turn, I have a lot of stuff.

I find it interesting that when I see a very clean house with no clutter (see some of the above in Unclutterer) my first instinct is to shun it and think that people can't live that way, to think that it wouldn't be comfortable to go to that house, or that I'd be terrified of messing something up. It's the opposite of my house and I'm not happy with my house, yet the extreme side feels uncomfortable to. Is there a middle-ground where you can have a home that is clean and de-clutered but not completely void of personality?

Or is lack of stuff personality too? Just a very different one ...

Over the past few years I've gotten rid of a lot of stuff and picked up some healthier homekeeping habits but not enough and I continue to work on this project.

I think the crux of the problem is that I believe on some level that having stuff in my home means I have the ability to have stuff. It's asserting on some level that I'm human and this is how I show it. Even people without homes, bagladies and the like have stuff. It's like I'm saying to the world, "Look, here is my stuff. I work hard for it and I have lots of it." I think this all goes hand-in-hand with debt too, at least in my case. I have debt and I have clutter. Or is it that I have debt and as a result have clutter?

This week, the Fly Zone is the kitchen. I have the least amount of work to do here but I'm going to tackle the dining room since it's technically a part of the kitchen. *G*