Daily Declutter

I got an item shipped for ebay today. That's about all the decluttering I was up for. I didn't increase clutter, though, so that's something.

As I was driving my son to school this morning I noticed that one of the main branches of our peach tree had split. A few years ago the same thing happened, and the tree healed after we wrapped it, so I spent a good part of the morning wrapping the tree, and pruning branches that were weighing the tree down. There might be a metaphor here that I could use, something about having too much, even too much of a good thing, can be destructive. Hmmmm.

However, with the aid of my valiant daughter (seriously, the break was above my head. My arms are aching from holding the branch up, and my 5-foot-1 daughter had to do most of the wrapping above her head as well. However, we rescued a number of peaches that are almost ripe, and they will ripen as best they can, and they will go into cobbler next week.

I stopped by the store on my way home from my husband's school; it's not my usual day shopping, but I haven't gotten birthday gifts for two nieces whose birthdays we are celebrating tomorrow. I went into the store with minimal inspiration, and came out with the foundations for two gifts. One niece will get an Oreo/lunch package (lunch bag, package of Oreos, Oreo box, something else I haven't figured out) and the other one will receive a beach bag (bag, beach towel, sunscreen, chapstick, maybe flipflops). They're both on their own this year, so I figure they can use a lot of adult essentials, but packaged to be fun. After all, they're not going to want to buy lunch or sunscreen, but they're going to need it, and they can spend their money on things that are more fun instead. I bought a pair of shorts for my daughter, but I did not get anything else for me. I did not get the grey linen blouse I almost bought, because I knew I would never actually wear it (I wanted it to be white, but it just wasn't). I'm feeling pretty pleased that I recognized that I would not wear the blouse, and I did not bring home clutter.

School is wrapping up for both my husband and my kids, so we have lots to do in the coming week. However, after that summer is here and we will be free! Today we have an event at my husband's school. I am realizing that simplifying, minimalizing, my schedule is difficult because I'm the mom. Even if I minimalize my schedule I still have to facilitate everyone else's schedule. I'm going to still try to streamline everyone's schedule, so I can drop off one person to the way to another event, but I don't want people to miss out on the end-of-the-year pool party just because I'm trying to reduce my own schedule. (On the other hand, people do have to limit their own commitments so they know how to balance their time. I don't have a perfect answer for this, and I may not get one while the kids are still living at home, and especially if they aren't driving. I guess it gives me something else to work on. In case I run out of physical clutter.)