Rae Roy

There has been a lot of bad happening thus far in 2022.  With all of the unrest and the atrocious acts in the news, it's easy to get overwhelmed and feel hopeless, paralyzed. I previously learned this the hard way. It's why I changed job roles in 2021. I couldn't do anything about my mom dying. I couldn't do anything to end the occupation in Ottawa. I can't do anything about what has happened in the Ukraine. Yet. It's at times like this where I turn my focus to what is in my sphere. In time, there very well may be a way to help, such as donating relief funds. That is when I will be able to do something about this crisis that is half a world away. For now, I am focusing on chores and decluttering. Because it's all I can do. #istandwithukraine

Is anyone else getting a ton of comments filled with links to junk on their blog? I've been marking them all as spam. It's annoying. Please go pay for actual advertising! Anyway, things have been up and down for me of late.  My bathroom was supposed to be done last Thursday, but the installer called in injured. I wasn't shocked after all the other hiccups on this project. It's now supposed to be this Friday, but I guess time will tell on that one. The hell that Ottawa underwent for nearly a month is mostly over though pockets of hateful people are still out on the streets harassing residents. At least the state of emergency has been lifted? Talks are happening whereby the area by parliament may become a pedestrian area only, which I don't think is a bad thing since it is a major tourist area anyway. A month has passed since we lost mom. Her 79th birthday was on Sunday. It was a hard day. Much of the occupation in Ottawa was handled the day before and I found myself

Losing a parent feels like an attack on your own mortality. It is utterly destabilizing.  It can unite your family or destroy it. I've seen families fight over cutlery. Thankfully, mine was mostly united when I went back home to help out with cleaning up the house. And cleaning with my one brother was helpful for me in pushing through a large chunk of my own clutter when I returned home. You might not realize some of the parts of you that came from them until they are gone. I long thought that my dad was the musical one in the family, but discovered that my mom was learning guitar at one point in her life. I also learned my grandmother and great uncle used to write each other letters with song lyrics in them. You might find odd things and wonder if they got them for you to have eventually. There were a number of skater style clothes in my mom's abundance of clothing that were in black. They weren't her style at all. Her style was floral print tops and bottoms of

One good thing about going to my hometown and cleaning up my mother's things was that working with my brother helped me figure out how to tackle some of the challenging clutter at my own home. This week, I did a ton of paper decluttering. And because I've reduced how many things I receive in a paper format, I was able to get rid of my filing cabinet and downsize to a box. This box is handy because it now lives under my desk and can stop my footrest from moving to unreachable places. I have a bit more to shred, but I'm through the bulk of the outdated paperwork that is no longer needed. Another side benefit of all this paper cleanup is that I think I may have what I need to fix a gap in the couch I made. I won't know that for a bit, but I'm looking forward to finding out. So my next step is to swap some shelves out of my office as I'm building a better shelving system using IKEA Kallax. This is a slow moving project, due to supply issues, but I can swap out the m