Hello again and the SNAP Challenge

by slightlyblurred via Flickr

I hope you all had a lovely summer. Mine was rather full with mostly positive things. I traveled a good amount, met someone new, discovered some health issues, became an aunt again, began a long distant relationship, and ran my first 5K.

Periods of a lot of change have always caused me to grow reflective and, predictably, I've been in a rather pensive mood lately due to the shift in the nature of my new relationship. His move has got me thinking about what, if anything, is keeping me on the west coast and if I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing with my life. I have these desires to promote my dad's artwork and to write, but I've done very little of either one and perhaps now is the time to devote attention to them. If I never really try, I'll never really now if they will give me the sense of fulfillment I think or at least hope they will. So, here I am, writing.

I discovered that keeping up with this blog has been easier if I challenge myself to do something and write about the experience, giving me that extra boost of motivation that I usually need to get through the life projects that speak to me. With that in mind, I came across the SNAP Challenge on one of the food blogs I follow, Budget Bytes.

What is the SNAP Challenge, you ask? It's a challenge to eat on $4.50 a day (or $31.50 a week), which is the allotment Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants receive. The challenge raises awareness for the cost of food and how difficult it can be to provide enough food for yourself (and potentially a family) to combat hunger. Why am I interested in participating in this challenge? A few reasons:

• First, a rather selfish one. I tend to keep a pretty close eye on my finances in general, but I have a few extra expenses to pay for (plane tickets, vet bills) that require some extra budgeting on my part. Doing a challenge like this will help to ensure I keep my food expenses low. 
• While my mother did not receive food stamps while I was a child, she did everything she could to spend very little on food. This was partially due to her low income, but also because her hoarding tendencies made her and continues to make her a rather cheap person. Additionally, my mother hoarded food and so we always had a full fridge, but one that was full of rotten food. There's little worse than looking through a fridge full of rotten food when you're hungry and trying to find something suitable to eat. 
• I thought this challenge would give me an opportunity to talk about some of the few positive things I was able to glean from living in my mother's hoard. Because of my experiences, I hate to see food go to waste and so I have developed some good methods to use up all of the food I buy. Some of my mom's frugality rubbed off on me and so I have also gotten rather good at keeping my food expenses low (within reason- I am adamant about staying well out of the realm of my mother's cheapness). I think it'll be nice to balance out a lot of the negativity written about my mother and my childhood experiences with some of the positive I got out of it all.

Like Beth at Budget Bytes, I will also do the challenge for a month instead of just a week. One of the "rules" is to not use what you already have, but I think that is unrealistic and would be wasteful on my part (why would I buy a dozen eggs and let the eggs I have go bad?). Using what you have is a big part of eating on a budget, so I'm throwing that rule out. Additionally, I previously agreed to take two of my neighbors out to dinner as a thank you for them cat sitting for me while I was out of town. I'm not going to shirk that gesture because of this challenge. I very rarely eat out by myself (and as part of this challenge, will not eat out by myself at all for this month), but do go out to eat with friends every once in awhile. I'm going to look at these invitations on a case by case basis. Because I tend to think of these types of interactions as an investment in the friendships I have and less of a ding to my food budget, I expect I will eat out a few times during the next month. 

I tend to spend in the range of $30-40 a week on groceries, so I'm curious to see if I will find this challenge difficult. Stay tuned for my post on how I did during my first grocery shopping trip and the meals I have planned for week one.

Check out how I did:
Week 1 report
Week 2 report
Week 3 report
Week 4 report

A blogger comes home

by craftydame via Flickr

Hi, friends. I believe an explanation is in order.

As Ernest Hemingway put it, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Since I was already experiencing significant blood loss due to my father's death, adjusting to a new job and home, and the rapid failure of a new relationship, let's just say that writing became far too painful for me to pursue. To be honest, I'm afraid that writing is still painful for me, but that brings me to my next point.

Over the last month or so, I've really started to examine my life and ask myself what needs to change in order for me to be living the life I really want. 2013 was definitely not my year and I want 2014 to be much, much better. After listening to and reading Brene Brown talk about vulnerability as well as other happiness related articles and books (like The Happiness Project), I'm convinced that I need to start choosing love over fear consistently.

As the child of a hoarder, all I've known has been survival mode. I just needed to get through high school to get out of my mother's hoard. That survival instinct stayed with me through the years: I just needed to get through college, I just needed to get a job to support myself, I just needed to get through grad school, I just needed to land a professional job, I just needed to adjust to living on the west coast, I just needed to get over the loss of my father, I just needed to find the perfect partner, I just needed to be driven by fear. In the process of having my survival blinders on, I've pushed aside a large number of things that have brought me great joy in life: writing, art, exploring new topics just for the hell of it. I got really amazingly good at denying myself things out of fear of being distracted too much from what I "should" be doing as A Very Responsible Adult. This barebones living has brought me to my present condition: doing all of the "right" things, but not being particularly happy.

And so, I've decided to choose love and the things that I love in an attempt to find peace and happiness within myself. My desire to write about it is not just because of my undeniable inclination to be a writer, but because "... as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." I think Marianne Williamson was on to something there and I hope my return to blogging can ignite untold lights in my readers.

Happy holidays and expect to be hearing more from me regularly in the coming year.

Exciting blog news: podcast!

by vincentwiki via Flickr

Hi, friends! While we're only halfway through October, November is quickly shaping up to be a very exciting month here at Squalor Holler. I don't want to let too many cats out of the bag just yet, so I'm just going to share one bit of news for now.

A few months ago, I was pondering over how to make my little blog more than just about me and my experiences as a child of a hoarder and how I deal with my past as an adult. Since hoarding affects so many people and is still very misunderstood, I decided that introducing more voices would be more beneficial than just focusing solely on my own voice. My children of hoarders interview series was one idea I had while I was thinking about this bigger than me angle. My second idea involved the other child of a hoarder in my family: my brother.

My brother has graciously agreed to do a monthly podcast with me where we'll talk about our childhood and how we are both affected by my mother's hoarding behavior. I figured adding his voice would offer a fuller picture of how hoarding affects a family as a whole.

We have tentatively decided to record our first session during the last week in October and I plan to post it on my blog shortly thereafter.

Is this podcast something that interests you? I hope this news is as exciting for you as it is for me! Do you have any questions for us that you would like answered during our chat?

Children of hoarders interview series

by Rusty Sheriff via Flickr

Are you a child of a hoarder? Do you know a child of a hoarder? I would like to start a guest post series that revolves around interviewing fellow children of hoarders.

We all have a different story to tell and telling those stories will help us to create a stronger community. The Children of Hoarders message board on Yahoo! is an excellent resource, but I often don't get a good sense of someone's background and, therefore, can't connect as well. Also, when someone does introduce themselves, their message tends to get buried rather quickly.

I want to start this interview series so that we can all get to know each other better, especially those of us who blog or are active with social media. If there's anything I've learned about being a child of a hoarder, it's that a support system is essential to creating a healthy balance in your life. Would you be willing to be interviewed? Send me an email at squalorhollerblog at gmail dot com so we can get started!

Why I did 30x30 and what this blog is about

[Fair warning: this is a lengthy post. If you don't have the time or interest to read the whole thing, here's the summary: I participated in the 30x30 wardrobe challenge to put a face to the name of a child of a hoarder, to reinforce the fact that you don't need a large wardrobe to dress well, and to live with intention. To fight against the habit of pushing goals to someday and most likely never achieving them, I will be posting the progress of my own small goals and challenges to keep me accountable and to encourage others (especially fellow children of hoarders) to better their own lives, one step at a time. This project will be called Someday is Today.]

Some of you might be scratching your heads and wondering why I decided to do a wardrobe challenge on a blog that primarily addresses growing up with a hoarding parent. The connection may not be obvious, especially to those who didn't grow up in a hoard or who don't know me very well, so let me see if I can clear up the confusion.

Building good habits
First, I did it to force myself to get into the habit of updating more often since I fell off the bandwagon for a few months thanks to grad school and I wanted to establish a much better routine.

Exhibit A: Child of Hoarder
Second, I wanted to put a face to the name of a child of a hoarder. Many children of hoarders who blog do so anonymously or as close to anonymously as they can make it. I considered going this route myself because hoarding is such a personal topic and can be very embarrassing. I have changed many names of friends or simply have not given names so that my friends, family, and I can have some privacy. Ultimately though, I decided that for those who are unfamiliar with hoarding and for those who are currently living with a hoarding parent, seeing the normal looking face of a person who went through living in squalor can be powerful for the uninformed and comforting for those feeling isolated in their cluttered environment. Anyone you see, whether they look like they live or have lived in a hoard, could be affected by hoarding. It's much more common than you think. Someone does not have to look dirty or disheveled to be a hoarder or to have grown up as a child of a hoarder. In fact, many hoarders go to great lengths to look and have their children look well dressed and put together in public because they do not want anyone to be suspicious of what is actually behind closed doors.

Less equals more
The next reason why I wanted to do the 30x30 challenge is because I wanted to reinforce the fact that a large wardrobe is not required to dress well. One of the items my mother hoarded and continues to hoard religiously is clothing. We couldn't eat on the dinning room table because the table itself and all of the chairs were covered in clothing. My mother could not sleep in her bed, let alone enter her bedroom, because the bed was piled high with clothing and bags upon bags of clothing were scattered about the floor. We didn't have hampers. We had two teetering piles of dirty clothes in the hall. Our closets were full of old clothing we never wore. Clothing was not put away after it was washed and dried. It was placed in the dinning room until my mothered ironed it and we wore it that same day.

My mother was and still is a fanatic about ironing. She irons absolutely everything: t-shirts and pillowcases included. While I took a shower, she would frantically iron a top and bottom for me so that I could pull them on before running out the door. I didn't have the luxury of planning outfits when I was living with my mother. She picked out what I wore the morning I wore it. I had very little say in what I wore and, because there was so little time and planning in the morning dash, I wound up wearing a lot of the same outfits over and over again. Instead of attempting to remix what I had, we would simply go shopping fairly frequently and, therefore, add to the ever growing clothing hoard. (I would also like to add that my mother did not like me to wear anything remotely formfitting nor spend very much money, so I wound up with a lot of cheap, ill fitting clothing.) Since moving out of the hoard, I've tried to keep a smaller sized closet of items that fit me well and that I actually wear. Doing the 30x30 challenge affirmed my smaller closet and opened my eyes to new ways I can wear the clothes I already own, thus reducing my impulse to go shopping because "I have nothing to wear."

Enough of the somedays
While all of these reasons would have been enough for me to go ahead and do it, the main reason why I wanted to participate in the 30x30 wardrobe challenge is to fight against what many of us children of hoarders (and many, many other non-hoarding affiliated people) have heard our whole lives: someday change will take place, action will be taken. Someday. Hoarder's Child recently wrote a very well written, pithy post about this same idea. Someday my mother was going to go through the clothing with me. Someday my mother was going to fix the leaks in the basement and bathroom. Someday my mother was going to call the eye doctor and make an appointment for me. These somedays never came. Living in this "someday syndrome" environment caused me to think this same way for many years beyond living with my hoarding mother.

While I was battling a deep depression that landed me in the hospital, I had an epiphany: if I want things to change, I need to take those steps and those actions in order for that change to happen. Very, very few things are just going to fall into your lap without you putting in some effort. If I wanted a better life than one wallowing in depression, I needed to go out and seize it. If I wanted to save money, I would need to watch my spending and transfer that money to savings. The money just wasn't going to appear out of thin air. If I wanted to visit another country, I needed to set aside the money and make the arrangements. I wasn't going to just magically wake up in Europe one morning. If I wanted to dress better, I needed to sit down and see what I have and what looks good together. I wasn't going to look down and be wearing a well planned outfit without the planning part.

What this very lengthy post is really all about is pushing myself to live mindfully and with intention. My mother is always a victim, letting life happen to her instead of shaping her own life. I thought for a very long time that that is simply how life is, but I've come to discover how wrong that perception is. She claimed that she would clean the house someday when she had more time. I went along with that thought process, thinking that one day she'd miraculously have nothing to do but clean. What we both failed to see (and what she still fails to see) was that she sat for hours in front of the TV everyday and never made an effort to fill those hours with something more productive, like cleaning. There will never be the perfect time to reach your goals. There will always be other life things going on. She didn't need to find more time, she needed to prioritize. 

I took the 30x30 wardrobe challenge to remind myself that if I want to dress myself better, it requires some effort on my part. On a big picture level, I shared my 30x30 experience to act as a gentle reminder to my readers (especially those who are children of hoarders) that making goals, even small ones, and pushing yourself to achieve them is an incredibly important part of gleaning meaning and fulfillment out of life. It's very easy for the goals to get lost in the mix and for you to push them to someday because it's easier to do that than to take action. Plus, achieving small goals gives you the strength and willpower to achieve the bigger goals on your list.

Someday is Today
Going through 30x30 gave me the push to get my blog back to what I want it to really be about. One big step in that direction is executing the idea to start a project called Someday is Today. I will be picking a smaller goal that I've been wanting to work on and sharing the progress on the blog. My goals will cover all aspects of life and will vary in length depending upon what the goal entails. Sharing provides the duel purpose of keeping me accountable and providing encouragement for readers (especially fellow children of hoarders) to tackle their own goals. 

Stay tuned for my first goal! I hope you'll be inspired to start turning your somedays into today.