Tag: calendar

The Sweetest Time Capsule

On April 15, 2024

Lately, I find myself in my “Swedish Death Cleaning” era. If you are unsure as to what this means, you can google it, but essentially I am cleaning out all the nooks and crannies of my home so that someday (hopefully many years from now) when I am no longer present, my dear daughters will have less to deal with. I have lived in my home for 18 years and when we moved into it, I had a two-year-old and a six-year-old, so time for organizing was quite limited. I’ve slowly begun the process of analyzing what I own and whether or not I still value it in my life enough to take up real estate in my home and/or mind.

The current project is clearing out the paper filing cabinet and taking the “sensitive” materials to be shredded. I own a shredder, but this is going to be next-level shredding as I clear out 30 years of old documents. By the way, did you know that UPS will take care of your shredding? Well, they will for $2/pound….that’s SO worth it to me!

Yesterday, I was cleaning out old income tax files from 1999/2000 and came across the paper calendar that I used in the year 2000. I am not sure why I had stored it in the income tax folder, but I found it and it took me on a trip down memory lane. My oldest was 1 year old (she recently got married and celebrated her 25th birthday). I chose to stay at home full-time when she was born, so I did not have many schedules to manage in 2000. I remember feeling a bit lost after having worked full-time for years, and the calendar helped me feel like I still had reasons to care about how I filled my time. I wrote my husband’s work schedule, important birthdays, pediatric appointments, and paydays, which were highly anticipated events of the month! I even made notes about extra expenses we would have to budget for at the beginning of the month. Some of the sweetest memories I came across were my daughter’s first steps on February 16, 2000, the first snowfall of 2000 in Memphis, TN on January 28, 2000, and the very first women’s ministry bible study I ever participated in at Bellevue Baptist Church in September of 2000. That date is special to me because it served as the beginning of my journey into reading and studying the Bible, which started transforming me and continues to do so to this very moment.

Finding this calendar made me nostalgic and a bit emotional. I had forgotten how much I relied on moms’ groups/play dates to keep me sane as I learned how to be a mother to a precious, strong-willed little girl. It’s a good reminder that the things we worry about in the current moment will likely be forgotten in a few years. It also reminds me that God has been so faithful over all of these years, and what a gift it is to have had all of this time to watch my daughters grow into amazing adults with their own calendars to maintain.

I know paper calendars are being replaced by digital, and in many ways, I am in full support of this. I love digital copies of just about everything! However, I will say that there is something so sweet about coming across this little time capsule with the ink smudges and crossed-out words, and even crayon marks created by my toddler’s little hands. I will surely have great success weeding out many things in my home, but this little calendar may not make the cut of the Swedish Death Cleaning guidelines for elimination; For now, it brings me joy.

Too Much Time On My Hands

By Kathy Wetsell

On December 31, 2021

In My Two Cents

As another year winds down, I find myself contemplating plans and goals for 2022. I feel as if I have been in a fog for the past few years with the Covid pandemic looming constantly overhead. I have never felt quite so stalled as I have these past few years; I wonder if this is true for others as well. With so much of our daily lives changing and actually coming to a screeching halt in 2020, I have not allowed myself to create expectations for fear of extreme disappointment as outside forces threaten to eliminate all of the routines and patterns I have come to expect and thrive within.

I have had several goals to accomplish within my mind, such as organizing my home, weeding out clutter, and becoming more consistent with my writing, among other things. The problem is, I have not taken any tangible steps to create habits that will make these goals attainable.

If I am completely honest, I cannot blame all of this on Covid. I have two new circumstances in my life which are contributing to my lack of focus. First, I have been experiencing the brain fog which comes from the hormonal changes of menopause. While I had hoped to escape this, unfortunately, I have not been able to come out unscathed. I did try some hormone replacement therapy which helped for a while, but hormones continue to change, and sometimes we have to follow up and make changes in our treatment methods, which I will be doing very soon. Second, I became an empty nester in August, and I have so much time on my hands now. One would think this would increase productivity, but I have found it to have the opposite effect. I have not worked outside the home in a full-time position since my oldest daughter was born, and since then, my focus has been on raising my children and caring for my family and home. I used to be so organized and had many volunteer commitments when my daughters lived at home, but now that I have much more time on my hands and less required of me, I find myself to be less productive than ever. I am so frustrated by this, and it has to change!

My first steps for the new year will include purchasing a new planner (I tried a digital planner this past year, but I miss the physical paper planner) and filling in all of the commitments I am aware of currently. I have been spending some time researching how other women set their goals and how to plan daily tasks in order to create habits. Until recently, I have not spent time learning about goal setting, and I believe this has contributed to the condition described in the 1967 booklet, Tyranny of the Urgent, by Charles Hummel. He wrote about the tension between things that are urgent and things that are important. We often sacrifice important things in order to react to urgent things. But Hummel warned that “your greatest danger is letting the urgent things crowd out the important.” I know I have experienced this personally, and it contributes to the feeling that I am chasing my tail every day without ever accomplishing anything besides the required daily “urgent” requirements. I hope that setting some specific long-term goals will help me move past the feeling that I am constantly treading water.

As a woman of faith, I truly seek to understand God’s will for my life. I don’t want to miss an opportunity because I am stuck in a rut or bogged down by daily obligations which could be streamlined and ordered in a more efficient manner if only I attended to the planning of them. My resolution for the new year is also my prayer: may I not be afraid to hope for better days, and may I make it a habit to steward my time wisely.

Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom. Psalm 90:12