I'm posting these articles because usually at the end of the year or the beginning of the year, a lot of people are decluttering or organizing their homes. You can do that any time of the year, but it's common to do that now.
Jan. 12, 2019 "Tidying Up with Marie Kondo": Today I found this article by Hank Stuever in the Edmonton Journal:
The war on clutter continues. In previous reality-TV skirmishes with America's junk-filled closets and overstuffed garages, shows about clear-cut cleaning tried to sass and snark people into a state of tidiness.
Before she found her way as an actress, Niecy Nash came to people's homes a decade ago on the former Style network's "Clean House" and decried their "foolishness" before unleashing a trio of helpers to pare down the mess and redecorate rooms to minimalist perfection.
Viewers later became transfixed by the tragedies seen on A&E's "Hoarders," a tough-love approach to a form of mental illness, in which troubled homeowners and renters living amid unsafe piles of belongings and filth were forced to part with however much of it would return them to a semblance of sanity - or appease the enforcers of some local ordinance who had declared their homes uninhabitable.
Despite its sincere intentions, "Hoarders" (which last aired in 2017) was a sad and occasionally intrusive wallow. It allowed us to cloak our morbid curiosity in safe-distance empathy.
Now it's Marie Kondo to the rescue in Netflix's happily engaging new reality series, "Tidying Up with Marie Kondo" (available for streaming Tuesday).
The show isn't all that revelatory, but it certainly qualifies as a fine New Year's Day binge for people who intend to drag the Christmas tree to the curb sometime before Easter.
If you haven't heard of Kondo, a successful Japanese home organizer, then you've probably been buried under a mound of still-tagged bargains from T.J. Maxx and Kohl's.
The rest of us already know (and perhaps adhere to) the principles detailed in Kondo's international bestseller, "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up," which advocates a five-step "KonMari" approach to evaluating one's belongings on an emotional level.
If an object does not "spark joy" (in Kondo's terms), it probably needs to go.
"Tidying Up" puts Kondo's methods to the test in eight different Los Angeles-area homes, starting with that of Kevin and Rachel, whose situation seems most common: Two married adults with busy careers and two small children, not enough space and not enough time or energy left at the end of the day to stay ahead of the stuff they own.
Kondo, who is in her early 30s and also has two young children, arrives at her clients' houses (accompanied by her translator, Marie Iida) full of squeaky, irresistibly cute enthusiasm, greeting their engorged closets and chaotic junk drawers with giddy discovery. "I love mess," she declares.
Unlike her TV predecessors, Kondo brings a calming influence to the surroundings - even asking the owners if she may take a moment to kneel in a particular spot and silently greet their homes.
Sometimes she asks the homeowners to join in and offer unspoken thanks to their home for the shelter it has thus far provided.
This is a noble and overdue concept for the home makeover and real estate genre - a chance to express gratitude for any home, rather than the perfect home. Years of HGTV's programming have placed homeowners and home-seekers on a narcissistic pedestal of entitled complaint (our house is too small, too ugly, too outdated) and criticisms.
How many couples, by now, have we seen walk through homes for sale and disparage the countertops, bathroom tiling and size of the backyard?
Where's the reminder that we should be so lucky as to have lived in a state of acquisition rather than sacrifice?
The gratitude extends to Kondo's lessons in culling.
Once Rachel has dragged a few closets' worth of her massive, mostly casual wardrobe and piled everything on the bed, per Kondo's instructions, she is asked to "thank" an item of clothing before discarding it.
It's a long process, topped off with Kondo's insistence that the remaining T-shirts, underwear and socks be folded into consistent rectangular shapes that line up in drawers like cute, obedient children.
Herein lies the happiness. You might not run to your dresser to immediately duplicate it, but you'll at least be tempted.
Kondo's journey continues to other families and couples facing various anxieties about their mess.
Margie, recently widowed, confronts a closet full of her late husband's clothes. ("Creepy!" her daughter callously declares later, when Margie attempts to show off the hard-won progress of its emptiness.)
A male couple, Frank and Matt, seek Kondo's help tidying their shared L.A. apartment as a way of asserting their adulthood, especially for family members who still think of them as young slobs.
Clarissa and Mario are expecting their first baby and must reckon with a surfeit of clothes, especially his stacks of collectible sneakers and athletic shoes, many of which he bought with no intention of wearing.
And Ron and Wendy, empty-nesters married 42 years, must tackle layers of accumulation, including the dreaded Christmas decorations and decades' worth of baseball cards.
The vicarious, lookie-loo factor can be appealing on its own. Other viewers may watch to get the inspiration to tackle some of their own closets and drawers.
Kondo's methods make good sense, dividing the work into categories - clothes first, then books, then papers, followed by a catchall category, "komono" (miscellaneous), which includes the kitchen, bathrooms, garage and miscellaneous spots where stuff accumulates.
She saves sentimental objects for last, and it's here where the owners must really buckle down and assess whether they are keeping something out of a sense of duty or true joy.
To her credit, Kondo is not a makeover artist. She effuses over any form of progress, happy to overlook matters of taste and decor. As such, "Tidying Up" isn't filled with the sort of visually appealing reveals that viewers expect from other home-improvement shows.
It's also worth noting that "Tidying Up" is so relentlessly encouraging that it cannot bring itself to feature a failure, such as a homeowner who gives up in the middle of the process, even with the promise of inner peace. It can sometimes feel as if Kondo and her producers settle for small victories without addressing some of the homeowners' personal issues that still simmer just beneath the surface.
She's here to tidy up and spark joy, which ultimately includes a bit of glossing-over. The joyless, Judgey McJudgerson stuff is left to viewers like you and me, and Lord knows, we've watched enough reality TV to easily pick up that slack.
My opinion: I used to go to the Edmonton Decluttering and Organizing Meetup group in 2019. I went to a few meetings. A woman said that she watches an episode of Hoarders, and that inspires her to declutter and organize.
I like reading and watching about feng shui to inspire me.
Apr. 13, 2019 "The rise of the cleanfluencer": Today I found this article by Matthew Hague in the Globe and Mail:
It’s spring-cleaning time. To our Victorian ancestors, this was the moment to fling open the windows and let all the accumulated winter dust fly out with the newly warm breeze. But to us, the better weather might not even be perceptible, with those same windows covered by too much mildew, grime or accumulated clutter to even see the unfurling green leaves.
After all, who has time to clean any more? According to Statistics Canada, not many of us. Both the percentage of Canadians who actively tidy indoors and the number of hours spent on such chores declined between 1986 and 2015. About 50 per cent of the population used to spend five hours a week on housekeeping. These days it’s closer to 40 per cent and four hours and 54 minutes. A six-minute drop might not sound like much, but that adds up to more than five hours a year in lost dusting, vacuuming and organizing opportunities.
This might explain why miraculously immaculate spaces are to our home lives what Kylie Jenner is to fashion and beauty – a collective, aspirational obsession, something that’s somehow everywhere yet still seemingly unattainable. Or, as a recent Guardian article stated: “Bleach is the new black.” And the trend is fuelling a boom in bestselling organizational books, popular TV shows and social-media stars.
In some ways, this isn’t a new occurrence. “Cleaning seems to be the cockroach of businesses,” says Toronto-based YouTuber Melissa Maker, whose Clean My Space channel has more than 1.1 million subscribers. “AI, recessions, whatever – it seems resilient.”
That’s because despite what’s going on in the world, most of us still desire an orderly abode. What’s singular now, though, is the confluence of uniquely contemporary trends driving the movement – a rising zeal for self-help, wellness and social-media perfection, all mixed with a lack of time to realistically achieve any of the above without professional gurus or the kind of one-on-one help once exclusively available to the ultrawealthy, now more readily accessible in the gig economy.
Marie Kondo might be the most famous of the so-called cleanfluencers – her tomes have sold more than 10 million copies around the world and her recent Netflix series, Tidying Up, was devoured by millions of fans as soon as it came out in January of this year. But she’s hardly the only one. Canada has its own group of neatness gurus, some of whom are acolytes of the Japanese phenomenon, while others predate her rise entirely.
Toronto’s Ivanka Siolkowsky started her career as a primary-school teacher. But in 2015, when a co-worker gave her a copy of Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, as a gag secret-Santa gift, she realized she had a different calling. “I was always the one with the notoriously clean classroom,” she says. “At the time, Marie Kondo was just starting her KonMari training workshops. I registered immediately.”
Siolkowsky left teaching shortly thereafter to become a full-time KonMari consultant, someone who charges an average of $100 an hour to handhold someone through Kondo’s approach of eliminating anything that doesn’t “spark joy” from their home. To some, that might seem like a highly risky bet – giving up a government-backed dental plan for the vagaries of self-employment.
But since starting her business, called the Tidy Moose, in 2016, Siolkowsky has amassed more than 20,000 Instagram followers (“I get 90 per cent of my clients through Instagram,” she says) and penned her own Amazon bestselling book called Declutter Your Way to Health, Wealth and Freedom.
She’s also Canada’s only platinum-certified KonMari consultant, a distinction granted to those who have not only completed the $1,500 training workshop, but who have amassed a certain amount of experience. Siolkowsky has done more than 900 hours working with at least 30 clients using Kondo’s methods.
Lisa Orr is one such client. She owns a Toronto-based, eponymous protocol consultancy and has three kids. “As an entrepreneur with a busy young family, keeping things organized and clutter-free tended to fall to the bottom of the to-do list,” she says. “I really needed some professional help to put systems in place that my family and I could maintain.”
Orr and her family worked with Siolkowsky over the course of five months. “It was an incredibly positive experience,” she says. “We tackled the master bedroom, the kids’ rooms, the kitchen, my home office and our storage room, so really the whole house. Six months later, the spaces look very similar to how they looked after the declutter. Sometimes a pair of shoes might be in the wrong spot, but the great thing is that those things stand out now and are easy to fix.”
As with Siolkowsky, Halifax’s Jane Veldhoven had a previous career (“I was a terrible salesperson,” she says) and an innate knack for space planning. “I was a naturally organized child,” she says. “I always had the ability to look at a mess and know exactly how to improve it.” But unlike Siolkowsky, Veldhoven started establishing herself as a cleanfluencer in 2002, long before “spark joy” was a common phrase.
Back then, being a professional organizer was relatively unheard of. The Professional Organizers of Canada (POC), a national group promoting neateners-for-hire, was only a year old with about 100 members (it now has 700).
“My friends and family thought I had lost my mind,” says Veldhoven, the first POC member in Atlantic Canada. “They told me: ‘People won’t pay you to do that.'”
Seventeen years later, not only is there so much demand for her services that she often has to refer would-be clients to other POC members, but Veldhoven was recently the subject of a five-part docuseries on Vision TV. Called The Big Downsize, the show followed her as she helped two families weed through all the excess stuff in their lives, including four siblings cleaning out the junk-rammed house where their deceased parents had lived for 50 years.
The show has the predictable heated emotions and flowing tears that come with purging a lifetime of possessions. But Veldhoven’s infectious optimism more than balances out the drama. “I’m really passionate about helping people let go of what they don’t need,” she said recently on a promo stop in Toronto.
“In my own experience, I’ve found that whenever I let go of what I no longer need, something wonderful comes along to replace it.”
Melissa Maker also predates the Kondo craze. She launched her video channel, Clean My Space, in 2010. It has more than 100 videos demonstrating how to scrub everything from tubs and tiles to salt-stained winter boots.
A major part of Maker’s appeal is that, unlike overly earnest perfectionists such as Martha Stewart, she has the casual tone of a friend who, like you, would ultimately rather be doing something more fun. That get-it-done-and-over-with attitude is genuine. Maker was the kind of teenager who refused to unload the dishwasher or wipe down the bathroom, often resulting in yelling matches with her mom. Even now, at 36, her resistance is resolute. “I still hate cleaning,” she says.
The aversion might be ironic, but it also inspired Maker’s business idea. At 24, while working as a server at the Keg, she realized that if other people disdained cleaning as much as she did, there must be demand for outsourced solutions. So she started a pay-by-the-hour cleaning service (also called Clean My Space).
She taught herself the time-consuming, pre-social-media way: taking books out from the library. At first, she hired herself out as the maid. Now, she has a team of between 20 and 30 cleaners.
Which is not surprising considering that during the big downturn 10 years ago, Maker was initially worried for her then-new startup. The economic contraction, though, proved to be a springboard. “We grew five-fold in 2008,” she says. “We went from five-figure to six-figure revenues that year. … People might not love cleaning, but they love being in a clean space. It smells good, it feels good. During the recession, people were so stressed-out, the last thing they wanted to do, or even had time for, was to clean for themselves.”
The need has stayed strong since. In addition to starting the YouTube channel shortly after (which led to sponsorship deals with Tide, Dawn, OxyClean and others), she’s since launched additional ventures, including a how-to book published by Penguin Random House, a line of microfibre cloths and towels and an online training course to teach others who want to start and run their own Clean My Space-style enterprises. More than 10,000 people signed up before the course went live in February.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/home-and-design/article-neatness-gurus-the-rise-of-the-so-called-cleanfluencer/
Dec. 28, 2021 Discmans: I'm going to recycle 2 old discmans at Staples:
Panasonic SL-S160- My sister got this as a gift in 2000 and used this for years. I then used this.
1. The lid is broken.
2. You have to press hard on the head phone jack so you can listen to music. This will cramp your hand.
Panasonic SL- SX320: My little brother won this in a draw in 2003. In jr. high school, your name is put in a draw if you don't get tutorials (as in you finished your homework for the week for like a whole semester). He used this and I used this for years.
1. This doesn't work. I tried this with 3 cds and the discman says "no disc."
I haven't used this in years and it sits there. Well at least we used this for a long time.
My sister got one as a gift in like 2001 or 2002. She then got an iPod by 2007 and I gave that discman to my friend Sherry because I already had 2 discmans.
You can buy discmans on Amazon, but I'm sure a lot of people are listening to music on iPods or their smart phones.
Dec. 31, 2021 iPod mini: In 2018, I got this 6GB iPod from my mom and she got this from the lost and found at her work. This iPod is from like 2004, judging from the music on it.
I charged it for 18 hrs, and they play the music for 10 seconds, and it says low battery. It's not the charger cable because I tried it on another iPod and it charges.
I called the Apple store and the tech guy says they don't make batteries for this. I will recycle this at Apple.
The other 2 blog posts are:
"The unintended consequences of working from home will be multifold and worrisome for Canadians"/ "Remote work's loyalty problem: Risk of 'culture crisis' rises with employees isolated at home"
"Here's what Canada's business leaders think about heading back to the office"/ "If the way we work is going to change, offices are going to change, too"
My week:
Dec. 28, 2021 "99-year-old Betty White says the secret to her long life is that she tries to avoid eating 'anything green'": Today I found this article by Yasmin Garaad on Yahoo news:
"I'm so lucky to be in such good health and feel so good at this age," she said. "It's amazing."
White said she believed being "born a cockeyed optimist" was also essential to her nature. "I got it from my mom, and that never changed," she said. "I always find the positive."
In 2018, she said it was important to "enjoy life" in an interview with Parade. "Accentuate the positive, not the negative," she said at the time.
She added: "It sounds so trite, but a lot of people will pick out something to complain about, rather than say, 'Hey, that was great!' It's not hard to find great stuff if you look."
In that same 2018 interview, she said she still loved vodka and hot dogs, "probably in that order."
99-year-old Betty White says the secret to her long life is that she tries to avoid eating 'anything green' (yahoo.com)
Dec. 31, 2021 "Beloved TV Funny Lady Betty White, Star of The Golden Girls, Dead at 99": Today I found this article Charles Mason on Yahoo news:
Legendary actress, producer, animal-rights activist and all-around sweetheart Betty White died Friday at the age of 99.
“Even though Betty was about to be 100, I thought she would live forever,” said Jeff Witjas, White’s agent and friend, in a statement to People on Friday. “I will miss her terribly and so will the animal world that she loved so much. I don’t think Betty ever feared passing because she always wanted to be with her most beloved husband Allen Ludden. She believed she would be with him again.”
Throughout her life and career, White — who had no children (but was stepmother to Ludden’s three kids from his first marriage) — was a staunch animal-rights activist. Not only was she a sponsor of both the Farm Animal Reform Movement and Friends of Animals, but she wrote Betty White’s Pet-Love: How Pets Take Care of Us, and donated all the proceeds from her clothing line and 2011 calendar to animal charities.
Beloved TV Funny Lady Betty White, Star of The Golden Girls, Dead at 99 (yahoo.com)
My opinion: That's sad to hear. She always seemed so happy and positive. I liked when she was on The Simpsons episode "Missionary Impossible":
"The Simpsons" Missionary: Impossible (TV Episode 2000) - IMDb
The Simpsons - Betty White PBS Pledge Drive HD - YouTube
"Ellen DeGeneres: Kristopher and Antwain surprised their classmate, and I wanted to surprise them with Will Smith": Today I found this on Facebook, but it was dated Sept. 20, 2019.
Kristopher laughed at his classmate Michael. Later he felt bad about it and he told his friend Antwain and they wanted to make it up to him by apologizing and giving him brand new clothes. One of their friends was always filming things and decided to film this. This was on put on Facebook and there were a lot of views.
Antwain: I wanted it to make a difference, to make people stop bullying.
Will Smith came and hugged them. He gave them all free gear like sneakers and socks. He will also give the school and all 600 students something from his line.
Shutterfly (a American company) each gave them $10,000.
Facebook
"94-Year-Old Woman Crochets Thousands Of Hats Each Year For Those In Need": Today I found this article by Anastasia Arellano through Facebook:
Just like no one is ever too young to make a difference, someone is also never too old to make a difference.
94-year-old Rose Valdez took up a new hobby of crocheting when she was 90, and after that, she taught herself how to make woolen hats. Once she taught herself how to make hats, there was so stopping her – she has crocheted thousands of very cozy beanies for her local community of Pueblo, Colorado.
This incredible lady suffers from carpal tunnel and macular degeneration, as well as glaucoma – something that causes her to experience some vision issues. While this doesn’t stop her from crafting, Rose does prefer to crochet in sunny weather, as the natural light helps her to better see the crochet holes.
“I don’t do nothing else, so I might as well do something for somebody,” she said. “I make one a day or two. If I go steady, I make two in one day.”
Shirley Homer, one of Rose’s daughters says, “I bet we’ve done an easy 2,000.”
This kind lady donates her crafted creations to various charity organizations, schools, and hospitals. Recently, Rose delivered more than 100 of her wooly hats to the Pueblo Cooperative Care Center, who were beyond grateful for her kindness.
https://www.facebook.com/PuebloCooperativeCareCenter/posts/2396572400672779
The organization thanked her, writing on their Facebook, “Thank you, Rose Valdez for the beautiful hats you crocheted. You are truly a blessing to our community.”
94-Year-Old Woman Crochets Thousands Of Hats Each Year For Those In Need - The Hunger Site News (greatergood.com)
Jan. 4, 2022 "Still using a classic BlackBerry? It's going to stop working today, company says": Today I found this article by Pete Evans on CBC news:
The end of the line has finally come for a lot of the old reliable BlackBerry smartphones still out there.
The Waterloo, Ont.-based company has officially pulled the plug on the software and infrastructure that powers its legacy smartphones and handheld devices — which means they will stop working today.
Devices running on the BB10 or BlackBerry OS platform "will no longer reliably function, including for data, phone calls, SMS and 911 calls," the company says. Internet access via a Wi-Fi connection will also cease service, which means today is the end of the line for the devices that ushered in the era of smartphones before being left behind by iPhones and Google-powered Android devices more than a decade ago.
"We have been holding off on decommissioning the BlackBerry service out of loyalty to our customers for a long time," CEO John Chen said in a blog post published today. "So, it stirs mixed emotions today, as I write this ... telling you that era has finally come to a close."
Still using a classic BlackBerry? It's going to stop working today, company says | CBC News
Flaxseed: Today I finally finished eating and drinking this. My mom bought like this 1.2 kg bag of this because it's healthy. She bought this like in early 2020. She mainly put this in my water for one cup a day. I don't like this, and I tried to offload this to my friends who are a married couple, but one of them is allergic.
Tracy: If you want to buy something new, you should buy a small sample to try it.
Mom: There are no small samples at Costco.
Tracy: Go to Bulk Barn.
I read on some blog post about buying a small sample from Bulk Barn when she/ writer wants to try something new.
The Cleaning Lady:
"A whip-smart Cambodian doctor comes to the U.S. for a medical treatment to save her son, but when the system fails and pushes her into hiding, she uses her cunning and intelligence to fight back, breaking the law for all the right reasons."
The Cleaning Lady (TV Series 2022– ) - IMDb
My opinion: Today I saw the pilot. I predicted I would like it and I did. This stars Elodie Yung as Thony/ the cleaning lady. She's good in this role, and I have never seen her before.
I like the mob boss Arman (Adan Canto). At first, I didn't recognize him, and then I looked at his credits. He was on the TV show I liked Second Chance.
There is lots of action. I will record the series and watch this all in a week.
This show is on Mon. at 9pm on Fox, or 10pm on CTV.
Jan. 5, 2022 "Mom captures touching moment when son, 2, identifies with 'Encanto' character: 'Black and brown children are getting to see themselves'": Today I found this article by Terri Peters on Yahoo news:
We may not talk about Bruno, but thanks to one mom's viral post, everyone's noticing the Encanto character's animated nephew, Antonio.
Kah Brand says during a family movie night last week, her 2-year-old son, Kenzo, made an adorable discovery, realizing he bore an uncanny resemblance to the character from the Disney film, which released in Nov. 2021.
"When Antonio popped up on the screen Kenzo was just staring," Brand tells Yahoo Life. "He was in awe. At some point he turned around to his dad and I sitting on the couch and was smiling: I think he truly thought it was him because there is such a strong resemblance."
In the film Antonio Madrigal is the 5-year-old cousin of main character Mirabel, who receives the magical gift of being able to talk to animals. Antonio is voiced by Ravi Cabot-Conyers, a 10-year-old who also appears in the show #BlackAF on Netflix. In a YouTube video discussing his role in the film, Ravi called voicing Antonio alongside actors like John Leguizamo and Wilmer Valderrama a "dream come true."
Now, Brand says she's the one getting her heart's desire — seeing her child feel represented by an on-screen character.
"It makes my heart happy," says the New York City mom, "As a mom I'm always trying to capture these special moments. Growing up there wasn't much diversity in the way characters looked — that's changing. Black and brown children are getting to see themselves in positive images through characters like the ones on Encanto."
Brand shared images of Kenzo watching the film on @katchingupwithkenzo, an Instagram account she manages for the 2-year-old, using the hashtags #RepresentationMatters and #ThankYouDisney.
"My son saw himself and it made him happy and this made me happy," says Brand, who works in the airline industry. "Representation truly does matter."
Mom shares photos of son twinning with 'Encanto' character (yahoo.com)
My opinion: Aww... that's so cute. I have written about his before.
The stand- up comedian Nathan Macintosh. He has red spikey hair and pale skin.
Macintosh: Before you guys come up to me after the show, and tell me who I look like, I want to say this: Yeah, I know. I look Fry from Futurama.
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