Fridge the handmade. A brief context to set expectations.
Fridge the handmade: Quick notes
I threw out a Gap denim blazer a few years ago, which I’d owned since my college days. I’m sure it was in a well-intended, blind rage of cleaning, and I’m sure it went to live at Goodwill, where it sat with my future regret, because I’d wear the heck out of it now. I’m the Leonardo DiCaprio meme pointing at the TV whenever I see an actress donning one on modern-day television. It’s mine. I just know it.
I still lament other various psychotic cleaning tangents where I offloaded frocks that my daughter now asks me for, since they’re definitely back in style. I did, however, find my flapper dress from a 2001 New Year’s Eve party, and promptly gave it to her. I get it, we can’t live with all our clothes forever, and I only wish I had endless organized storage in my closet, because things do come back. EsPeCiAlLy JeAnS. This is my side tangent of an intro, as it’s been a painful lesson. Purge wisely. On the timeline of things, it aligns perfectly with the Millennial gray phase that took homes by storm. At the same time, we attempted to whitewash the early Olive Garden and Bombay 2000’s Tuscan style everyone had previously been obsessed with, because, hand in hand with said whitewashing, was the over-the-top minimalism phase. We were just a teensy bit harsh on ourselves, don’t ya think?
Ps. My closet looks nothing like this right now and I need help cleaning it up. The irony.
It was a time when everyone was fed up with clutter in their homes. We lived in fear of being featured on “Hoarders.” So I cleaned and minimized for the next few years, in waves and bursts of energy. At least, as best I could manage, when it came to three small kiddos. The Legos, the Barbies, the costumes, and the large kitchen set we handmade for them one Christmas were landmines in our house, living in what felt like permanent piles, until we nearly broke our necks navigating the living room. {PS. I do love that the school street sign is now in his dorm room.}
“You’ll miss this,” the well-meaning stranger often said to me, smiling oddly in the store at my three feral children leaning at various perilous degrees out of the shopping cart. The oldest organizing the cereal, my middle telling her brothers what to do, and my youngest thrown backwards in an impossible arch over something I told him he couldn’t have, in full display of a rare fit, Goldfish permanently crusted on his cheeks. Of course, all this was after I corralled them since the youngest was prone to wandering, one step away from wearing an actual leash. While in the moment, this acknowledgement isn’t particularly helpful to someone currently drowning in diapers and a never-ending montage of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. But that occasional stranger in the grocery store… she was right.
In their younger years, I made a hobby of organizing the house when I could, trying to keep it manageable, healthy, and clean. Growing my design business at the time, I made it my full-time job to photograph everything picture-perfect during naptime and preschool. I was a perpetual pillow fluffer and stuffed animal relocator, making sure it looked as though no one lived in our house. To this day, it’s a reflex I can’t control, much to my embarrassment when guests are over. I literally stopped myself mid-pillow fluff right after a friend stood up from my chair. What is wrong with me? and WHO CARES?!
We’re told that time is fleeting; to embrace the moment. To dig in, breathe deep, and relish. In the middle of careers, back-to-school chaos, doctor visits, activities, and clearing toys out of the way with a bulldozer because it all just feels like too much in one overstimulating moment, we’re constantly reminded that it goes by so quickly.
But I’m going to tell you a secret: it’s impossible to do it all. That’s why everyone is telling you to embrace it… because they were overwhelmed, too.
At some point, the children’s art slowly faded from that fridge and was filed away for later as they grew. Their school forms no longer exist as things went digital. The kitschy, handmade magnets we always made slowly disappeared into nonexistence. Suddenly, I find myself at a precipice. I’ve spent so much time making my house look as though no one lived there, until guess what? In just a few short years, no one will be living here.
I made a vow to myself a long time ago to embrace where we are. Life isn’t perfect. We don’t live in a vacuum. We’re managing bills, college applications, and all those obligations…and it’s really too bad we could never hover in the present, permanently.
If I had a superpower, it would be time travel.
Our only solace is in the notion that if we’re doing it right and putting in the work now with parenting, it only gets better. And it does. But that doesn’t mean it’s not hard to let go. I never wanted to simplify to the point where our home was devoid of personality, and our fridge was blank. And sometimes, I think we took the whole purge-and-cleanse-and-simplify notion… a bit too far.
At times, I think that living in the middle of the chaos and not realizing that we would miss this is the bittersweet beauty of it all.
There are way too many articles going around right now about removing the burden from your children by purging your house before you die. That’s cool with great intentions and stuff, but what about living with things that bring you joy and sweet memories? There has to be a balance somewhere.
When I asked my kids what, of ours, if anything, they would want, the response was universal: things that mean something. That included my art. Whether stained glass, paintings, or something else. Of course, Emerson said she wanted my jewelry and a chance to sort through clothes. So I think that striking a balance and purging wisely is the way to go, without completely voiding ourselves of everything in the name of minimalism {or insert whatever the new cool term is, here.}
I spied this post from the poet Jennae Cecelia a few months ago about blank fridges, and that hit me in my core. I shared it with my daughter. I’ve always been a sentimentalist and an artist. Therefore, our home is inherently personalized. It’s always been full of life, despite my best intentions to overhaul each year when that January-overstimulation-with-a-side-of-guilt hits.
But our home was certainly never devoid of life, and I never wanted a blank fridge.
Emerson understood the assignment. It started, little by little, when I entered the kitchen. A sentimentalist at heart, she displays meaningful items in her own space. But I’d cleared it for a few years, and now, the fridge is filled with life again.
Instead of little drawings, it’s a pros-and-cons list of college campuses. Instead of supply lists from their first-grade teachers, it’s acceptance letters. There are old photos of Jamin and me from the early 2000’s that the kids find sweet. We even found an old math test from our youngest’s elementary school days wadded up behind a basket on our basement bookshelf. It’s irrelevant now, and he makes excellent grades, so we’re not even sure why he felt the need to hide it… But we did enjoy hanging it on the fridge with the magnet letters “shame” as a family joke. I tried to remove it the other day, and they all refused. “Let that stay!” they said. “It’s hilarious.”
So, in this season of pressure to purge, clean, take down, and start anew, you may be tired, like me. You may realize your home works as it is, and you have bigger fish to fry in the professional projects department. You may be prepping two kiddos for college next year and have too much planning to do alongside your usual workload, so you probably shouldn’t purge that extra pile of dishes just yet because they’ll probably go to good use. And that’s okay.
Clean and purge when you can for your mental health. But also? Let the meaningful things breathe. And give yourself some grace, in the meantime.
Because living in a vacuum is for the lifeless, and blank fridges are actually really boring.
A short mention of Fridge the handmade helps readers follow the flow.
Fridge the handmade comes up here to connect ideas for clarity.
This is inspiring — I’m excited to try it out.