(no subject)

Been thinking about the labor of organizing and sorting things, and how often that's taken on by women, and often under the radar. It's important work, since it makes is easier for other people to do things. As my energy is increasingly invested elsewhere (work, pregnancy, etc), there's a more tangible Clutter in our life -- from the boxes and piles that aren't processed, to the constantly unsatisfying state of our fridge that drives us to eat out more than we should. (Hoosband does a lot to help -- he's the one responsible for putting away leftovers and taking out our daunting mountains of recycling. But he's also super busy with work, both in managing people and in doing coding. And basically he's doing coding for a separate company in his off time, in addition to his hobbies.)

There's a lot of nights when we're both like "we have to do this and this and this, so let's grab a quick dinner and get to work." And that's worrisome to me, since I don't see it as emotionally sustainable in the long term. (I want to have conversations with the Hoosband that isn't about logistics!) And it's not even that great in the short term -- despite our best intentions to get all this work done, we end up spending a lot of time twiddling on the internet, just because we're too tired to do the work that we wanted to do. I'd rather get fuller, more substantial rest than twiddling on the internet, but that first requires not running myself ragged with work projects, which in turn would be facilitated with better organization. Getting home and finding myself having to think about dinner is tiresome. Stumbling around in the middle of the night and running into piles is dangerous. Having too many unknown variables for the upcoming months is anxiety-inducing.

But to do that, I need to invest consistent energy and labor into organizing and streamlining.

This is the conundrum: in order to have energy to do other things, I need to first have energy to deal with all the basics -- make sure the fridge is stocked with the right assortment of ingredients, make sure that laundry is done and paperwork doesn't pile up, etc etc. And right now, a big thing is to make sure that the initial baby stuff is set up. Only then will I have brainspace to really consider Idris Elba's inspiring speech on creativity and diversity.

Thankfully, most of the big ticket baby items are purchased. So what's left to do is the moving logistics:
- Go scope out the current situation on the 1440 garage and whether we need to do any sorting there before we start moving some current apartment stuff over
- Start sorting through and boxing the apartment stuff that we want to move over
---> APE stuff that I only use once a year
---> Comics and books
---> Drawing/Painting related art supplies
---> Old clothes should go to Goodwill? Old tech gets recycled?
---> Other Closet Junk that we haven't opened since the move to this apartment
- Figure out a day for moving said stuff, maybe Saturday 2/6?
- Get ready for Baby Shindig #2, which might involve wooden blocks (since tie-dying might be logistically more challenging than at the last location.)
- Set up various baby stuff in the apartment and at parentals (including going out to get the ointments, diapers, bottles, and wipes. And textiles.) Also: install carseat.

This is somewhat complicated by the fact that I can't really move heavy things like boxes. I wish I could do some of this in March, when I'm not working as much at my regular job, but a lot of this has to get done in time for Baby Shindig #2 and the in-laws visit. But perhaps this will work out because I'm already feeling myself having less and less energy and having more and more trouble sleeping properly. So it could all be horrible come March????