Wednesday, Jun. 26, 2019 - 7:45 a.m.

I have been doing ok keeping up with the dishes. Why?

1. It’s easier to keep a clean house clean
2. The kitchen is much bigger and more pleasant to be in. Less clutter makes it easier to keep clean.
3. There is a dish rack
4. The kids basically have one plate and set of utensils and a cup each that they use, it’s clear which is whose, and I wash them as soon as they’re used. And I basically do the same for me and J’s plates. When I wash the kids’, I wash ours as well.

So I think that if we basically emptied our cabinets and left one plate, cup, and glass per person with a couple of others for error, it wouldn’t get out of hand. Put the other dishes somewhere we could access them but not as easily. The giant sinkful of dishes is too big a job for me to handle all at once. Loading the dishwasher and putting them all away is a big job too. Things accumulate in the sink while we’re waiting for the dishwasher to fill and be emptied. And it contributes to clutter.

I tend to work best by doing a little, then doing something else, then doing a little more, etc. If the number of dishes is low enough then I could complete a portion of the task at each go and the sink would stay empty and the dishes dry and away. Like here. Hand washing, obviously, dishwasher only for when when there are a lot of people there.

Also, the toys. We brought basically nothing. The kids packed their backpacks with what they wanted, I packed a few new books for them. They haven’t missed any of the rest of it. They play in the yard with sticks. Or on their iPads, but not that much more than at home. Wish I could get rid of all that shit at home.

Mistakes I made in life, a selection:
1. Letting them throw all those bridal and baby showers for me.
2. Accepting so much stuff into my home for the sake of enabling others to feel generous.

***
I read an article about margins, the metaphor that began with edges, then described the page, then was applied in a social context. The idea was what if you regard margins not as extra bits that aren’t important, but instead as framing. How does that change all these analyses? This was in the context of medievalist work on manuscript illustrations but I think it’s interesting to consider more broadly.

Also, my current work in progress is as much about margins and edges as it is liminality. Maybe the next one I will start at the edges and work inwards.

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