Joy

We watched Inside Out finally because one of our children was shown part of the sequel during childcare and I figured I should know what my kids are watching even if we're not with them. I borrowed both from the library and we watched the first one. If you haven't watched the movie and you don't want descriptions of it spoiled for you, you probably shouldn't read this blog. 

It's a good movie. I really enjoyed it, but it definitely hits differently as an adult. While the children are gravitated toward colorful glass orbs of different colors and laughing at the goofiness of the characters (and the one who gets dragged around by her leg,) I was processing how Disney so perfectly displayed the essence of how memory works in a make-believe land. 

It was sobering to see how Riley's initial islands were all destroyed due to changes happening in her life. I think if we're all honest with ourselves, our main core childhood islands in our lives get destroyed too. There's definitely moments in my life, some which are core memories and I still recall, which destroyed my islands of family, friendship, and pillars of my childhood. At the same time, I have new islands with new "themes" from my life today which are holding strong and thriving. 

Seeing the cleaners vacuum old memory orbs for the pit was sobering. I have countless memories which have faded away over time and been forgotten. When you think about all the forgotten events and happenings, some of it is sad because at one point, they were seemingly very important and significant. I had written about this in a previous blog about my journals. Without rereading, I would have forgotten many details of that semester of my life. 

I believe the biggest theme in the movie, one purposely emphasized, was the importance of joy. This would be pretty easy for most children to pick up. The hidden theme beyond that was the importance of sadness behind the joy. My guess is you'd have to be age 14-15+ in order to begin to understand this one. If anyone had kids who understood this theme after watching the movie, I'd love to know what age they were!

Sadness is necessary in order for joy to truly shine through. I didn't get a lot of things I wanted as a child because they were deemed "unnecessary" or "not useful enough." To be honest, if it's necessary or useful, there would almost never be a discussion on whether or not to buy it because you always would. As an adult, I've been adding new memories of joy to rectify all the sad ones. I've blogged about a number of them here. Two which stand out in my memory include Cinderella's slipper ornament and a pair of flats. 

This year for my birthday, my husband gifted me an entire set of miniatures. I'd seen these (in Taiwan?) somewhere and thought it would be so cute to own the entire set. I contemplated it for a while and then tossed away my thoughts. Miniatures were just little figurines to be displayed and looked at, right? I didn't need them. They would just take up space. These fell under the "unnecessary" and "not useful" category. 

Well, I opened them for my birthday, and it was a fun surprise. But the real surprise came after we were able to display them.  

I love walking by this display in our bedroom and taking a closer look at it each time I pass. I get a sense of joy and warmth from looking at these miniatures. The detail put into these is incredible. The tiny glasses of lemonade have removable lids and straws. The hand on the scale actually spins around. 

I secured everything into the case with museum gel so nothing would tip over or fall if someone sneezed wrong. Seeing my own miniature display brings me back to when I saw miniatures in museums. The Art Institute of Chicago has one downstairs, and we went to the Miniatures Museum of Taiwan this summer. I feel like I have a small piece of the museum with me.  

You can arguably measure the usefulness of an item, and you can arguably measure the necessity of an item. But it's hard to gauge the joy of an item. These are subjective and will differ from person to person. Sometimes, joy is a longer lasting factor than the usefulness or necessity of something ever will be. I find lots of things useful and necessary, but very few of those things bring me joy the way these miniatures do. 

Scrappy

A month ago, we hosted a guest and I was stripping the bed to wash the sheets. I discovered our fitted sheet had completely lost its elastic and had turned into a giant flat sheet. It wasn't an expensive or special queen sheet set we'd used, but considering the fabric itself was in decent condition, it would be a shame to retire this sheet simply because the elastic went out.

Now replacing a queen fitted sheet runs anywhere from $10-$50+ depending on where you're buying it from and what deal you can find. We were definitely not looking to spend a lot of money to replace this fitted sheet. I got the grand idea to buy elastic and replace it myself. It couldn't be that hard, right?

Elastic was cheap. I could get yards and yards of the stuff for maybe $5-$7. The amount I actually needed for this project amounted to probably $1 of the actual yardage if not less. The rest of the project was the time and ingenuity I needed to have in order to replace the elastic.

Materials: fitted sheet, new elastic, safety pins, scissors, sewing materials

*I was gifted a sewing machine toy when I was about 6-8 years old. Sadly, I never used the machine and it has been long gone over the years. I did keep the sewing kit which came with the machine and it is still my sewing kit today, the one seen above.* 

I spent some time pondering this project before actually starting. I knew the elastic was sewn into the edge of the sheet in a little channel. Assuming they did it cheaply, the elastic should not have been sewed into the fabric but would be loose all the way around the perimeter. This meant all I had to do was cut a small slit, pull the old elastic out, and thread new elastic in. Easy, right?

The whole process ended up taking just over an hour, which relatively speaking, even for someone who knew what they were doing, is pretty efficient. The longest part of the project was actually removing the old elastic from the edge. I made the mistake of cutting the slit without pinning the elastic in place next to my slit. As a result, when the elastic was cut, what little tension was left pulled the elastic deeper into the channel away from the slit I had just cut. It probably took a solid 20 minutes just to retrieve the end of the elastic to start pulling it out. 

I can't tell you exactly how I did it. I ended up finagling it with a safety pin and a needle. Miraculously after numerous tries, the elastic peeped out with the safety pin and I could start pulling it out. 

After removing the old elastic, I began to thread the new elastic in. This part, I had premeditated for a long time. I knew threading anything through a narrow channel was not easy, so I'd make sure I had this figured out before I started this project.

I clipped a safety pin to the head of the elastic I would thread into the channel. The safety pin served as my "pusher" to get the elastic through the channel because the elastic itself is too flexible to put pressure. As I stuck the safety pin into the channel, I'd scrunch the fabric over the safety pin and then un-scrunch it on the other side, productively moving the safety pin attached to the elastic through the narrow channel about an inch at a time. It's effectively how any kind of caterpillar or worm propels itself through movement. Although still time consuming, having this technique greatly sped up this process. 

After successfully threading the elastic through, we had to properly space out the elastic around the perimeter and then sew up the slit I originally cut. This was a much faster process and it was so satisfying to be able to fix this fitted sheet with my own two hands. 

An hour of my time is worth more than a $10 sheet. An hour of my time is actually worth more than a $50 sheet. But considering it was during the night time, I wouldn't be teaching or earning money anyway, and I was able to do it while watching tv sitting on my bed in my bath robe, I'd consider the money savings worth it. 

Consumerism and convenience has turned us into people who look for the quick-fix answer. We trash the old/broken and buy something new to replace it. And while I understand the need for simplicity in our lives and less mental clutter for our own sanity, I also understand the need to value the things we have and not be wasteful if we can help it. What's one way you can be a little more scrappy?