Avivah Werner

Category: Homemaking

  • Furnishing our new home

    We aren’t yet finished furnishing our new home, but we’re getting close!  Today I want to share with you what we bought, and how much we paid for each item.  Initially I was shying away from sharing these details, but then I thought about those who would find it helpful to have hard figures to work with in estimating costs of used furniture in Israel, and general comments about ‘finding a good deal here’ or ‘much cheaper in America’ aren’t super helpful.

    To get an idea of what we’d have to expect to pay for used furniture, I casually skimmed an excellent website called yad2  for about three months before moving – this is the Israeli equivalent of Craigs List, and it’s very, very helpful.  The one caveat is that it’s in Hebrew.  When I first looked at it, I couldn’t figure out how to use it, but once I did, I loved it!

    One challenge when buying used furniture and not having a vehicle is you have to figure out how you’re going to get your purchase home.  It took us almost two weeks to find a solution for this, and I’ll share what we paid for each item as well as how much we paid for delivery.  Because we weren’t able to do this from the start, we ended up buying some things from a second hand store because he offered delivery, something I generally avoid.

    In the US, our kids shared bedrooms, with two bunk beds in each bedroom (ie four children in a room), and one child sharing a third bedroom with the inventory from my nursing pillow business.  When I talked to them about what kind of beds to buy, all of the older kids said they didn’t want bunk beds.  When you get older it’s not fun or cool to climb up, and they wanted the open space above their heads rather than another bed.  I still wanted to use the space well and have extra sleeping space for guests or possibly future children, so the below is what made all of us happy.  🙂

    For the first girls’ bedroom, we bought matching twin beds with spring mattresses.  Each bed has an additional bed frame (but not an additional mattress) that can be pulled out, in addition to two large storage drawers the size of the bed.  We went to buy these with the intent that they’d be for dh and I, but when dh got there and saw the color of the drawers below (in the one picture I had seen they weren’t visible), he decided to go ahead with the purchase but that they’d be better for the girls.  Dd15 and dd10 share this room and are very pleased with it.

    Dh traveled to Akko to buy these beds, and paid 1000   shekels for both (they were asking 600 each but we got a lowered price since we bought both).  We paid an additional 200 shekels for delivery.  They are each 80 cm wide.

    Now you can see the bed that pulls out

    This is the four door closet for the girls’ room.  The previous tenants had originally offered to sell this to us for 1000 shekels; I offered 500, which I felt was reasonable based on my yad2 browsing.  They ended up leaving it behind after taking it apart and realizing it was too much work to get it down the spiral staircase from the upper bedroom.  They told us they were leaving this (and some other items upstairs that were equally cumbersome to get downstairs) in exchange for the paint they should have paid for.  It’s not exactly free but I think of it as if it was.

     

     

     

    The next bedroom is our guest room that dd16 likes to call her room. I’m holding out on calling it hers as a matter of principle.  🙂

    Four door clothing closet with four drawers at bottom

    This next bed took a while to find, since I was trying to find something that matched the wood of the closet we had already purchased.  (It’s not easy trying to match furniture just by the online pictures in the ads, since lighting affects the accuracy of the picture!)  It’s easier  to first buy the bed and then match the closet to it, but we bought what we did in the order that we found things.

    This has an additional pullout bed, and two huge storage drawers (width and depth of bed) that also pull out.  The bed is 80 cm wide.  We bought this in Moran for 700 shekels, and paid 100 shekels for delivery.

    Same bed with additional bed pulled out

    On to the boys’ bedrooms.

    Littles’ bunk bed

    This is one of the things we bought at the second hand store on a second trip.  The price and quality were actually decent, but it doesn’t look as good as what I usually look for (you can see the stickers on it which the littles actually were excited about!).  It’s all wood, and is 70 cm wide – there are three standard twin sizes in Israel (70, 80, 90), and 70 is called a youth size bed.  If you measure a standard American twin, you’ll begin to see how buying Israeli furniture allows you to use the space much better.  If we had US twin mattresses, we’d lose a lot of the floor space in between the beds and the closets, and the rooms would be much more crowded.

    This was 700 shekels.

    With additional bed for ds2 pulled out below

    Below this bed is a pull out storage drawer (narrower than the beds), and I had the seller throw in an extra mattress.   I was ideally looking for a bunk bed that had a pullout bed and storage box included, but this is what I found, so I improvised.  The storage box is only 60 cm wide, but I cut down the foam mattress mattress to size, then resewed the mattress cover all around so it fits perfectly now.  I plan to replace this with a pullout that is 70 cm and to use the drawer for storage, since due to the narrowness I consider it a short term solution for ds2.  The delivery was supposed to be included, but the store owner called me when they were on the way and said he had made a mistake in calculating the prices, so he told me to pay the delivery guys 100 shekels when they got there, and he would also pay them 100 shekels.

    Five door closet for boys

    Across from the bunk beds is a five door closet that all of the boys share.  I measured the space in each bedroom and got the largest closet I could in order to maximize storage space.  The boys’ bedrooms are upstairs and due to the slant of the ceiling that starts at about 5’8″ high on one side of the room, this is the only space in the two rooms where we could put a full size clothing closet without blocking windows.  Our ceilings are high and you can see it goes almost to the top, so there’s loads of space.

    We bought this from someone in Haifa, and paid 600 shekels.  Combined delivery with the fridge we bought the same evening was 550 shekels – the price was higher than usual because the closet had to be dismantled, and a refrigerator is a more expensive item to move.

    Now the older boys’ room, shared by ds9 and ds12.

    Second boy’s bed (note additional bed peeking out at left corner)

    This is a bed I bought at the same time as the bunk bed, because the wood colors matched perfectly  and I got it for a reasonable price.

    This bed has an additional bed that pulls out from underneath, and the drawer from the bunk bed actually goes to this bed, which is where it will be returned to when I replace the pullout bed of the bunk.  I’m considering cutting the legs on this pullout bed down so it will fit under the bunk.  It was a little rickety when we got it but dh strengthened it with a few well placed braces and now it’s very sturdy.  300 shekels.

    Boy’s bed with three storage drawers and additional pullout bed (not shown)

    Across from the above bed is this one.  This has three pullout storage drawers that are the width and depth of the bed, and an additional pullout bed.  I didn’t bother taking a picture of that since you can probably figure out how it works by now!  The pullout of this bed is what ds18 will use when he comes home.

    I bought this in Haifa, and paid 500 shekels for the bed (he was asking 600), and 300 for delivery (delivery also included a stop at Kiryat Motzkin, to pick up most of dd16’s belongings that she had left there over the summer).  This bed also took some effort to find since I was trying for a close match of the first bed, which was difficult since the newer beds are a different shade.  It’s not perfect but it’s quite close and the room looks nice.

    There’s also a small two door cabinet with two shelves and two drawers that was also left behind by the previous tenant that is a perfect match to the above bed that’s in this room. This allows the older two boys to keep a nice amount of their things in their room, though the closet is really just a few steps away.

    Now back downstairs to the salon (living room/dining room).

    Dining room set with eight chairs

    Finding a suitable dining room set wasn’t easy. Most sets have just 6 chairs, so I was trying to match up different dining room sets from totally different areas, just by looking at the pictures online, so that we’d have twelve chairs.  I was trying to keep in my mind over two hundred sets and went back and forth between sets, looking at the wood shades, counting the wood backing strips of the chairs to get a close match…I was getting a big headache from this.  Since the sets were sold with tables and chairs, I would end up with two tables, and I planned to put one table in the kitchen, though I didn’t really want more than one table, total.

    Finally, I decided to just look for one with eight chairs, and to supplement with folding or stacking chairs as needed.  There weren’t many sets available that had eight chairs, and when combined with the size table I was looking for and the price range I wanted to stay in, it took some looking.  I was pleased when I came across this set, which is solid wood and very well made.

    We  bought this in Kfar Tavor, and it was 2000 shekels.  We paid 200 shekels for delivery of this, which included delivery of the oven the same evening.  I was pleasantly surprised when dh got home to see how heavy the table and chairs were.  There are two leaves of half a meter each that are added to each end (not pictured), which brings the table to a total length of 2.9 meters, large enough to comfortably seat 12.  We can manage to fit around here for regular dinners without putting the leaves in, by seating two people at each end.

    Couch on left

    We bought our couches from the second hand store on our first trip there.  Ds18 was with us and thought they looked decent, and since at that time we had no furniture, I expected the other kids to be excited when the couches arrived since we’d finally have a place to sit and relax.  They hated them!  Dd16 even told me they’re so ugly that she’ll be embarrassed to bring her friends over; I won’t share the more graphic comments about how ugly they were.  It’s more of a European style (which makes sense, since they were made in Italy), but they prefer American style couches.  They aren’t perfect, but I think they’re nice.   And the kids have gotten used to them by now.  (Sorry the picture isn’t so good; I took it for an intended post to show you the set up of the apartment.)

    It’s a set of three couches, medium brown leather with solid wood frames.  In the picture you can see the big couch on the left; in the foreground is the edge of the matching chair, and across from that is a loveseat.  The way this second hand place is, things are stacked on top of one another and you can’t fully see what you’re getting, unless you insist that the owner take out every single item, which isn’t such a small thing to ask.  I asked him to take down the loveseat for me, and sat on it to see how comfortable it was; it looked good.  The two larger couches were in fine condition, but the matching chair looks significantly more used, which I didn’t realize until they arrived.  They were 900 shekels.

    On to the kitchen.  I already wrote about the challenges of our fridge and stove, but these problems actually were the catalyst for a much better working solution for our appliances.  So I’m really glad that we didn’t have things that worked okay to start with, since we would have settled for them and it would have continually crimped my ability to function effectively in the kitchen.

    After trying to use the standard size Israeli stove that was left behind (which only had one rack that was kashered), I realized that part of the problem we were having, is that we cook such large quantities that we simply needed something bigger.  I had planned initially to keep this stove and make do, but this realization got me thinking in a different direction.

    I was up late one evening when I saw this oven come up for sale, and though I hadn’t specifically been looking for something like this, as soon as I saw it I knew that’s what would be perfect for our needs.  But I didn’t know if it would still be available by the time I was able to call about it in the morning.

    This is the space intended for the fridge and the oven

    I’ve rarely seen ovens this large for sale second hand, probably because Israeli kitchens aren’t sized to allow for something this large; it is 90 cm wide.  But when looking at the space in my kitchen, I realized I could put the oven where the fridge and oven were supposed to be, and then put the fridge across from that where the table would be (if we had one).

    I was delighted when I learned it was available, then less delighted when I learned that although he advertised it being in Karmiel, it was actually located in a different town.  (This was only the second item I was buying directly from a seller, and I wasn’t yet comfortable with the idea of paying someone to travel there to get it, regardless of if I’d end up getting it or not.  I got used to buying something based on skimpy pictures followed by a phone conversation with the seller, rather than seeing it in person, pretty quickly.)  After speaking to him, I decided to send dh together with the delivery guy to go buy it.  Dd15 and dd16 had been very frustrated when trying to cook for Shabbos, and I didn’t mention to them that we were getting this, since I wanted to surprise them when it arrived.  They love it and so do I!  Cooking for our family got so much simpler with this purchase, and though it was more money than I could have gotten a perfectly good stove for, I feel it was a very, very worthwhile purchase and an effective use of our kitchen space.

    And we did get an excellent price – we bought it from a seller in Rakefet for 1000 shekels.  As I mentioned above, we paid 200 shekels delivery including the dining room set.

    Finally, our fridge.

    Our wonderful new fridge

    I’ll detail in another post how I decided on this model, but this has a good capacity (I think 568 liters, but I might be wrong on that) and I liked the setup of it.  The seller was asking 1900 shekels, and said he was slightly flexible on the price, so we paid 1800.  I know, not exactly major savings. 🙂  This is lots more than I initially planned to pay for a fridge (my original budget was 1000 shekels), but after our first fridge fiasco that ended up costing us 1400 shekels, I decided to get something newer that would hopefully last us for a long time.  The delivery cost was listed above, 550 shekels for this and the five door closet.

    If you’re wondering what we’re doing with the old fridge, I found a solution!

    An expensive ‘lemon’, but a decent cooler

    The fridge itself actually looks nice (unlike the first one, which was not a bit attractive), but the fridge part is like a cooler and the freezer part is like a fridge. I decided to keep it to store the fresh fruits and vegetables in, which I buy in such large quantity each week that I really don’t have room in one fridge.  Before this I couldn’t buy enough in one trip to last for a week.  This also works well since it’s not opened as often as a regular fridge, so it keep the cold better than it did when we needed to open it often.  It’s next to the good fridge, in the kitchen, in the space that would have accomodated a kitchen table.

    I didn’t take a picture of our washing machine, which I think is the only thing left.  We paid 900 shekels at the used furniture place, which was too much and I knew that when I bought it, but I needed something and I hadn’t yet figured out a way to buy directly from sellers.  Thank G-d it works and as long as it continues to work, it will be fine.  At the point in the (I hope, distant) future that I need to replace it, I’ll look for a ten kg model.  This is supposedly a 7 kg model, but I say supposedly because that’s what I wanted so that’s what the seller said it was.  I can’t find it written anywhere to say how much it actually holds, and since the veracity of his words has been repeatedly been shown to be questionable, I’m not assuming in this case he actually said the truth.

    We still need to buy beds for dh and I, a clothing closet for our room, and eventually will need some bookshelves when the twelve boxes of books we’re sending on someone’s lift will arrive.  You might be getting caught up in how much more cheaply all of these things could be purchased in the US, and you’d be right.  But when you take into account how much it would cost to ship the items here, it changes the picture quite a lot.

    These were all good buys, but if just getting basic furniture was my goal, I could have spent much less.  For example, someone offered us a free, wobbly table, and someone else offered us a fridge that doesn’t seal well.  That could have been fine.  However, this was my chance to furnish our home, and I was willing to spend more to get what I wanted and felt good about, while staying in my budget.  If I would have gotten things given to me, or bought very cheaply, the total spent would have been less but my home would be mismatched; I would have ended up keeping it because it basically worked even if it didn’t look great.

    I’m a visual person and seeing nice looking things around me makes me happy, and seeing things that look junky doesn’t bring a smile to my face.  It doesn’t have to be fancy, but I want what I buy to be good quality and stand up to the heavy usage it gets in our home.  To me, bring frugal doesn’t mean that you do without things that are important to you because you must get everything for the least possible amount of money, but about having the quality of life you want within the financial constraints of your budget.

    Even so, you can see that the total (if you’re doing the math), though not small, even including the extra delivery costs, is still far less than the approximately $6000 to send a 20 foot lift, or $10,000 (36,000 shekels) to send a 40 foot lift (which is the size that would be big enough to have brought all the things we needed to buy).  (And I would have had to buy furniture to bring with us on a lift, so we had to take that into account, as well!)

    We’re really happy to have bought the furniture we did here; not only was it a more affordable option, but equally important, it uses the space well and the apartment feels nice and spacious!

    Avivah

  • Loving difficult people

    >>I am really struggling in my life with my relationship with a few people. I will have to say my nature finds it much easier to write them off and be done with them, but I don’t think that’s the right thing.  I know that I don’t have to be best friends with these people or even spend a lot of time with them, but I really struggle with my anger and frustration with them. <<

    I’ve held off on responding to this for a while, since it’s been an issue I personally had to deal with pretty intensely fairly recently.  I was told by someone that I’m an abusive, cruel, unfeeling person, and that every single interaction we’ve had in the many years we’ve known one another is proof of this – it was shocking to me to see even the nicest things I’ve done for this person (and there were a lot) twisted into proof for her criticisms.

    I had to work hard to find peace of mind about this situation – I don’t think this is something a person can resolve at a core level without the willingness to go beyond one’s emotional comfort zone, and though I’ve made a lot of progress, I think I’ll continue to be faced with challenges in this arena that will push me to grow to a higher level of acceptance for her.  What I’m sharing is what I’ve found helpful, but very much isn’t coming from someone who has ‘arrived’; I have to consciously work to detach when thoughts about what’s been said come into my mind.  With the Jewish month of Elul just begun, a unique time in which introspection and self-improvement is a focus, it seems like an especially good time to share some thoughts on this issue.  Additionally, I received two calls on this same issue in the last few weeks, and I think this is something that most of us have to grapple with at some time in our lives.

    – I’ve found it helpful to realize that it’s really not about me and what I do or don’t do, even if that’s what is being expressed.  It’s about the person and their pain.  I have a tendency to think that if I just try hard enough, it can be worked out.  Sometimes you really have done something to hurt someone and an amends is in order, but sometimes, nothing you do will make the situation better.  In this case, I tried to empathize with her pain, then move on.

    – It’s important to have healthy boundaries with people like this, who can be energy vampires; they suck positive energy from those around them.  Be respectful, be kind – but respect and protect your emotional boundaries.

    – Don’t make the mistake of thinking that better communication is the answer.  Often in these circumstances, communication becomes a power struggle rather than an honest way for two people to clarify their thoughts and feelings.

    – ‘What kind of person do I want to be?’  This is something I repeatedly asked myself when deciding how to respond to hurtful comments.  I sometimes felt a strong desire to respond in kind to what was done/said to me, but that would have been moving away from the person I hope to one day be.

    – Don’t let others keep you from seeing the beauty in yourself.  When people are critical and judgmental of you, it can cause you to doubt yourself, to start to think that you really are the cause of the problems or difficulties that they claim are your fault.  They are entitled to their opinions, but they don’t have the right to keep you from shining your light out.

    – Pray for them. If you don’t feel like doing this (I didn’t), pray for the desire to pray for them.  Prayer is very powerful and whether it consciously affects them or not, it changes your feelings inside of being a victim of their actions to being a person who rises above that.  A simple but powerful prayer that I first read in a book by Kay Sheppard is, “Bless them, change me”.  Ask for help in responding appropriately, for using this as a positive growth experience.

    – Look for the good in them.  Everyone has positive qualities.  Find them, and focus on them.  It doesn’t take away the pain of dealing with difficult people, but it keeps you from being consumed by bitterness.  The more we focus on finding light, the more darkness we can push away.

    Are there things you’ve found to be helpful when dealing with difficult people?  Please share them!

    Avivah

  • Tip for organizing puzzles

    Years ago I used to get frustrated when somehow several puzzles would all get dumped out on the floor, and I’d spent a huge amount of time painstakingly separating them.  One day I had a brainstorm, and from that day on I never had an issue again.

    As soon as I bought a puzzle, I would turn over all of the pieces and mark the back of each with either a colored marker (eg red) or the same number (eg 1).  The next puzzle would be marked with a different color marker (eg blue) or the next number (eg 2). And so on, and so forth.  (I found markers easier because within about a half a minute I could mark the back of all the pieces, and writing the numbers down took a little longer.  But when you have more puzzles than colors in your collection of markers, you have to move to something else since if two puzzles shared the same color markings, it would no longer be helpful.

    Then, the next time puzzles would end up getting jumbled, I could quickly sort through them by glancing at the ‘key’ on the back of them.  And it was easy for me to get the kids to help with this as well (who were all young at the time and asking them to independently sort would have been beyond their ability).

    Avivah

     

  • Recharging and birdwatching

    At this year’s Torah Home Education conference in May, I spoke about the challenges of burnout, and the importance of taking time to recharge and renew yourself.  I mentioned something I was planning to do just for me: to take an early morning walk with a friend and enjoy some bird watching by a local lake.  This week, I finally did it!

    We met at the lake at 7 am to accomodate me, the late riser.  😛  I was bleary eyed from being up repeatedly at night with ds2, who kept waking up, screaming for a while, then falling back asleep.  I stuck him next to me in bed to make it easier for us all.  I couldn’t fall back asleep each time as quickly as he did, and it seemed that every time I had finally fallen into a deep sleep, he’d wake up again.  Be that as it was, he was exhausted enough that at 6:15 am, he didn’t wake when I disengaged myself from his little body, that was wrapped all over me, and was there by 7:02.

    What fun this was!  The friend I went with is someone I met at an aliyah meeting – she saw my name written on the sign up sheet and recognized it from Seattle.  We ended up getting into a nice long shmooze, during which I encouraged her to make her move to Israel this summer rather than making it an indefinite goal for the future, and which culminated with her agreeing to join us for Shabbos lunch.  At some point in our email communication I learned that she was an avid bird watcher, and asked her if she’d lead a group for our local homeschoolers. 

    Then I realized, I didn’t really want to go bird watching with lots of kids, when I’d be so busy watching my littles that I’d hardly have time to notice what birds were where.  I wanted to do it myself!  So that’s what we did.

    When you’re familiar with the birds or plants you come across as you’re taking a walk, it totally changes the experience; you begin to see things that you would otherwise walk by- it’s a much fuller experience.  We started off by seeing a pair of green herons, a first for my friend – she figured it out with her bird guide and it was exciting for her to see something she never had seen there before.  Then she pointed out Canadian geese (one of the only birds I sawthat I already recognized), goldfinches, mockingbirds, red-winged blackbirds, and kingfishers. 

    As we walked along, I was able to see these birds frequently enough that I can now identify them on my own.  We saw a red-tailed hawk, and it was especially interesting to watch it being harassed by a mockingbird.  The mockingbird kept swooping in at it and pecking it – I suppose the hawk was too close to her nest – but the hawk just sat there, only occasionally slightly turning its head towards the little bird.  I was kind of waiting for it to get so fed up it would snap at it, but it didn’t seem bothered enough.  Very entertaining.

    Then we saw mourning doves (I had recently seen a few of these in my backyard and wondered what they were – they look somewhat like small pigeons), orioles, cardinals, robins, and a northern grosbeak.  I think that I would be able to identify all of these in the future without assistance, except for the kingfisher and green herons, which I could only see through binoculars.

    I enjoyed myself so much that I’m thinking of doing this again sometime soon.  The early morning is a beautiful time of day, with a freshness and energy that I really love, and even on hot summer days, it’s still pleasant that time of day.

    How do you find ways to make time for yourself, to keep yourself from becoming depleted by the continuous requirements of motherhood and parenting?

    Avivah

  • Benefits of no computer

    This past week has been a really nice one – after a very long while of being super busy, things are finally shifting into just regular busy, and I remembered what it was like to be the person I like to be – basically, to be very present in the moment.  And that has been fantastic.

    Ironically, just when I finally had both the time and desire to post about a number of issues – I’m unable to!  Though many of you may have been assuming that things are so hectic I don’t have time to write, it’s actually my current computer situation that has been the cause.
    One night we turned the computer off, and all was working normally.  The next morning, the screen didn’t go on.  And not being able to see anything on your computer screen definitely puts a crimp in computer usage.  😛

    While technically it’s not the best time to be unable to access the things I need on the computer since there are so many things I need to do, on the other hand, it’s created a feeling of freedom – I can’t check my emails, research facts related to our move, read things of interest – there’s no online competition for my time and no feeling of guilt or ‘I should get to that’ because I can’t.   This is wonderful!! I’ve been going to sleep earlier, spending more time with my husband and children just being there, started a new read aloud with the kids, got lots of interesting non-fictions books from the library to tie into our read aloud  – and am enjoying feeling balanced without having to work at being balanced.

    Every time something happens to the computer, after the first feelings of annoyance or frustration, I begin to enjoy the extra space in my life that has opened up.  As useful as the computer is, it so easily becomes a time and energy drain.  Though I consciously limit the time that I spend online, and have extensively cut back this year on the online reading and research I used to do, it’s still so easy for the time to expand.  Even if it doesn’t, computer usage is a block of time that can be otherwise very constructively used with my family.

    It reminds me of the feeling I had on several occasions when my watch broke.  I’m a very time conscious person – that means that being on time and reliable is an important value to me – and I’m constantly checking my watch to be sure I’m where I need to be at a given time.  After a few days of having no watch, I realized how much more relaxing it was not to constantly be able to check the time.   In spite of this, each time I’ve replaced my broken watch after several weeks, when the inconvenience of not having a watch overcame the benefits.  However, it’s now been almost two months that I haven’t had a watch, and perhaps especially because it was such an incredibly busy time, I found it has helped me stay centered on what needed to be done rather than the minutes on the clock.  I’ve learned to create bigger blocks of time and more margin to get things done, which allows me to do what I need to do in the necessary time frame, as well as to stay more calm while doing it.  It’s fascinating to see how easily our tools become our masters, isn’t it?!

    As much as part of me dreams of not ever fixing the computer and going back to a simpler and quieter time in life, the computer is too important a tool for me to voluntarily give up. When I do go back to my regular computer usage (I’m currently using the library computer to take care of business – it’s the first time in a week and the time constraints force me to be very focused), I hope it will be with a stronger sense of honoring what is really important in my life and keeping the computer very much in the background, rather than allowing it to move into the foreground.

    Avivah

  • Appointments winding down

    Today I got up nice and early to whip my house into shape in time for the photographer to come (for pictures to post along with the online listing).  That wasn’t incredibly relaxing because you know the feeling of knowing there’s no way you can do what you need to do in the amount of time you have?   This is an area I tend to feel very uptight about (people coming into my private space and looking around), but somehow today, in spite of 4.5 hours of sleep (had to stay up late to take care of some conference stuff while the house was quiet), I was able to do what I needed to without getting emotional or tense about the situation.

    The photographer came ten minutes early, right before I walked out with ds8 to his dental appointment, so I got to meet him and then introduced him to all of the kids.  Since ds3 had a pre-op physical scheduled right after ds8’s dentist visit, I took him along, and on my way out, took ds2 (he just had a birthday a few days ago – doesn’t time fly?!?).  He wasn’t feeling good and was out of sorts – maybe in part because he woke up at midnight and wanted to spend time with me during my ‘get work done while it’s quiet time’.  That’s why I didn’t finish until 2:30 am!

    Anyway, I thought I’d take him with me so that the older kids would be able to do what they needed to without having to watch him.  That was more noble of me than I anticipated- it was an hour long dental visit, followed by an hour long visit with the pediatrician.  Ds3 and ds2 quickly got bored in the very small waiting area during the first appointment and thought it was amusing to play with the front door. Redirecting them repeatedly took a lot of energy on this particular day – I could have used a nap before I left the house!

    The good news is – as of today, all of the dental visits for the family are finished!  (With the exception of ds3’s extensive work that will be done under general in a month, and dd10, who won’t see a dentist until after we move.)  21 trips to the dentist later, everyone’s mouth is in good shape.  Yes, 21.

    That doesn’t include 2 trips to the orthodontist, 2 trips to the oral surgeon, 2 trips to the lab for blood work, one day at the emergency room, two trips to the osteopath, three trips to the chiropractor, and four trips to the gastroenterologist.  Or the visits to the Jewish Agency for interviews and then again for more paperwork, or to the Israeli embassy twice (tomorrow morning will be the third time), or two trips to get our US passports processed.  Or the pediatrician today, or the oral surgeon on Friday.  Or Pesach.  Or preparing for the conference.    Or getting our house ready to sell, or trying to find a place to live in Israel.  I don’t think I want to add all of that up, but I know it’s a lot.  🙂  I suppose it’s good that I’m waiting to take dd10 to the dentist after we move, or the total would be higher.

    What’s really nice is that it’s finally winding down!  I looked at my planner today to schedule a date for a check-up for ds2 with the pediatrician, and I had wide open weeks to choose from.  Well, maybe not wide-open, but it looks like it since I haven’t yet written in all the appointments to conduct reviews for local homeschooling families filing their end of the year paperwork.  But I told the director of the umbrella program that I could only meet with seven families, so that’s a finite amount of meetings.  Though I know there will be a lot more to do in preparation for our move, it’s nice to feel like a good bit of things have been taken care of.

    You know, until this week I haven’t wanted to write or talk about a lot of what I’ve been doing.  I felt when I did, my carefully kept in-check energy would start shifting and speeding up in a negative way, and I didn’t want to stress out others or myself by describing what I’ve been doing – there’s been a lot of life to live in between the highlighted appointments above.  But this week I realized I had shifted my perspective back into a better place because I was able to talk about what I’ve been doing, and not feel myself talking faster to keep up with my thoughts.  I wasn’t stressed out before, but now I feel calm inside, whereas before I was really working to keep that calm.  Part of this shift came after someone I spoke to suggested that I needed to stop being so attached to the outcomes I desired and let go – not an easy thing to do, to be working to accomplish things and simultaneously not be emotionally attached to if they get done in the way I want or not.

    But she was right, and it was a powerful reminder than I can do what I do, but I have to remember that Hashem runs the world, and I can only do the footwork for my little part in the world.  And how it ends up isn’t dependent on me.  It’s a good head space to be in now, and I’m glad to be here.

    Avivah

  • To blog or not to blog, that is the question!

    >>i am trying to decide if blogging is something i want to try.  to try or not to try?  is it beneficial?  are there any downsides?<<

    When I started blogging almost five years ago, it wasn’t something as common or popular as it is now.  As hard as it is to imagine now, many people didn’t know what a blog was at that time!  My only goal was to be able to offer help or perspective to moms who might not have real life support, since I would have appreciated that as a young mother trying to figure everything out from scratch.   As readers began to ask more questions about other areas, and I was finding it hard to respond to the private emails with questions as well as to write for the blog, it gradually evolved to writing about a number of other topics.

    While I started off blogging to help others, I found taking the time to write created ‘me time’ at the end of a busy day, and as more and more people began to comment, it became more personally rewarding.  That made it something I wanted to do for myself.  However, there was a point that the readership numbers got very high and many new people were reading, that  blogging stopped feeling relaxing and started to feel stressful.  Some people welcome controversy for the increased number of hits it will get their blog, and will try to stimulate it, but that wasn’t my goal and I wasn’t really interested in negative energy.

    So if you should blog or not really depends on what your reason for considering it is.  If you want to make money, there are those who do very well, but you have to put a lot of time and effort into it.  There are a lot of blogs on the internet, and people will only read yours if they can find you and if they appreciate your content.  I personally wasn’t that invested in the numbers of daily hits I got (though it was fun to watch the numbers of visitors climbing and know people in many countries were reading), and this kept it low-key and low-pressure for me.   If you want to make money, you  need to be focused and treat it like a business – don’t underestimate the time this takes.  I can easily spend an hour+ on a blog post; it’s not the writing but the clarifying so you won’t be misunderstood that takes so much time.

    If your life is already very full and busy, consider if you really want one more thing on your ‘to do’ list.  Blogging should be enjoyable, not something you make yourself do because your readers expect it.  If you want to make money, be realistic about how much time and work it will take before you are earning an income, and consider if there is other work that you could more easily do that is more reliable for many fewer hours of your time.

    I try to make restrictions for myself on screen time, since the computer can too easily pull someone away from what is going on around them with the real life people who need them.  (Note the recent absence of posts, despite many, many things to share about.)  If you think it will be fun and don’t care if anyone reads what you write, go ahead.  If you have lots to do and hardly find time for yourself as it is, be careful that blogging will enhance your personal rejuvenation time, not take away from it.

    Avivah

  • Pesach cleaning commences

    Today we did a lot of Pesach cleaning – it was ambitious, but we mostly met our goals!  

    My goal for today was to clean three of the four floors of our house for Pesach (all the bedrooms, three bathrooms, linen closet, attic, and basement).  My kids and husband made skeptical faces and raised their eyebrows when I told them my plans, but I felt that we did so much preliminary work (giving away/selling things) in the last couple of weeks that it was doable.  The reason I needed to do so much today is that my schedule is jam packed – in addition to the regular busyness of Pesach, I need to get our house ready for sale, organize the Torah Home Education Conference, and take care of myriad details for our move to Israel. 

    Right now I’m getting dental appointments for everyone taken care of – I’m doing as much as I can now and I already feel glad that I’m doing it like this rather than leaving lots to do closer to our departure date (tentatively mid August) – because there will be plenty to do in the last few weeks, so why complicate it with things that can be done in advance? 

    Last week I took ds12 for a root canal (he injured a tooth and killed the nerve), and then took ds8 for a checkup (that was a total of three appointments).  This coming last week I have three days with appointments scheduled (two dental, one orthodontist), and ds17 is coming home Friday afternoon and since everyone wants to go meet him at the bus stop, I’d like to finish all my Shabbos preparations on Thursday.    And there are other things planned for most days, as well (eg I told the littles we’d have a special outing to the library tomorrow on our way to pick dh up from work).  Which leaves me only Weds. that doesn’t already have something planned, and I might use that for doing my monthly/Pesach shopping since the only other possible day is the Thursday right before Pesach, which I think might be too intense. 

    Since we want to put our house up for sale after Pesach, the week after ds gets home will be spent taking care of things around the house.  Today dh replaced a bathroom door that had a hole in it (which got progressively bigger as little hands kept poking and prodding) – it was an eyesore, and it looks so nice now!  The last three times ds17 called, I warned him that I’m going to put him to work as my personal handyman and he better be pyschologically ready when he gets here!  😛   (He told me with a smile that he’s ready!) 

    In addition to dh replacing the door, the rest of us also got a lot done today!  It ended up being a productive and relaxed day for everyone – ds12 had several hours to go to his first baseball practice of the season, followed by the beginning of the season parade, and the other kids had fun playing board games with dh in the afternoon.  Most of the rooms look good (mine isn’t finished, because I needed to be around where the kids were working to supervise what was happening), and the basement is mostly done.  Another three hours by just me or one hour with all of us will finish it up. 

    Now that we’ve done a thorough cleaning, it’s noticeable that we got rid of so many things (mostly clothes, some odds and ends, and the dressers in each bedroom), and it’s feeling more open and spacious.  It’s very pleasant, and all of the kids are appreciating it!  Dd14 is encouraging me to get rid of even  more things – she loves decluttering, but tonight when she suggested we give away or sell most of our books right now (because the littles twice a day dump out dozens of books at a time when they’re looking for something to read), I told her I already gave away over a large amount two weeks ago, and we need to keep something in our house for us to use for the next 4.5 months!  I think she’s ready to just pack whatever we’re going to take with us in a box and put it out of sight until we’re ready to go, and I understand that – I have a similar desire myself!

    So Pesach cleaning is going well, and for the most part, I’m going to leave most of the other cleaning until the week after next, so that I can do the main floor (living room/dining room/kitchen) within a couple of days and then turn the kitchen over for Pesach.

    I hope you’re all enjoying this lovely season of clearing away the old and making room for the new!

    Avivah

  • Power out and backup lighting

    Last night I taught my children what the adage, “Two is one and one is none” means.

    Yesterday afternoon, our power went out – we had strong winds and a huge tree went down into someone’s garage right opposite the back of our house, pulling down power lines with it.  It wasn’t until it was evening and I noticed that almost all of our neighbors had their lights on that I realized it didn’t affect many people more than us.  Fortunately for us, someone had called the power company earlier in the day, and as Shabbos was ending, a truck pulled up to begin the repair.

    Now, a power outage shouldn’t be a big deal, right?  Last week dh noticed that all of our battery powered lanterns and flashlights have no batteries, so he bought some.  Just in time!  But as frequently happens in the busyness of a large family, he couldn’t find them on the shelf he had placed them on just a few days ago.  So none of those lights were of use.

    But that’s okay, because I had purchased three lights that are powered by winding, just in case.  The problem was those is that you had to basically continually wind them for them to be of any use – not much help!  We bought the older boys headlights for their backpacking trip several months ago, and a headlight would be perfect for a situation like this, since it directs light where you need it and frees up your hands – but wouldn’t you know, a little person must have been playing with it since the one I was sure I could locate two days ago was no longer there!

    On to the oil lamps.  Do you remember a couple of years ago when I mentioned that I purchased attachments that could turn a mason canning jar into a lamp?  I bought three, and although all three glass tops that channel the flame were broken, I knew the lamps would work anyway.  One jar/lamp had been filled and used a number of times since we got them, for atmospheric dinnertimes in the winter.  So I knew that was fine.  Dh pulled it down and lit it, but it wasn’t burning well.  It seems the wick was too short.  So he transferred it to a smaller jar, where it fit perfectly.  That was then burning beautifully, while he and dd10 figured out how to connect the attachments to two other jars so we’d have three lamps going at once. 

    But – once again, the reality of life with lots of little kids – two of the attachments had been damaged by apparently someone stepping on them and bending them out of shape!  And just then, the one lamp that was burning ignited right under the lid – I think when dh poured the fuel from one jar to another, some spilled underneath a lid.  So that was it for the oil lamps.

    By now we couldn’t use battery powered lights, manual powered lights, head lamps, and oil lamps.  But fortunately, I had one more last possible option that I had put away quite some time ago – I had bought several large candles (2 inches in diameter) at a thrift store at one point.  And this is what finally brought light to our home!  We placed each of them in a metal bread pan as a security measure, and then that gave us enough light to do what we needed to do until the very extensive power line work was completed.

    Although it sounds like we were a disorganized mess, we actually did a lot of things right.  Firstly, we were very calm about not having any power for hours, even with all the little kids who were getting scared about not being able to see anything, and that reassured them.  Secondly, as soon as Shabbos was over, we were able to locate our emergency lighting supplies in the dark – we knew exactly where to find them, as well as the matches to light them.  Secondly, dh had checked our flashlights and bought new batteries for them.  Thirdly, we had plenty of fuel available for the oil lamps, that would have kept us going for a long time.  And lastly, we had several options to choose from, so when one thing didn’t work out, we just moved on to the next possibility. 

    The saying above, “Two is one and one is none” is used to refer to being prepared for emergency situations.  What that means is if you only have one backup to your regular way of doing things, if something goes wrong and you need your backup, it’s like having nothing.  To be in a better position, it’s good to have two options so that if one backfires or doesn’t work out as planned (see our situation for lots of examples of that!), you still have something else. 

    The main thing I’ve learned is that we have to be more careful with the things our older children take out, since when they aren’t put back in a safe place, the littles find them and play with them – and then the chance of finding it when there’s no light goes down to a very small likelihood. 🙂   This is what accounted for most of our lighting options not working out (lost batteries, headlamp, dented lamp attachments).  

    We were lucky that we didn’t go without power for long (maybe six or seven hours), and that there was some light shining in from the street lights and then later from the trucks working on the power line, so it wasn’t pitch black in the house even after dark- we had the luxury of seeing the flaws in our backup plans when the consequence to not having them was very minor, and it really only affected our lighting, not anything else. 

    Avivah

  • Out with the old….

    I have been on a serious decluttering kick in the last couple of weeks – and I tend to constantly be decluttering, so that’s saying something!

    Here’s what I’ve given away so far:

    • 12 upholstered dining room chairs – very comfy but wide and could only comfortably fit 10 around the table; it was a pain when guests came to have to switch some narrower chairs with our regular chairs
    • 1 set of pots – I was washing a lot of pots at the end of the day, and it hit me that it was because I had so many that it was easier for the kids to just pull out something clean each time they needed it
    • 1 set of dishes, service for 14 – this was hard to get rid of because I paid so much money for them, but I inherited a set of stoneware dishes for 12 that was better suited to Shabbos, and I recently bought a nicer melamine set of dishes for the week – so more than one set was definitely overkill, and the set I gave away was never quite what I wanted
    • two sets of encyclopedias – one regular, one Judaic – I love the idea of having them but they take up a lot of space and we weren’t putting them to good use
    • 1 treadle sewing machine –  a machine that isn’t powered by electricity is fantastic, and treadle machines are particularly good for kids who are learning to sew – but I don’t know how to use it and haven’t learned in the three years since my mom asked me to keep it here
    • 1 sewing machine in cabinet – I have two portable sewing machines that are more space efficient, even though this one is much better quality (made in the old days when things were made to last!); practically speaking it’s easier for me to bring the machine to where I am than take myself to where the machine is
    • high chair
    • car seat- I’ll get another one when I need one
    • 3 large garbage bags of baby boy clothes – it was shocking how many baby clothes I’ve accumulated – I could have easily dressed triplet boys (still holding on to baby girl clothes, though – I’m still hoping we’ll one day even the score!)
    • several hundred books – donated to a book exchange, still have a box with probably a hundred more that I’ll take tomorrow
    • homeschooling curriculum and textbooks
    • 2 full size bookshelves
    • gave away a number of board games that we weren’t using (though the shelf still seems full!), also a chemistry set
    • 1 cordless phone – our kids chipped in to buy use a new phone that has two handsets and an intercom feature (our room is in the attic on the third floor, and this makes it possible to get a message downstairs without having to really raise your voice), so we no longer needed this
    • in addition to all of that, today – one overflowing shopping cart to Goodwill –  blankets, cushions, clothes, shoe.

    What prompted me to do this at this particularly busy time?  I took a look around and started thinking about where most of the mess comes from, what makes me feel relaxed, and what makes me feel less than positive.  One big project that grew out of this thinking was something that I’ve spent the last three days on.

    We had 8 full sized bookshelves in our home, all about 6 feet high and all stuffed.  Four were in the dining room, three were in the hallway upstairs, and one was in ds17’s room.   I decided that I wanted to move all the bookshelves out of the dining room to open up the space – I love books and we use them a lot but they create a lot of clutter, visual and physical.  (When my littles take a book off the shelf, they end up taking off another 10 or so at the same time, most of which end up scattered on the floor right in front of the shelves.)

    To begin, we moved a double bookshelf to the living room, but first had to cut it down by 3 inches so it would look right in the available space.  You know I wasn’t rebuilding it – good thing I have a very competent son who is willing to help his mother with her great ideas.  🙂  Then with those gone, I only had two more bookshelves.  This required a lot more work than the first set of shelves.  To do this, I needed to: a) find another bookshelf to bring down to replace one of them so I could move it to a better spot – only one bookshelf in the house was narrow enough; b) move books from one bookshelf to a shelf upstairs; c) empty an entire bookshelf upstairs to make room for the migrating books.

    Well, this wasn’t simple at all, and if I try to explain all the logistics of how I turned everything upside down to put it all right side up again, I’m going to lose you because it’s complicated. Even my family members who were watching me and who I kept explaining my idea to were having a hard time following me.  But after moving almost every book in every single bookshelf, and a few days in which hallways were stacked with books and only the periphery of the dining room table could be used for meals, it’s done.  I’ve eliminated 2 entire bookshelves, meaning 1/4 of the books we had, ds17 no longer has a bookshelf in his room, and I incredibly have extra space on a number of shelves!

    Though I was definitely the driving force with this project, when dh came home tonight, he got right to work sorting through his seforim (Jewish religious books).  I had asked him in advance to mentally be prepared for that since it was the last part of the project and I couldn’t do it for him.   Amazingly, he was far more ruthless than I could have even hoped for!  We have about four banana boxes full of books – one box will be donated to a local synagogue right away tomorrow morning, the others are stacked neatly in the basement while we decide what to do with them.

    My husband has a habit of picking up books that I’ve checked out to read from the library, and then keeping them with him until he’s finished with them.  Since he takes them to work and doesn’t read as fast as me (not many people do! 🙂 ), that usually means I don’t end up reading whatever book he’s taken a fancy to before it’s due.  Such was recently the case with the book The Power of Less (I finally checked out another copy for myself).  He found it very valuable, and it was this reading that helped him mentally shift into a readiness to let go of things he’s had for a long time.

    These books were all purchased retail, have been through numerous moves, transatlantic, cross country, and intercity.  So a lot of money, effort, and emotion has been spent on them.  But you know what? Sometimes we hold on to things because we spent so much money, and it feels like a waste to let go of it.  But it’s crazy to keep holding on to something just because we have to justify the past investment in it.   The money was spent, and the money is long gone!  So I decided, if it’s not serving me right now or in the reasonably foreseeable future, then it needs to go.

    Though I was looking at my decluttering from an analysis of how the 80/20 rule could be applied to keeping things clean, and my husband was viewing it from a different angle, we were really on exactly the same page.

    On Tuesday a thrift store that I sometimes drop in at happened to have some beautiful used furniture – and I happened to have taken both bench seats out in preparation for my monthly shopping at the suggestion of dd9 (more often I only take out one bench seat).  And what I saw was a set – two dressers and a hutch, and for an incredibly low price – just $20 for everything!  Apparently it had just been put out at the end of the day before closing, and then we came in first thing in the morning – so we were definitely in the right place at the right time.

    The dresser in the boys’ bedroom is falling apart and this was such perfect timing – it was wonderful to get such an amazing bargain, but it was also fantastic that at this busy time, I didn’t have to go out of my way to shop for this, which I really needed.  Their room just wasn’t staying clean and it was because with some drawers not working properly or even broken, they didn’t have enough space for their clothing.   So tomorrow morning we’ll take the old dresser and some other odds and ends to the dump – more purposeful decluttering!

    Moving the bookshelves and giving away the bulky dining room chairs has really opened up the space in the dining room – when dd11 and ds15 came home tonight from MI, they both immediately commented on how much larger the room seems.  And because bookshelves attract clutter – loose papers and items that don’t have a home seem to find a place there – there’s will be a lot less to clear up and clean around.

    It was a huge amount of work, particularly since the older kids weren’t around to help much, but it was worth it.  Getting rid of things that don’t serve you is very freeing – it feels like I’m making room for more good things to enter our lives (and I don’t mean more ‘stuff’)!

    Avivah