So buy it/make it once doesn’t mean zero maintenance.
When I made this 6-ply jute crochet jute bag in February or so, I waxed it with melted beeswax then.
But beeswax wears down, so it has to be reapplied occasionally.
And the waxing cuts down on the jute shedding but does not eliminate it. So, the whole bag has to be emptied and vacuumed out and I used tape to catch the fibers still caught after the vacuuming.
And then I melted my wax, and used the dedicated brush I have for this purpose and went over the whole thing in the kitchen with melted beeswax. Then I went to our bathroom and used the hair dryer on high to melt the beeswax into the bag.
I did the waxing process twice when I made the bag to begin with, but doing it again every few months is probably going to be a good thing, at least for a while.
And while I didn’t do it when I put the straps on, I used leather conditioner on the straps today, too.
The longer luggage strap is permanently affixed— I used 2-part jeweler’s epoxy to permanent close the clasps to the bag.
Mama and Daddy gave me the 16 inch Holdfast stabilizer in 2018 or 2019, and it is perfect for days that I want a shorter strap— the luggage strap tucks in the bottom of the bag just right, as seen in this photo:
The Holdfast strap comes off on days I have my laptop in the bag, or on days it’s otherwise packed to the brim with camera gear.
In general though, Jared’s lining has proven to be hardy and holds up to my wear— I did manage to get an ink stain in the pocket and I tried the rubbing alcohol trick and while it didn’t completely do away with it, the stain does look more like a color block than a pen accident. The stain is deep enough to not be visible at all and is light, so it is just a part of the bag now.
I’ve decided when the lining does eventually wear out, I will use stitch removers and cut it out and we’ll just make a new one.
This bag is big enough to hold anything I want to carry on a regular basis…. If I remove the Holdfast strap I can fit my MacBook, a notebook, my paper calendar, and my camera with a lens attached. If I don’t have the MacBook in it I can carry a camera (or two) with two lenses in pouches.
I kept 4 other purses for days it’s either not practical or inappropriate to carry this big bag.
But I do love that it has turned out to be practical. Making bags like this has killed my purse addiction. It took 4 attempts to get one that was just right, and I don’t follow a pattern for these, I just stitch in the round till I decide it’s big enough, and then stitch till it’s tall enough. Not hard, except on my hands. Being able to make my own bags that fit my lifestyle better than anything I have ever found in stores has pretty much made it impossible to consider buying a purse off a shelf pretty much ever again.
And re-waxing with beeswax once every few months is just fine with me, if this will last me several years before I have to make another one.
Eventually I intend to try making a smaller one. Haven’t gotten around to it yet.
I bought these Bamboo boots at Cherry Bomb at L5P in September of 2003. I remember they were probably about $100 in a time I had zero business spending $100 on a pair of shoes that were impractical, that I absolutely did not need. I did not need rain galoshes at the time; I probably needed dress shoes for work.
Here they are, three minutes ago, in June of 2026.
These boots saw me through two winters in Iowa. I remember a guy in the parking lot while I was working at Grinnell Mutual pointing at me and laughing and telling me I needed real snow shoes. But these rubber boots are completely waterproof and skid proof: perfect for snow and ice.
Most of the past 23 years, they have lived in the back of my closet.
I bought myself two pairs of Aérosoles Daria boots in 2025 and wore them near daily the entire year; I separated the soles on the brown pair, completely wearing them out. The faux patent leather pair still survives but is on its last legs probably.
And so, these are coming out and into the rotation more often, in favor of buying new boots. I wear mostly blacks and grays anyway, so a little color doesn’t hurt. And I do still love them every bit as much as I did in 2003.
I have owned these boots half my lifetime, and I’m hoping they last the rest of it.
In 2011, I qualified for SSDI at first application, without an attorney.
I started attempting to go back to work in 2018.
There have been lots of attempts to return to work at this point, all reported to the SSA.
I desperately want to NOT need SSDI. It is NOT fun. It is not an aspiration.
They know I have the photography business; I have applied for all kinds of jobs that weren’t ideal fits in desperate attempts to find any sort of employment that would allow myself to work off SSDI.
I have lost count of how many reviews I have been through, including one in-depth but many more shorter ones. Each one, it is utterly depressing to receive the letter saying my disability is continuing.
I found my original documentation not long ago. My situation was not expected to improve over time, back in 2011.
I am not a good judge as to whether it is improving on one day or another.
Ultimately, i do think I am more stable than I was in 2011.
And some days, like the day I wrote that post recently about getting the house in order, I do feel like I am getting my life in order.
And yet, I would absolutely love nothing more than for some employer to take a chance on me.
After 15 years, it feels hopeless.
And so, I have turned to volunteering as an outlet. I console myself that I have my wonderful church groups. I have mostly even given up on marketing the photography business because despite loving it, I am not a profitable photographer; I don’t have the business sense to make it work full-time and at 46 years old, I no longer have the stamina. I have spent embarrassingly amounts more on attempting to have a photography business; exponentially more than the small little amount I did ever make. I have one wedding on the calendar at this point, slightly less than a year from now, and nothing else on my calendar.
And, I do write, and I publish the posts I write here to a blog, but I have never quite felt like I was able to be profitable as a writer or blogger either, despite that being a long-term dream, too. I do not even know where to begin to actually become a profitable blogger or writer. I write because writing publicly is an extension of the journaling I have done since I was eight years old.
And so, there are still hard days, and desperate wishes that I could go back in time and somehow make long-relinquished careers work somehow despite knowing deep down that yes, there is a disability that is invisible to me but is probably wildly apparent to everyone else.
And I despise that I have become so reliant on the system, and I desperately do sort of wish self-esteem-wise that they would somehow review me and magically find me not needing SSDI somehow, that yes, that there has been substantial improvement in my condition.
And, I know that I am lucky, too, even if I don’t feel that way.
But, at this point, I just desperately wish for normalcy, and the ability to support myself, and I am soooo tired of feeling like money is an issue. Because in our house, it is always an issue. And that’s a tough thing to admit with the level of meticulous budgeting I do daily. That could be a whole other post. But it is the truth.
In late April, I brought in someone to help me start cleaning up our house. To say the boys’ rooms were problematic was an understatement. It wasn’t their fault: We have five pets, and I hadn’t gotten in to help them declutter or clean much in probably three years.
Over the course of three visits, my helper and I tamed the mess entirely.
The first visit, we tackled Porter’s room. I’d already packed up a good bit of things that he’ll want to save, so a lot of our project was rearranging books and actual de-furring every item and surface. And, getting rid of a lot of trash, too.
But with her first visit, I gained momentum to keep going on my own. I cleaned up the mess in the dining room. I tackled boxes in our bedroom. I re-arranged our bedroom.
The second visit was Oliver’s room (which was not in as bad shape as the others because he has a cat that lives in his room so his room had to be cleaned at least a little), and also the bathrooms in the house.
The momentum continued after her visit; I kept up maintenance cleaning and managed to make the kitchen desk shelving (and desk and kitchen table themselves) presentable and useable.
The third visit was Liam’s room and all the floors in the house, and some dusting.
And, all of a sudden…..I have a sanctuary baseline to work with to maintain.
We have a four-bedroom, single-story house with all luxury vinyl plank and tile flooring throughout. And two and a half bathrooms, one of which has a tile and grout shower and a garden jetted tub.
It’s a big house. Big by my standards, anyway.
So, here’s my new summer schedule….. I worked it out and the actual work each day should not be more than an hour and a half on the heaviest work days. The schedule will change in the Fall both because the big boys will be off at their colleges and my schedule will change too:
The Weekly Schedule
Sunday: Church & Rest & Maybe Swimming
Morning: Zero chores. Head to church and Costco.
Afternoon (3:00 PM onwards): Make beds, pet care (which involves changing puppy pads and scooping cat litter), two loads of laundry, unload/load dishwasher, scan for fur balls & five-minute pickup, swipe toilets, wipe down all counters, boys to maybe swimming.
Monday: Sheets & Swim (Oliver goes swimming on Monday afternoons)
Daytime Block: Make beds, pet care, four loads of laundry (sheets), unload/load dishwasher, scan for fur balls & five-minute pickup, swipe toilets, wipe down all counters.
Weekly Task: Quick dusting of main areas.
Floor Task: Steam mop primary bath and bedroom.
Afternoon: Swimming with Oliver.
Tuesday: Volunteer & Bathrooms
Morning: Volunteer time
Daytime Block: Make beds, pet care, two loads of laundry, unload/load dishwasher, scan for fur balls & five-minute pickup, swipe toilets, wipe down all counters.
Weekly Task: Clean bathrooms.
Weekly Task: Mow one yard segment (our grass is not in one section— there are 5 distinct sections of grass).
Floor Task: Steam mop kitchen and laundry room and powder room.
Wednesday: Volunteer & Bare Minimum
Morning: Volunteer time
Daytime Block: Make beds, pet care, two loads of laundry, unload/load dishwasher, scan for fur balls & five-minute pickup, swipe toilets, wipe down counters.
Weekly Task: None. Rest and recover from the drive.
Thursday: Catch-All Floors
Daytime Block: Make beds, pet care, two loads of laundry, unload/load dishwasher, scan for fur balls & five-minute pickup, swipe toilets, wipe down counters.
Weekly Task: Swiffer/sweep all floors.
Floor Task: Steam mop living room, dining room, and hallway.
Friday: Projects & Swim
Daytime Block: Make beds, pet care, two loads of laundry, unload/load dishwasher, scan for fur balls & five-minute pickup, swipe toilets, wipe down counters.
Weekly Task: Project Day (this is where I will do things like clean out a closet or unpack a box in storage in the attic or under the house).
Floor Task: Steam mop boys’ bedrooms.
Afternoon: Jared takes youngest swimming.
Evening: Date night.
Saturday: Yard & Flex
Daytime Block: Make beds, pet care, two loads of laundry, unload/load dishwasher, scan for fur balls & five-minute pickup, swipe toilets, wipe down counters.
Weekly Task: Mow one yard segment.
And having the schedule worked out like that, I feel free to create the kind of daily rhythm I struggled to establish and maintain when the boys were younger. I’m not 100% sure that two loads of laundry per day will be necessary, even, but if I don’t keep it in the schedule I won’t stay on top of the laundry and then there will be a dozen loads to do in one day.
I’m finding that I loved raising my boys, and I love even more now that two are successfully out of high school and the third is solidly in middle school. Motherhood has not been easy or come naturally to me and I am realizing I have been mostly in survival mode for nearly twenty years.
Now that there is room to breathe and no toys underfoot, my psyche is relaxing quite a bit. And I love chatting and spending time with my big boys now that no one is little. I was not the baby-person in the household; most people know that person was solidly Jared.
I realize that house cleaning is not rocket science; I was learning to tend to my house as a young child. It’s not lack of knowledge or even lack of discipline; it’s that somewhere over the last twenty years of life and motherhood, I lost my bearings.
And I’m under no illusion: it will take work to maintain this momentum, and I deal with mental illness and there will be days I just cannot.
It’s strange though, to go from feeling hopeless about the state of our house in April to all of a sudden feeling like I could have guests over right now if I wanted to.
There would be more photos, but the beds are not made because it is sheets day.
I’ve long since struggled with waking in the morning, but with this schedule and a sense of hope and feeling of gratitude about my life, I managed to wake up at 5:00 this morning and have my quiet time before everyone else was up. That is the magic part of the day for me, and my days don’t feel complete when I oversleep out of depression or exhaustion.
I have severe scoliosis. As in– I started wearing a back brace at age six, wore some variation of said brace through age 13 (think hard plastic shells molded from a cast of my whole torso, made every few months as I grew)…..it was not fun times.
And at age 13 when I had surgery for an 87-degree curve, I really hoped that was the end of it. I grew from five foot six inches to five foot seven and a half inches in 10 hours. True story.
But….life happened, four pregnancies and three healthy boys happened, and here I am at age 46 with a secondary thoracic curve that has to be at least 45 degrees in addition to the original lumbar curve, which has settled also at 45 degrees or so.
Suffice it to say between the curves and rotation, my whole skeletal system is a mess.
For the past six years, we have loved our Kirkland Signature leather electric reclining couch. We now are at Costco all the time, but we actually scored our couch at a local salvage store for $250, brand new apparently. When we bought it I thought we’d be doing well to get six months of use out of it, and here we are six years alter, and it still works.
I have been in physical therapy now for months, and after last week’s session I decided I might be done with the couch. I’ve known for a long time that it was not good for my back, so I decided to just take the week and sit, when I sit, in this straight back cushioned rocking chair with the pillow, as pictured above.
And…..something minor-miracle-wise, happened:
I found myself sitting less. A lot less. I started getting back on my stationary exercise bike daily. I found myself sitting to do what I was going to do and then getting back up to resume household tasks as needed. And my mental health has been better on the whole, as well.
I did not realize that what one sits on can literally make a change in lifestyle in the span of a week.
So, the couch is posted on Facebook for giveaway, and we will find a better recliner for my husband, who legitimately does need one since he sleeps out here in our living room occasionally.
Yes, we are a couple that does not always sleep in the same room, and no, there is nothing wrong with our marriage.
