Week of Money: Where Little Bun KonMari’s his Clothes

DAY ONE

??:?? — I wake up to Little Bun snuggling me.

6:30 a.m. — As he has his milk, he recounts stories about caterpillars and how they go into cocoons, and keeps chittering away like a chipmunk. I feel like he never stops talking. It can be so mentally exhausting to keep up with constant Little Bun chatter. Some days I just snap at the both of them: NO ONE CAN TALK TO MOMMY RIGHT NOW FOR AN HOUR. I want to be MENTALLY QUIET AND to hear NOTHING! … or I just go into the second bedroom and request to be left alone.

7:09 a.m. — Meetings. We are all in different time zones so it’s tough.

8:08 a.m. — I wish I could drink more tea, but the caffeine really affects me quite strongly, so I can only have two cups a day, max, and before noon. I long for a second cup however.

12:26 p.m. — Time for lunch. After a meeting. It cuts into my lunch time and then I scramble to get to my next meeting, stuffing my face.

5:28 p.m. — I have fallen down a hole of watching these closet clean out videos, they are very soothing for me to watch them assess, declutter, re-assess, and put things back. I get motivated and excited to do the same thing to my own closet!!! Little Bun is also very excited watching these (am I passing on a weird obsession to him?).

5:45 p.m. — We watch how to File Fold something Marie Kondo style (Skip to 8:26 to see it), and he says: OH LET’S GO DO MY CLOTHES!.. and runs to his clothes basket where he meticulously folds everything just the way Marie showed us (he wasn’t as neat with his corners, I had to help), and lines it all up nicely. He loves it, and smiles with pride: Now my clothes that were messy are all clean and neat again!

And here is Little Bun during and after… now I want to do it myself with my things…. but my closet is pretty neat and clean now (I already folded everything). I am not sure what I could do this with until we move.

 

7:56 p.m. — I am on the phone with my mother and it turns into a long discussion about what happened a few weeks back.My uncle isn’t taking it well. He’s absorbing all of the guilt and we are all helpless, particularly during this time. I hope he leans onto his church and community in this time of need even though the pandemic is still on (he is getting his second shot soon), I am sure he is going to confession daily.

Spent: $0

DAY TWO

6:00 a.m. — I saw this video and immediately thought of my first year freelancing. It’s truly hilarious:

 

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5:40 a.m. — I log in and start working. I have a lot of things to get done, and each time I add something to my list, I think: AND HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DO IT ALL ALONE.

6:19 a.m. — Little Bun is practicing the piano, I can hear his keys being smashed, and he is building the muscles in his fingers to be able to play the piano, plus learn treble and bass clef to play together. I pop over occasionally to watch him play – I have to buy another headphone splitter because my last one broke and now I can only watch his fingers on the piano and guide him.

7:30 a.m. — I have triple booked meetings this morning. Not even sure how this happened.

12:08 p.m. — I take a break for lunch.

6:00 p.m. — I have dinner, do laundry, I clean up the second bedroom but I feel drained from the day.

7:54 p.m. — Time for bed. Little Bun loves to play a game where we throw a pillow at each other to try and score points of where we hit each other on the body. It’s a lot of fun.

Spent: $0

DAY THREE

5:28 a.m. — I wake up early with Little Bun and log in to work after a tea.

8:38 a.m. — WELL WELL WELL. Look who absorbed all the lessons from Mommy’s Lectures on Time Management, Planning and Frittering because he finished all of his pages before 9 a.m. today. IT IS POSSIBLE. I asked him if he wanted to do extra pages, he gave me a sweet smile, and ran off with the iPad. Well. There we go.

10:15 a.m. — I enlist Little Bun’s help and we slice off the top of the cleanser, and inside, even though the bottle is “empty”, it is FULL of product. At least two weeks if not a month’s work of product left in there.

To combat waste, I like to slice down the tube (it’s 32 ounces and very long), and just keep scraping off product as I use it daily. To keep it from drying out and crusting, I bought these silicone bowl and lid covers that are very useful and food grade covers for anything in the kitchen as well. I pop a silicone cover over the top, and I just remove it when I want more product. Binder clips (even industrial ones) aren’t able to keep it closed (I tried, but the plastic is too thick and the bottle too wide), and cling film / saran wrap / plastic bags are all quite wasteful and bad for the environment.

10:29 a.m. — He sits down and practices at the piano while he waits for a break in my meetings.

11:20 a.m. — Finally, I stop working and we play in the bedroom together.

12:28 p.m. — Break for lunch, and then back to work.

2:56 p.m. — I end up taking a short 15-minute cat nap before my next meeting, and my brain feels so much more refreshed. I wake up and I am back into working again. That’s one of the perks of working from home, because I woke up early, my brain and body were dragging but now I feel better.

3:30 p.m. — The female tax certainly starts young. Just because it’s pink, it costs more money.

5:01 p.m. — I do dishes, he wipes cutlery, laundry, and I am trying to follow up on refunds I am supposed to get. There were some parcels that weren’t ever delivered, and I am filing with Paypal to get my money back.

8:56 p.m. — I am helping my partner order some DVDs, and when I am about to go to the bedroom to talk to Little Bun, I realize Little Bun already tucked himself into bed and fell asleep. He must have been really tired today to do this, as he usually waits for me and we chit chat before sleeping.

Spent: $0

DAY FOUR

??:?? — I wake up refreshed. That nap helped immensely, and Little Bun also “slept in” (any time before 6:30 is called sleeping in for me).

6:30 a.m. — He starts on workbook pages, and I log in to start working.

11:30 a.m. — We play Scrabble together as a break. He is really getting into this game but I don’t want to make it a daily thing because it exhausts me mentally as well. He plays with it just doing letters across the top in alphabetical order while I lie down beside him and read.

1:05 p.m. — After lunch, nap time for him. I take a short break in the bedroom and lie down for a 15 minute rest, which I think is helping my brain these days.

1:23 p.m. — I log in for my next meeting.

3:18 p.m. — Up from his nap, he was done all of his pages super early so he grabs the iPad and runs off. Then he gets bored, runs back, and I set him up with some videos on topics he enjoys – mostly science, math or “real life” or “real world” things like how blood typing works. It’s not as boring as it sounds, he watches the Dr. Binocs channel.

5:15 p.m. — Done for the day, we clean up the second bedroom (we are using it for herbs and storing stuff), but also, I wonder if I should do another donation haul. I think so. I enlist his help to review each piece, having been so motivated from the professional closet clean out videos, and determined to only have pieces I actually reach for and wear, which is hard because I really enjoy a lot of them!

8:46 p.m. — Time for bed. This time he is awake, and asking me: So! What is the one good thing and one not so good thing for you today? … We recount what went well and not so well today, and then we talk about any other topic, like what happened on Amphibia or quizzing on planets before I whisper: Time for bed. It takes an extra 30 minutes before sleeping, he’s such a chatterbox, but I enjoy these late night chats with him.

Spent: $0

DAY FIVE

??:?? — I wake up a tiny bit tired. I feel like I can’t ever get ‘ahead’ in sleep because my schedule is inconsistent, and I am flagging half way through the day.

6:30 a.m. — I log in and work. Have a few documents to finish, and a presentation. A lot of people are on vacation, so a lot of things are on hold or sporadic.

8:30 a.m. — I take a break and read my book. I take book breaks during the day sometimes, like coffee breaks because NO ONE can work 8-hours straight, not even in an office setting.

9:05 a.m. — Next call. This project is unusually heavy on the meetings and calls, and I much prefer email because it records down what people say and you can refer back to them versus remembering during a call and taking notes.

11:45 a.m. — Lunch.

3:40 p.m. — He’s up late from his nap, which is a good sign and a bad sign as well. Good because he’s not as grumpy grumpkins, and bad because now he will take forever to sleep tonight even lying there in a dark, he will want to chat all night long.

5:11 p.m. — He uses Scrabble to do the Alphabet and to spell out a surprise for me:

9:45 p.m. — Yep. Almost 10. Still not really sleeping. Finally I tell him: BEDTIME. 

Spent: $0

DAY SIX

6:00 a.m. — I am up pretty early, and feeling tired because of Little Bun. His sleep is so erratic because he also naps on occasion, so it throws us all off. My partner is feeling tired from the vaccine, so he needs to rest a lot longer/more than usual.

6:22 a.m. — I log in and start working. I have a lot of extra work to do and I like the quiet in the morning.

7:20 a.m. — First meeting of the day.

12:30 p.m. — Break for lunch, I make vegan sushi rolls with quinoa and roasted cauliflower, and Little Bun loves it, eating three smaller ones I made for him.

1:01 p.m. — Down for his nap, I close my eyes in the second bedroom as well for a short mental break. I have such a terrible headache today, it’s going to rain all week and I think it’s playing with my head.

3:05 p.m. — They’re both up from the nap, my partner has been sleeping a lot more lately, and he feels exhausted. It is going to be him trying to recover all week.

4:15 p.m. — A friend asks me to buy a sweater for her and have it reshipped to her. I am glad to!

6:22 p.m. — We read the See Underground Usborne book, and Little Bun is recreating some of the scenes using the Stuffies as examples:

This is Babiest Stuffie pretending to be a worm (I had to be the bird to swoop down and eat him).

And this is Babiest Stuffie pretending to be nocturnal (we also play acted diurnal animals with the curtains down and lights on/off):

7:30 p.m. — I do all the dishes, decide to put away laundry tomorrow, and Little Bun and I are in the bedroom. He is making up a new game where he created an obstacle course out of pillows and blankets, like a high-intensity circuit workout he has to complete in a minute or two minutes. After a few minutes, he’s red-faced, and out of breath. He ran like a banshee….! Kids have to much energy. I wish I could siphon it off and use it.

Spent: $0

DAY SEVEN

??:?? — I knew he’d wake up early today. It’s a tiny bit too humid and hot in the bedroom (we don’t like the A/C on when we are sleeping, as it’s too cold and it’s a surface cold rather than being the kind that goes deep into your blankets to keep you cool. Plus it makes a little noise.

5:23 a.m. — I log in to start working. Little Bun is in fine form, very chipper and happy. I am dragging. I will need a 15-minute lunch catnap.

6:01 a.m. — Little Bun is working on his pages now, and he is actually quite cute, with his commentary about the workbook.

“Ohhh I see, they wanted the capacity not WEIGHT measured!” (he used basketballs to measure the aquarium capacity, when I told him they were really asking for the capacity, like how many cups or spoonfuls), though he isn’t wrong in using basketballs, but they meant more cups or spoons than similar objects.

Eagerly, he adds two Mistake Stars to his chart. He is aiming for 100 Mistake Stars to get the Mistake Star Learning Trophy I promised him, to show how much he has been learning.

11:15 p.m. — I spy this gorgeous dress on beautiful Joanna from The Home Edit (I love the show, and both of them!), and realize it’s this Alice + Olivia butterfly dress.

10:08 a.m. —  We were playing a little as a break in the bedroom AND HE LOST HIS TOOTH! Super exciting! I make a Fourth Tooth Trophy for him, and he is thrilled. Inside, I write how he lost this tooth, and he marvels at what it looks like. His adult tooth is coming out too, I can see the beginnings of it.

4:25 p.m. — Little Bun is out of English, Social Studies and Science pages to do, he only has math left because he was saving those pages (his favourite) for last. I end up letting him do all the math pages to finish off Grade 2, and we start on Grade 3. He will read a few books today as part of the English, and we can do a Science Experiment in the bathroom with a mirror, water, and flashlight to create a rainbow.

6:12 p.m. — This appeals to me for some reason. I think it’s all the low bookshelves.. And that kind of fun convex mirror.

7:40 p.m. — I also like these looks. Simple and comfortable. I am more into flats these days, so I’d wear flats or sandals with the skirted look, but I like the feeling of both and can definitely recreate it.

Spent: $0

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Want more? Read all of my previous Week of Money Diaries.