(S)he Who Has the Standards Does the Task

I explained a philosophy to a friend of mine recently and she loved it and professed that she would adopt it.

This philosophy is a way of life for me - sort of like Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying has become for many of us. It governs behavior in many areas of my life, most weightily - the area of housekeeping.

I call it (S)he who has the standards does the task.

Here's an example.

Let's say you consider your job finished when the spices and cans in your pantry are in your pantry - that's it. They're just in there. Whatever.

But what if you are married to a person whose eyeballs will shoot out of their head in a dramatic fashion and roll down the street if the cans are not all facing the same direction and in size, color and alphabetical order, in that order?

In my world, person B is not allowed to shriek and rend garments if a can is turned sideways, because that person is the person with the higher standard. That person is the one who will suffer mental injury if the cans are not as he/she psychically NEEDS them to be. So that person, instead, is the person solely in charge of that task. They have full, free reign over the pantry and its contents and are responsible for putting all the things in there in that way that they find fulfilling. Everyone else is absolved from pantry responsibility.

In my house - I have a strange need to have clothing and T-shirts (not that I don't consider T-shirts clothing, but you know what I mean) hung in rainbow order in the closet. This means I'm the person in charge of hanging up the clothes.

I am 100% immune to ironed clothing though, and have not used an iron for anything other than encaustic in about 30 years, and so that task does not fall to me.

If you ever find yourself saying "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG" - just became the owner of that task and you shall do it henceforth, and enjoy peace and harmony for ever and ever, amen.

It also works with people who live with people who are chronically late or early. The key to peace here is never get in a car with a person of the opposite persuasion. Early people go early and late people go late. Problem solved.

You're welcome.

#thelifechangingmagicofnotcaringaboutsomethingsandcaringaboutothersbutowningyourthings

It was nice to have the long Thanksgiving weekend, and for once, I actually took a break from work. Most weekends, or holidays, just to preserve my sanity, I check in and do some things so that I'm not overwhelmed when I get back.

But I love Thanksgiving the most, and I just cut the cord and enjoyed myself. I had two art sessions with my sister - one where I did about 120 of the main "arty" portion of my Christmas cards, and one where I did the cards I'm showing you today.

My teammate Bev made cards with this technique at my October retreat and I was so wowed I had to give it a try. It's so easy to make a ton of gorgeous cards really fast, and preserve just a moment in the universe at the same time. Really super fun. So here is one of the cards, for a friend who just lost her kitty. :(

links to supplies used

InLinkz.com

And here is a quick video of the process.

This was so much fun - no two were the same but I love that I got two card fronts with each pass, and that it's a way to preserve a specific moment of the year - like a small, ephemeral art journal.

Very fun and very relaxing.

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving as well.

I'm off to work on my DSP online class that you'll see soon, and my team event on Sunday - where we will get to make a project together online - in our PJs! The joys of the internet.

Hope you can find some pretty plants to make cards with.

Loveyameanitbye.