Photo credit: Bernadette Macpherson Morris
Lately I’ve been cleaning, and when I say cleaning, I mean emptying dressers, stripping closets, and purging file cabinets and hard drives. I feel agitated when the kitchen counter is not scrubbed clean. I eye the newspaper moments after bringing it in from the porch, eager to recycle it.
The other day, as I was uttering “Why are these (fill in the blank: trains, balls, cars, clothes) always on the floor?” while I zipped around the house tidying, it occurred to me that the intensity of all of this scouring, scrubbing, and sanitizing isn’t, um, exactly normal for me.
Then I remembered something my friend said during her first pregnancy. “I knew I was nesting when I finished vacuuming and then took the vacuum apart to clean it.”
Oh, right, nesting. Is that what I’ve been doing?
Here’s what Pregnancy Weekly says about it:
Nesting brings about some unique and seemingly irrational behaviors in pregnant women and all of them experience it differently. Women have reported throwing away perfectly good sheets and towels because they felt the strong need to have “brand new, clean” sheets and towels in their home. They have also reported doing things like taking apart the knobs on kitchen cupboards, just so they could disinfect the screws attached to the knobs. Women have discussed taking on cleaning their entire house, armed with a toothbrush.
Okay, so that does sound curiously like what I’ve been doing. But I’m still clinging to the idea that I rationally make decisions about my day-to-day activities.
In any case, I figured I’d put all of this organizing mojo to use and attack a few of the more messy, disheveled, bedraggled corners of my life.
Enter: my Google feed reader.
A minimalist blogger recommends regularly purging your feed reader entirely and adding back only the blogs you miss. Sounds like a great idea, right?
I opened my reader, resolved to click on “delete all”. Except first I had to browse through my list of blogs … and then read through a few recent posts … and then click on a few of the posts those posts mentioned.
Full confession: I added seven blogs to my feed reader and deleted maybe six. Oops. So much for purging. But I fully intend to return to said reader with a more discerning eye in the near future.
There are just so many great blogs out there. Recently a reader recommended Drawing America by Bike, where Eric Clausen documents his 14-month round-the-country bike tour with ink drawings. It’s very cool, and it made me wonder what else I don’t know about.
I know it’s the opposite of purging, but in the interest of making my feed reader more interesting (albeit a little cluttered) will you help me by answering a few questions:
What’s your favorite blog? What blog(s) deserves to be on my feed reader? If you have time, I’m also curious, approximately how many blogs do you read? How do you keep up with them? Do you use a feed reader or some other method? Do you read blogs every day, once a week, or less often?
Thanks for your feedback! I’ll check out all of your recommendations and report back next week on my favorite new finds.
(To reach me, you can leave a comment below, email newurbanhabitat at gmail dot com, or tweet @newurbanhabitat.)
