10 X 10 Challange

The stress has subsided a bit finally.  I'll let you guys in on a big decision I made last week as soon as the smoke clears. I'm still being all superstitious about it lol. Spring is a time for change!!

But during times of stress all things clutter, mess, and disorder encroach on what free space is left in my mind.  Unfortunately my old PJ ways still have my dresser and pantry looking like a fully stocked store shelf.  Even worse, I have enough clothes to fill two dressers and 1.5 good sized closets.  I just keep wearing them - more and more clothes - and laundry day sneaks back to 3 weeks instead of one.  Then clothes don't get put away. Then I have a dresser full of products and a chair, bed and hamper full of clothes in various states of having been worn.  Blegh!  Chaos!

I'd long been eying ideas regarding living small, such as tiny houses, wardrobe stripping, multifunctional furniture and housewares. This stems less from trying to be tidy then from my desire to be less of a mindless consumer.  But this past week I really wished I'd already implemented some of those ideas so I wouldn't have to look at clutter when I already have a cluttered mind. 

So I'm going to do something about it!

One of the challenges I saw that was most promising was the 333 challenge.  You have to knock your wardrobe down to 33 items you swap out 3 times a year.  It's not so much based on donating or throwing things away as it is about clearing your actual living space to something sustainable and manageable. 

Now... I don't think I could possibly get down to 33 things (and not even including shoes and accessories for me). nope. no way! lol. So I tried to wrap my privileged mind around a number that was feasible for me, and not likely to cause even more stress.  I got to 100.  10 of  10 things.

My list looks like:

10 jeans
10 pants
10 skirts
10 dresses
10 tanks
10 Ts
10 blouses
etc...

I am also going to go down to 10 hair products. 

1 shampoo/cleanser
1 oil - castor! 
2 gels
2 leave ins
2 conditioners
2 special products (I'm thinking a style putty and maybe a light shiny oil or a setting lotion)

These 10X10 items are the ones that will be allowed to live in my space with me.  In my closets, drawers, cabinets and on my dresser. The rest have to go into storage.  I can swap things out, but not add things or have things co-exist. 

I think what makes this sound fun and feasible is that rather than cull out the duds I have to cherry pick my favorites.  Then I take everything that didn't get picked and pack it up. and put the goodies back.

So far I bought the bins to store the clothes I won't be wearing.  They are purple :-) And going in the basement. womp womp lol.

I'm taking the week to do this after work and I'll keep you guys posted!

Does anyone want to join me? Spring cleaning?

Stress

STRESS.  This has been a stressful past two weeks for me.  I don't know why I stress out about things I can't control and things I am in complete control of alike.  I got out of the habit of journaling.  That used to help me a lot when I was younger.  handwriting on paper got me to put the thoughts and fears out physically and artistically.   Maybe it's all this technology? The pen to paper thing isn't so second nature as it once was.  Shame.

But I have been taking pictures, as usal, intending to expand on what I was doing with my hair etc.  Instead, these picts all read like a pictogram of worry itself.  Let's see if I can remember what I was even worried about...

This was over the weekend. The morning after I went to a concert with my BF I believe.  Had a great time at the show and I had the next day off.  I was worried about my income, and considering renting out a room in my house again. I had someone coming to look a room and was hoping she liked it, and hoping my BFs concerns about re-renting a room would be unfounded.

It was such a beautiful day though.  And my yard is covered with beautiful weeds like so.  These do not concern me, though my neighbors be like -_____- 

"you gonna cut that?" lol

SO here I am on my back patio. beautiful early spring day. finally.  But why does my face look like this in all the pictures I took?? I don't even remember...

 

So this is another weekend shot of me on the patio. trying to take a pic of my hair. but look at my PJs and socks lol. Imma need for myself to put some real clothes on and stop with the selfie crazyness.

This was the previous weekend. I did the whole big hair don't care thing and went to see one of my girls up the street.  I actually didn't go much of anywhere else.  I was worried about my ortho appt coming up on Tuesday.  It was my 19 month check in and I wanted them OFF, but was at least hoping for news of them coming off SOON.

Ortho waiting room. I may not look worried but I was sleep deprived from fretting all night, and the situation was indeed out of my control.

ALAS, I get the bottom brackets off in early may and the tops of probably in June. Say goodbye to the braces soon guys!

Heat Stretching a wash and go

I wanted to show off a little length this past weekend so I decided to stretch out my wash and go before I even washed my hair.

What that meant is that I needed a pretty solid shingle to start with.  I washed my hair using bentonite clay and followed with the Herbal Essences Honey I'm strong conditioner.  Then I actually used some Yes to cucumbers leave in conditioner I stumbled on in my bathroom.  Its a light leave in that I can't say I'm smitten with, but for a wash and go I use a ton of castor oil with my gel, so I figured a light leave in would be fine. I shingled it pretty thoroughly using KMF gel and castor oil and I actually went to bed a few hours later with damp hair pulled up into a pineapple with a scarf.

So the next morning it was just slightly damp at the root so I diffused for a few min and then I switched the attachment to the concentrator nozzle.   I will make a video about this but I use the tension method to stretch from root to about 2 inches form the ends.  I like my ends to stay coiled as tightly as possible. 

So here is the result.  This lasted for 3 days :-)

Drying shingled set:

Finished product:

Bang, bang, bang. Still.

I have legitimate bangs.  Like the rest of my hair is long but among my layers I have a relatively short "layer" in front that I wear as a bang. I go back in forth in my head, and sometimes to innocent bystanders, about how I may let it grow out.  I may let my hair grow this time for real.  I may not cut my bang back...

But then...  I cut my bang back.  About a month ago now.  I said I wasn't cutting it then one random day, it was there, and too long, and welllll- I cut it.  And I love it still.  I am re-committed to it to tell the truth.  No matter how my hair is looking I can refresh that front section in minutes and have new hair.  It's liberating and saves me on a bad hair day. It gives me a different look to play with, concerning makeup and earrings. And how about this... It makes my bead head not so bad lol. I can leave it out and fix it easily so I have a cheat.

Last week when I did that twist out I really didn't want to wash my hair again before the week was up.  So it slowly went up into a high bun.

I didn't like brushing it back so tightly though, since I hadn't bunned it from being wet and de-tangled. I felt it was stressing my hairline a little.  I had used a lot of gel to get it all up and smooth. It was flaking by the end of the day too :-(

So the next morning I let it get a little wet in the shower, parted my bangs out and rinsed just that part of my hair out.  I re-shingled it with the power gel since it's still sitting on my dresser.  I used castor oil and layered it in.  I made a low bun with the too-through twistout  to reduce stress on my nape.

So I got two more days out of this :-) I eventually had to wash all of my hair out though.  The accumulation of products on the bunned hair was getting out of hand.

But I definitely appreciate my bangs.  Just wanted to share.  Don't be afraid to cut. A strategic snip or two can make a head-full of hair a lot easier to handle. 

A Twistout

I have not done a twistout in a long time and having gotten a little bored with my wash&goes = Ta-da! Time to revisit.

I twisted it wet with KMF gel, castor oil and KMF mistreated conditioner as my leave in.

Of coarse it was not dry in the morning so I had to wear my ropey twists to work. I decided to put them into an updo.  I used pins and just made circles all over my head.  The front two twists were dry so I took those apart and looped them backwards... like so... (I wish you could hear how I just said that in my head lol)

So then I took them apart that evening and I was a bit disappointed.  They were super tight and the ends were not uniform.

SO I took them apart very carefully and didn't separate them many times, trying to keep the frizz down, since then ends weren't coming apart cleanly.

So still meh... It was unwieldy and the shape wasn't quite right. I decided to use my blow dryer to streatch it out and I used gel on the worst of the ends to get them back under control.

So I kinda fixed it :-) I was able to enjoy it for a few days. But ultimately the inconsistency of the pattern and the ends took over. By day 3 it was pretty done for :-(

I'd have to make the twists smaller, and I have to re-examine the KMF gel for twists.  It really takes the volume out of them by removing most of the frizz factor, then the frizz that does exists looks inconsistent.

All said, I prefer my wash and go coils better, and its much faster to set it with gel and just let my pattern do what it does.  However I do want to maintain my ends this summer to keep some length for once.  I'll have to figure out some more styling options like this one.