Word of the year

2026–Minimal

What causes the urge to ACQUIRE?

The feeling is gone so soon after it is home, on a hanger, on a shelf.

The hunt is the thing; a dopamine rush.

Hard-wired into the meaning of homosapien is hunt, gather!! (Own. Possess!!) Show your self-worth to others by the things you have!

This coming year-2026-I want to push past that; to get the same satisfaction from what I already have. I will need distractions until the feeling I need to “hunt and gather” passes. (Play with the fabric I already OWN as opposed to buying more)

Shopping is like hunting. Even one of the Christmas commercials this year came out and admitted it.  (Homegoods, maybe? TJ Maxx?)  

Resisting the urge to after-Christmas shop is hard– we have been acclimated to the giant rollup of BUY BUY BUY for two months, the payoff being finding those steals the day after, when you “say” you are looking for Susi’s February birthday but you come home with everything but. Shopping has become an activity to share with others. It’s the “let’s go do something” and the something is talking each other into BUYING that, you deserve it!

I collected a dozen new gift bags at Christmas from the gifts we received and I have a tub of wrapping paper still unused in the attic. And, NO, I don’t need a better container to hold it all!! (but, it’s so PRETTY! I could be more organized if the container was perfect…) The Semi-annual BBW sale is hard to say no to, but there is a vanity full of shower gel, lotion and body spray in the cabinets; there are enough candles for a week or more of no electricity. And July will arrive, in due time, for the second half of “Semi.”

Scrap-cooking, as a friend calls it, means adjusting the recipe if you are out of something. It may be amazing and it may be ehh, bad idea, don’t try that combo again. But applying that to most everything as I go about my days– Minimizing my $$ output can’t harm anyone!  

We are past The Depression. We are past Little House on the Prairie. We can’t do two pairs of shoes and three shirts and a single cup and plate per person any more. We think “deprivation” means not having matching holiday hand towels for each holiday, for all three bathrooms. We forget we were raised with a single bathroom for a family of 4, 5, 8? I remember fondly the giant Hellman’s mayo jar of broken Crayola at Great Aunt Gene’s house. When we visited we had something to do as the adults chatted. But crayons are ubiquitous and inexpensive today. Reduce reuse recycle. Easy enough, with a bit of thought.

I read Marie Kondo. She is not me. She has some good thoughts (does it spark JOY?) The concept, good. The will to live it? Not so much. Most declutter books/articles etc, are like that, one size fits all. Wear only black or grey tee-shirts! Eliminate color and life from your world and free up closet space the easy way!!! My grandmother only and always, in all the years I knew her, wore Windsor Rose nail polish. She ate a soft-boiled egg with bread, a cup of coffee and a cigarette for breakfast. Her lunch was a ham sandwich with mayo on rye bread. Her dinner was a hamburger on a plate with a slice of tomato. This was her routine. No matter what we ate. (Our menu choices were slightly more eclectic)

I can’t do “sterile”. I don’t want a magazine spread of soulless grey and white (or whatever two colors are currently de rigueur) and no, this isn’t a hint I am planning to paint. I like my things and I like them out where I can see them and touch them. This butts right up against “I love boxes and containers for things, so things have homes.” People are complicated.

I had someone once tell me my home was like a museum. It’s not of valuable things, to be sure! I am not hiding a $100,000 baseball card payout someplace on a bookshelf. There are no  placards of the stories of everything, hung at the bottom right corner, but there’s little without a story.

I could do “curated”. (my curator needs a bit more focus, maybe)  I don’t want my mother’s house! We had to leave it ALL. Someone climbed through the mess to rescue great grandma’s china, but there was no way we could get the china cabinet out of the house. That was a sickness.

And, then, as I was writing this, pondering whether Minimal was the right word for 2026, this story popped up on Bluesky. >>>>  https://archive.ph/jXbVt  Boomers Are Passing Down Fortunes — And Way, Way Too Much Stuff

How easy it could be to tell myself that if I get it at Goodwill, it doesn’t count. It does minimize my financial output! I already get most of my clothes there. Which means I probably need to stay out of Goodwill –which is shorthand for thrift stores, writ large. (No lectures please, about how Goodwill has issues of X or Y or Z. You shop at hobby lobby, Target and Walmart. Pick your poison.)

And I don’t need any more craft supplies! Honestly. Because being creative should mean working with what you have, not buying your creativity. More thread? Well, sure, thread is a consumable. Running out of glue or sewing with dull needles would be foolish. (but, to be honest, it will take some time to use up those things, too)

If I get the THINGS part sorted, then maybe the DOING parts… getting out to do the  things/go places …I’ve got what, 25 good years left?

WORD. 25. Coddiwomple.

I wasn’t sure I was doing a word. Most years, I write a good enough blog and then…Ask me what my word is, mid-April 🤪

And of course, last year, I didn’t, –(my IMPLED word was RECOVER) and look where we ended–right here on Dec 31 anyway.

Then, Sunday sometime, the word MOVE started wandering around in my skull. And I felt it was too “resolution-y” for the task— It almost is BEGGING exercise!! Now, some things have changed…. I HAVE a gym membership, for one, AND I use it…. sparingly of course. (We can’t get foolish.)

But it has been great for working my knees! (if I am not exhausted by being on my feet for over 10k while at work of course) So, as per usual, I ignored it and attempted a good think on the problem of a word of the year.

And it refused to MOVE out of the way and allow a sensible choice, so I went to the google machine to see what it was all about, anyhow! Could it be a good choice? (did I even HAVE a choice?)

And then, pretty much resigned to the idea I needed to make MOVE work somehow (because my husband is DEAD-SET against moving house EVEN if he finally wins Mega-Millions and I can’t go without him 😋) my brain needed a break, and I went onto Blusky and THIS popped up.

CODDIWOMPLE

Happy 2025! Be safe, be well, resist. MOVE! Look at this link for the words I’ve chosen in the past–(Wander about for all of my previous words)

Interregnum.

Here we are, in that odd liminal week between Christmas 2022 and New Years 2023. Half of you are done and dusted. Boxes in the attic, every speck of glitter sent to the bottom of a vacuum bag. I don’t understand you. I may love you in lots of other ways, but there is a certain magic to bumping into that odd snowman deep in May. And not until the Epiphany or later do I even consider de-Christmas-ing.

BUT. The bigger question–Are we ACTUALLY that deep into the roaring 20’s (and WHY have they been so loud!!!)

Yegads. AGAIN? I have to find ANOTHER word??? But I don’t wanna!!! Read through these and choose one for yourself. I can HONESTLY say I have failed every single year.

Last year’s word, which has a link to all the previous words… 😉

OK. Fine. Be that way–here, my word of the year. Acceptance, alright?? “It is what it is, so it is.” It turns out I will NOT become
Queen or Supreme Leader or even an astronaut or a unicorn tamer when I grow up. Le sigh.

I like mint chocolate chip ice-cream too much and exercise too little to ever become Twiggy or Serena Williams.

I have to accept that although the CONCEPT of Kon Mari appeals to me, that I also LIKE ALL MY THINGS. They Do bring me JOY!!! I love the idea of a place for everything and everything in it’s place, but I ALSO want EVERYTHING right out where I can see it. (This explains both my obsession with containers and boxes and drawers and ALSO why so many of them are EMPTY at any given moment.)

And yet. Nope. That’s not the word! I was informed by my quiet subconscious as I was hand-binding a quilt…. That LAST step between a WIP (Work-In-Progress) and Done. The word is to be–

“FINISHED.”

So. You know all those UFO’s and Flimsy’s and IDEAS and boxes/bins of collected parts of this and that craft and quilt and and and?

The description on my Twitter profile reads “#BeginnerOfQuilts (as opposed to beginning quilter)”

Yep. Gonna have a FINISHED List for the end of next year for you!! Will I keep to it?

Have a GREAT 2023…Remember, it will either be a good time or a good story!