1. Every single time I've been there with Pia, one of the TJs "crew" has offered to help me take my groceries to the car and they've loaded up the trunk and whisked away my shopping cart before I've even gotten my wiggly babe into her car seat.
2. Black bean and cheese tacquitos. Chocolate honey mints. Reduced Guilt Chunky Guacamole.
3. A break from the Decision Fatigue of every other grocery store in town. When I want to buy, say, cereal, there are roughly a dozen options from which to choose. Pasta sauce? Eight options. Pickles? Spears, slices, or whole. Ketchup? One option: ketchup. I can be in and out of TJs with (usually, almost) everything I need for the week in 30 minutes, AND stick to a list and budget.
Bonus: The store is not jam-packed with displays and aisles. It feels open, navigable, and easy. You could fit the entire store into the Halloween Candy section of Target.
Does Trader Joe's have everything I could ever need for a recipe? No. But by narrowing our ingredient options, we've actually gotten more creative in the kitchen, and we are able to go to Whole Paycheck less frequently, which saves us a whole lot of money. And time. Shopping at TJs is efficient, cost-effective, and delicious.
I am pining for the day that our home will be conscientiously curated to contain only those Useful, Beautiful things that Spark Joy, like the Joy that is sparked by finding Gluten Free Candy Cane Joe Joes.
Like my favorite grocery store, I've found that my house is much tidier, more efficient, and happier to live in when I have fewer options. This is and has been an ongoing process, but every little step I have taken in the direction of Fewer has been rewarding so far.
Exhibit A:
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to apply the now-famous Marie Kondo lessons of Tidying Up to my closet. I haven't actually read her book (who has time to read entire books during baby naps??), but I have read a couple of reviews and articles about her New York Times bestseller, and concluded that I had gleaned enough to take a stab at purging my closet of anything that didn't Spark Joy.
I took every item of clothing out of my closet, laid them all on my bed, then picked each item up and held it in my hands before deciding its fate. I made four piles:
- Sparks Joy AND it currently fits!
- Sparks Joy but doesn't fit my new, plush, post-baby body
- No Joy here, but I've barely worn it, so I'll try to consign it
- No Joy, but it's in good shape, so I'll donate it
No surprise, most of what Sparked Joy and Fits consisted of cardigans and a couple of forgiving dresses and skirts. I'm still about 15 pounds from my pre-baby weight, so I'm going to remain hopeful that some of those Joy-sparking clothes with buttons and darts and zippers will fit again. I didn't part with them; I put them in a plastic tub in the storage closet. Here's what was left:
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| Disregard the upper-right piles - they are Les's pants! |
Gone are the sentimental items, the stash of overly-fussy wedding guest dresses from the season of my life when I attended 10 weddings every summer, and anything that I really wanted to like and wear but never or very rarely did. As I hear Kondo's book suggests, I thanked the items I discarded for their service or for their part in a previous season of my life, and stacked them neatly for re-homing.
Last year, I had a 40-Item Wardrobe for a season, and that was totally painless. Maternity clothes created their own capsule-wardrobe-by-default, and I did just fine for more than 6 months. I know I can live and work and play and go to church with a limited but versatile mix of clothes, but I still want More and New and Better and Different all the time. That's the part I can't quite seem to wrangle. And I do not promise that I will never buy any more clothes. No. But anything new must be versatile enough that I can wear it for at least two out of three main fashion venues: Regular Life, Work, Church. And, thanks to Ms. Kondo, it'll have to Spark Joy as well.
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