Rosa Linda Román (00:00): Hello, everyone. Welcome to New Mexicast. I'm Rosa Linda Román. And before we get started, I want to share what you can expect here on this podcast. First, you should know that my family lives on a sailing catamaran, and this is my personal audio journal. What you're about to hear is an episode from 2016, when we were just starting our journey of moving from our home in New Mexico, onto the boat, as a long time broadcast journalist, I wasn't sure how I was going to keep working while pursuing this crazy new lifestyle. This journal is where I worked through a lot of things, both personally and professionally. That means you will hear about experiments with new technologies like Blab and Periscope and testing out systems to make the move easier like wild tree meal prep. And KonMari for downsizing our stuff. As you can imagine, some of these experiments were successful. Well, some like Blab and wild tree don't even exist anymore, but I decided to leave even the failed experiment in this audio journal. So you could get the whole story of how we went from New Mexicast to New Mexicastaways. If you like, what you hear, please stick around till the end and I'll share how you can find out where we are now and how you can get much more content by joining the New Mexi-Castaways crew. Enjoy! Theme Music: Rosa Linda Román: 00:28 Hello and welcome to NewMexicast, the enchanting show, which normally features interesting people in places in New Mexico and beyond. But lately New Mexico is all about how my family is prepping to move on to a 45 foot sailing catamaran. My name is Rosa Linda Roman. I am the host and creator of NewMexicast the TV show. But this is my audio podcast where I share my ramblings and musings and random thoughts as I either work on various stories or uh, interview interesting people or as is the case right now I am doing something called KonMari-ing. Basically that is a, an organization system where you go through every item in your entire house in order to downsize and decide what sparks joy. And it's been an amazing process and I'm sharing it live on New Mexicast the TV show, um, through live streaming. Uh, you can find that on NewMexicast TV on YouTube. Rosa Linda Román: 01:35 But here I just like to share my thoughts as it's a little bit more intimate and not so much I have to show. And tell like I do in the video version of New Mexicast. So today, what's on my mind is I'm on my way to a spa, which is pretty awesome. Uh, we are well on our way to the 90 day countdown being over, I think I have like five days left. Um, and I have been preparing and working nonstop to get ready to get, um, on the road, hopefully in the next week and probably less than that, probably five days. And so when my girlfriends decided they were doing a spa day, I thought, there's no way I'm going to be able to do that. And then I realized I really need that. I need a break. I've been going nonstop and my family has been going nonstop. Rosa Linda Román: 02:31 But they don't get to go to the spa. Just me. Uh, anyway, so it's been really enlightening. This process, this KonMari um, system. It's by a woman named Marie Kondo. It's all about the, the, her book is the life changing magic of tidying up. And like I was mentioning, it's basically figuring out what sparks joy in your life. And it's amazing how it has a trickle effect onto every other part of your, so it's not just that you're getting rid of clutter and the things that you don't need anymore, which is a big part of it, but it also helps you really get clear on the emotional clutter, if you will, and getting rid of and ending things that are not, that are dragging you down instead of lifting you up. Um, and so it's been really great and really exhausting, especially doing it with my family because they are very much a part of the process. Rosa Linda Román: 03:30 I have three kids ranging in age from 11, nine to five. The girls are 11 and nine, and my son is five. And then of course my husband and we're also taking, um, our nanny from New Mexico with us on the boat. So, uh, this whole experience of going through all of our belongings as a family is, um, it's been great. It's been challenging and I'm really proud of the work that we've done just today, right before I left, um, to head out to the spa. Um, my daughter, my nine year old was working with me on sorting through their dress up clothes. Uh, we're kind of in a unique position cause we're keeping our house and um, we're just renting it out to some friends who, um, we're looking for a place to, to rent. And so we don't have to take our furniture and put it in storage. Rosa Linda Román: 04:28 We're leaving pretty much everything that you would use just to, you know, live a normal a utensils and tools and furniture that's all staying with the house. So all I am really having to do is go through all of our personal effects and it's been challenging for my, my kids because, well, for, for one thing, my son Samuel, everything sparks joy for him as far as he's concerned. And so he doesn't want to get rid of anything. Uh, then there's my oldest daughter, she's very much into the whole idea of KonMari. Um, but she wants to do it her way and that's fine, but it definitely takes some adjusting and shifting and really getting clear on, um, how to make this system work for each member of the family. Um, because I'm steering the ship, if you will. Um, there are times where it's very frustrating because I'll be working on a category and that's how you do it. Rosa Linda Román: 05:33 You work through a category. I started with clothes moving onto books and now I'm on papers and it's, as you're working through these categories, you find that it brings up all kinds of emotional baggage, things from the past that you didn't even know you were carrying around, figuratively and literally all the papers from the past. And just this week I came upon, um, a treasure trove of documents from not so great relationships in my life to um, what I believe were abusive bosses or at least certainly manipulative. I'm not on the up and up bosses. And, uh, same for another relationship with an ex boyfriend. Um, and I found a bunch of letters from him and just some other people that have come into my life over the years. And it's been really, um, so you really have to do some serious soul searching when you're going through these things and asking yourself, well, first of all, why did I keep all this? Rosa Linda Román: 06:39 And I've been, I had been telling myself that I, you know, maybe one day could, um, write a book or share like a cautionary tale of how to avoid the mistakes that I made. But the reality is I don't want that energy to follow us to the next, um, place we go to the, to our boat and our next adventure. And a big part of this whole process is opening up the, um, it's basically opening up the plumbing and getting rid of the gunk to let the good stuff flow through again. Um, or maybe for the first time ever, really in some areas of my life. And so it's just been really personal and emotional. Just if I was single and doing this, it would be hard, but to do it within, um, a relationship. And a relationship with each of my kids, plus trying to manage, you know, the, the relationship with our nanny who, um, is now going to live with us and she's having to say goodbye to all her friends and family in New Mexico. Rosa Linda Román: 07:43 So, you know, there's lots of layers of emotions going on right now and, um, I'm, I'm really grateful that I'm doing it this way because I feel like I'm able to honor each person's, um, need for whatever. I'm able to kind of help hold space for what each person needs on this journey. So that like right now my 11 year old is very against, um, us having the nanny onboard. She, it, it's not that she doesn't like our babysitter. Um, but she just doesn't, she feels like she doesn't need a nanny and she doesn't want anyone else on board except us, our family. And I tried to tell her, listen, it's not about, just don't think of her as your nanny. She is Samuel's nanny because the reality is moving a boat and handling a boat is a two person job and handling a five-year-old is a full time job. Rosa Linda Román: 08:42 So we really need that third person who can keep an eye on him and keep him safe. And the girls too, of course. Well Nathan and I are docking or moving the boat or dealing with whatever might be might come up. Um, when you're on the, on the ocean and, you know, dealing with mother nature. Um, so there's that emotional drama. You know, the, the end of the school year was really challenging for pretty much everyone. Um, having to say goodbye to friends. We are leaving this whole thing open-ended so nobody knows when we will be back. And so there's been a lot of like really big heart to heart talks with friends and trying to figure out when they might see each other again. And um, you know, those are the things that I, I try to be, um, cognizant of and, and not, um, not just brush it off because it's, these are big important issues in their lives and to our lives. Rosa Linda Román: 09:46 I mean we are dealing with the same similar things with our own friends. Obviously not on such a, um, small level as far as you know, being in school together. Cause the end of the school year means it's the end. Well we know that through Facebook and other ways there are ways to keep in touch. But for a kid in elementary school it feels very final. Um, and, and maybe we don't know when we'll be back, but we do know we'll have our house and the theory is we'll come back when the adventure is done. Um, how long that will be. I really just can't say and I'm hoping it would be, I'd love it to be three years, but we have friends who are taking bets that it's going to be about six months and that's possible. We just really don't know. Um, so yeah, that's what's on my mind. Rosa Linda Román: 10:33 I, when I reached these different, um, pockets of papers and I, I basically realized from this process, I'm a paper hoarder. I've had, I have papers from pretty much every stage of my life, every stage. Um, maybe not from my early childhood, but from high school through today and I'm what, 45 or 44? I don't know. How old am I? Um, through today I have papers and a good amount of papers from every part of my life. So this process where I'm really not even supposed to be going through sentimental items yet, cause I'm out in the category of papers, which comes before something called Komono, which is basically all the other stuff in the house. And then you end with sentimental. But the problem is a lot of the papers were shoved in boxes with sentimental items and other Komono. And so we have really done this whole KonMari process, a little bit differently than the book suggests. Rosa Linda Román: 11:37 We really are doing the last three categories simultaneously. Um, I'm going through boxes and pulling out papers that might be, you know, tax documents and uh, things that, that are more official kind of papers that, that's really the paper's category. Um, and then I'm also pulling out, um, pencils and you know, kitchen supplies and any other thing that might be in there. Um, and then at the same time that I'm, most of the boxes have sentimental papers in them. Uh, you know, artwork from my kids or um, awards from my screenwriting or you know, you name it. There's so many papers and it literally has taken up the entire guest room for several weeks since I started the papers category. But today we finished most of the toys which would fall under the Komono category. We finished my husband sorted, uh, all the kitchen things. Um, everything in the kitchen has been con married. Rosa Linda Román: 12:50 My daughter did a lot of the toys. My two daughters got together and did the toys. Um, what else? Oh. And my husband, uh, went through all the medicines in the house cause he's a physician and he will carry a medical kit with him. And so he went through everything in the house that was medical related and um, sorta through that. And so, you know, it's been interesting cause I'm not really just doing papers. I'm mostly doing the emotional, sentimental stuff and papers. And at the same time sorting the bins if you will, of the, um, all the KonMari has ended up in bins and we have given away a ton of stuff. My son's daycare is having a big garage sale fundraiser at the end in I think at the end of this month. And so we just keep donating stuff to them donating stuff. And yesterday was an emotional day for my nine year old because my husband has a tendency to just want to give everything away. Rosa Linda Román: 13:49 And he, we did have an agreement that if it took me beyond May 31st he had the right to do it his way cause we were going to run out of time. And I, it was good incentive for me to really get a lot done by May 31st but I'm not finished by May 31st. It is now June 3rd. And there's no way I was going to finish, um, by then because the fact is I have the kids most of the time and especially now that they're out of school. So, um, but we've been really actively making significant progress. We are just a few days from totally done and not just done in the way that you've packed up a bunch of stuff and then you've got to unpack it at the other end. We are almost done in the sense that we are almost completely done with everything. Like we've purged all of the stuff that we've been carrying around all these years and really just don't need. Rosa Linda Román: 14:43 that's very exciting. But yesterday, because my husband, you know, he was ready, it was his turn to start kind doing it his way. And I said, that's fine. Let's talk about what that looks like and what you need to, you know, what, um, what bins and how, what, what can you go through right away? And so we talked about like art supplies and, and more like office supplies. Cause I also an office supply hoarder apparently. And so we talked about, yeah, why don't you just like the whole bin of pencils? I said, you know, we can like how do you figure out what sparked joy in a bin of pencils? You know, so he said, why don't we just donate the whole bin of crayons and the whole bin of pencils, maybe tell each kid to take, pick out five of their favorites or something like that. Rosa Linda Román: 15:33 Which seemed like a really good plan. Cause then we, I said, yeah, we could buy like the crayons, most of them are all beaten up and you know, from all these years we have this whole bin of crayons, which I know like the daycare would love to have. And um, and so we thought, I thought this was a great idea. We're going to get a brand new box of like every color crayon and they'll be really happy about it. Right? Well, it turns out that, um, my daughter, my nine year old, the crayons were the straw that broke the camel's back. She started crying and it was very emotional. And I was, I was floored because I didn't expect that. I didn't expect her to be so upset about it. And it turns out that she, she wanted to have a part in the process. She wanted, she didn't want daddy to make the summary decision. Rosa Linda Román 16:25 Okay, we're giving all this away. She has taken a great deal of pride in her ability to say, yeah, we can, we can get rid of this and I don't need to keep that and to really take ownership of it. And so she was quite upset and she never, she thinks daddy walks on water, you know, so she didn't even like this was, you could tell she was really upset cause she was like, how could you do that Daddy? Anyway, long story short, I said, but we're gonna buy new crayons, you know, when we get to the boat and then all of a sudden it was like the sun shone through the clouds and she's like, oh, okay, that's okay then. So she was fine with it then. But I think that the lesson in all of this is you gotta it's, it's not like barreling through it because we're eager to get it done, but we have to leave space for them to process it as well. Rosa Linda Román: 17:18 And my way is not my husband's way and my husband's way is not my daughter's way and you know, so, so just allowing the process to, to happen the way it's supposed to for each person and not just for ourselves. So I now need to go look for directions. I am about to go to the spa and get a massage for the first time in probably, I don't know, a year and a half, maybe more. So, um, this is my way of unwinding after this whole KonMari thing and hopefully in the next two days we are going to wrap it up and then have a few days left here in New Mexico before we hit the road. All right. Thank you guys for listening to my random ramblings and musings and whatever brainstorm. I hope you guys, if you do like what you're hearing, please subscribe or leave a review for me on iTunes. Um, that's always very nice to see what people think about the work that I've done, whether on just this podcast or, uh, if you'd like to check out my live work, go to facebook.com/NewMexicast or it, you can also find those same videos and more on NewMexicast TV on YouTube. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Rosa Linda Román. Theme Music: 18:42 Sailing away on a boat. Hailing from New Mexico. Enchanting stories as they go. Riding the tides, taking your time. Sailing away on a boat.