Friday Five: 12/31/23

Just a few faves from 2023.

Happy last day of the year! Happy last day that it’s permissible to listen to “A Long December”! The “u” on my keyboard isn’t working properly, so this is going to be a bit of a slog, but I wanted to round out the year with one more Friday Five, a “regular” feature of this Substack that I have hitherto only managed to do twice. Also it’s not even Friday and there are more than five things on this list, but you know what, that’s just the sort of wacky, anti-establishment energy we’re bringing to 2024, climb aboard!

1. Best thing I spent money on in 2023:

Okay, I’m just going to dive right in on this one, hold onto your butts because it’s the most boring, middle-aged purchase a person can make, but may I introduce you to the Tineco Floor One S5 Extreme, aka THE MOP OF MY DREAMS (yes, I can hear myself).

I cannot explain how much I love this mop, which solves two of my biggest household problems, namely a) hating to vacuum and b) hating to mop. Guess what, this bad boy does both! I find it weirdly relaxing and meditative to use, and sometimes when I feel pulled in a million directions at once and I want to accomplish something but I can’t figure out what, I just fire this up and mop my floors, which I know sounds very Danny Tanner, but there’s something super zen and cathartic about it?! It’s also extremely satisfying, because the amount of ABSOLUTE CRAP you pull up is both disgusting and wonderful, and then afterwards not only are your floors sparkling, but you feel so satisfied and smug. I stalked this for a long, long time before it went on super sale (almost $200 less than it’s listed for right now!), but I will just go full Type A and say it’s the best thing I’ve bought all year, oh my god I used to be cool.

2. Best book I read in 2023:

I read 43 books in 2023 and I enjoyed most of them, but the one I never stopped thinking about was My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin (who, incidentally, also has a very good Substack called Girls With Feelings).

I adored everything about this book: the gorgeous writing, the campus setting, the way it conjured a very specific period of the ’90s so perfectly. It was absolute catnip for me, a person who is a sucker for all of these things. I read it in February and then I chose it for my book club pick in May, and now it’s December and I still think idly about the characters and wonder what they’re doing. (I also very much enjoyed the A+ playlist that goes along with it.)

3. Best show I watched in 2023:

I’m not saying anything new or groundbreaking here, I’m pretty sure everyone has already watched seasons 1 and 2 of this incredible show, but oh man, I loved it so much.

There’s nothing to say that a million other people haven’t already said far more eloquently than I ever could, but the storytelling is perfect, Carmy is a hunk, every single character is so well-developed, and the soundtrack features a greater than average amount of REM, including, amazingly, my top three REM songs (Strange Currencies, Oh My Heart, Half a World Away). I feel about this show the way I felt about Friday Night Lights, which is to say, obsessed with its perfection.

4. Biggest thing that made my life easier in 2023:

For my birthday in February, after a lot of hinting on my part, my husband gave me the Shark FlexStyle, which, not to be dramatic, has totally changed the way I get ready and has cut down my hair-related meltdowns by 100%, because every time I use this now, my hair looks exactly the way I want it to. (In 2022, I basically oscillated between air-drying, which made my hair look not-great, and frantically watching YouTube videos on how to use a curling iron, spending an hour trying to curl my hair, then spending another half-hour bemoaning the fact that I could not curl my hair.)

There is definitely a learning curve to this thing, but I find that I can now get my hair the way I want it (lots of volume, slight wave) in about 10 or 15 minutes, and I have given away all of my other hairstyling tools (blowdryer, straightener, Revlon blowdry brush, many curling irons) in favor of just using this. My hair is fine and I wash it every other day, so YMMV of course, but I’ve found it to be a game changer.

5. Best way to get ready for 2024 (if you are me):

According to the (arbitrary, totally-made-up) rules of Friday Five, the fifth item is always supposed to be something that ended up being a miss, but that feels like kind of a downer to end 2023 on, so instead I’m gonna go with a let’s-look-ahead! mentality and bundle together a few things I bought this week to kick off the new year the best way I know how, which is basically making a lot of lists that are color-coded.

First, I bought a really stupid amount of highlighters (why did I buy so many highlighters?) in a range of colors I find aesthetically pleasing:

I plan to use these to bring splendor and organization to many areas of my life, including on this paper calendar, which is the bane of my husband’s existence, because he is very much a Google calendar person, I am very much a need-to-write-it-down-with-a-pen-or-I-won’t-remember-it person, and so the majority of our fights are based around one of us not knowing that something is happening that we both need to be a part of. I’ll say “did you write it on the calendar?” and he’ll say “I put it on the family Google calendar!” and I’ll say “I don’t look at that, put it on the paper calendar in the kitchen!” and he’ll say “I don’t look at that, put it on the family Google calendar!” and around and around we go. Anyway, we plan to change nothing in 2024 and to just keep having this fight ad infinitum, so look at this nice calendar I’ll be writing everything on and he’ll be ignoring!

I also bought a new planner, which I am extremely excited about, not least because its name, THE PURPOSE PLANNER, sounds like it means business:

And then finally, I went nuts and bought some fine-pointed markers in a variety of hues that I will deploy to life-changing effect in this planner, because that’s the way it works, right? Your to-do list always gets done if you write it in multiple different colors! Because I live a life of great excitement, I have already tested these out on various different pieces of paper, and I am pleased to report that they write smoothly and beautifully and feel much more expensive than they are.

Anyway, I hope you have a wonderful New Year’s Eve, and a happy and productive start to 2024. Thank you so much for subscribing to At Capacity, and I’ll see you next year!