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win·now [wínnō] (verb)  1. agricultural, use of air to remove chaff: to separate grain from its husks (chaff) by tossing it in the air or blowing air through it 2. examine something to remove bad parts: to examine something in order to remove the bad, unusable, or undesirable parts 

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I don't know anymore the exact circumstances that put the idea of winnowing into my head.  I can assure you it was probably laundry stacked too high, dishes piled into mock leaning towers of Pisa, miniature people making on me one of their 483 daily demands, the realization that my body hadn't been washed in, uh, awhile, and a swarm of cluttered thoughts rolling in my head like the festered sippy cup doing just the same on the floor of the car.

Winnowing has become for me a lifelong pursuit rather than the project I originally thought it would be.  I want to be a winnower on every level, in my internal and external life.  I'm not good at it a lot of days.  But I've reconciled that the winnowing of my life - inside and out - is a worthy aspiration.

I write about my efforts to steward, save, sift, and shift this little life of mine.  Sometimes I have great ideas, sometimes I don't.  Sometimes there's a point to my posts, sometimes not so much.  But all the time, I hope there's some something that keeps you interested and coming back for more.

Here and here are two posts where I laid out my original thoughts, what has led me to here, I life spent as a winnowing woman.

(And hold onto something, because my hair is seriously cute in these pictures.)