Try a Simple Life

As I think ahead to some changes I would like to make in my life, I acknowledge the fact that I need to make space for these changes to happen. Asking yourself to add more and more to your life without taking something away is a recipe for burnout. I know that is the cause of some of the issues I have at work. Everyday more new things are added and nothing is taken away. Trying to keep up with the contacts, the projects, the routine and the new taxes your brain. This is true for your home life as well.  My husband and I are not big social people. We see a friend or two each month. We rarely seek out engagements, and therefore don’t really have to say “no” too often to other people, though we do when the invitation just doesn’t seem to fit right. However, there is another type of “no” we need to do better at, and that is saying “no” to ourselves, our ideas, our “want to do’s”. For the month of July, I said “no” to myself during my “No New Ideas” month. It was amazing. The ability ...

Gentle winds, blue sky, warm sun. Wherever you live, city or country, Northern Hemisphere or Southern Hemisphere, there is an instant appeal to being outside on a nice day. You don’t have to be a nature lover or outdoorsman to recognize the good feelings we get just by walking out the door. A city garden, the forest, a lake, nature appeals to us. There’s something about the vast openness of the sky that brings space and lifts your boundaries both mentally and physically. The sun makes everyone smile and bask in its glow. The colors of nature help soothe my mind. Interestingly enough, we try to replicate these colors inside our homes, but they just don’t have the same effect. Lately, I’ve noticed how being outside helps all the things in my mind just dissipate. It's almost like the wind, the sky, the trees and the grass help declutter my mind. I'm able to just empty my thoughts or let them float around but not dwell on them. The breeze is blowing around me. I can hear th...

One thing I have a really hard time with is sitting still and just being. My mind never seems to shut off, jumping from one topic to the next. What I find to happen most often is that whenever I sit down to rest, all these ideas start flowing through my brain. Should we tear up the carpet and put down wood flooring? What is a new meal I can make for dinner? Can I watch the news on demand? How can I make money from home? What should my next quilt be? Oh, my iPad is sitting right next to me, I should look up how to ..... And so it starts. Whether it is a quick fix, something to create, or just a new way of doing something, I am usually hooked. Researching ideas is also something I like to do. I am a student at heart, a life-long learner who enjoys learning about new things. Researching new ideas is actually fun for me. I'd be more than happy to fill a notebook with notes on different topics. In fact, I have taken three internet classes (fortunately all three) to collect the...

More is better, right? More food, more clothes, more room, more money. It seems our society is driven by the word “more”. Commercials tell us what “more” we need to have and the products that will help us get “more”. Even if it isn’t a product. Want more excitement in your life? Buy this. More friends? Buy that. More for your money? Use this service. More beautiful of a vacation? Go here. More luxury? We have it. More service? That’s us. Dissatisfied with your clothes/furniture/kitchen? You just need more things! Our grocery stores are packed with isles of more. New products come out each day and we need more. There are so many stores to purchase clothing from, with more are added each day. There are more stores period. When I compare the choice of stores we have today, including online shopping, to what was available when I was a child, it is staggering. Psychologically, we want more. We want more things, more options, more choices. Some people feel if they don’t have all t...

We are a beach family. Our vacations center around the beach - camping, renting a house on the beach etc. Whenever we have a chance, I like to go to the beach. It is so relaxing and enjoyable. However, I can’t get to the beach every day. And even though I could go in the winter, it isn’t quite the same. So what can I do? Close my eyes and imagine I’m there. This is a great relaxation tip. You know that feeling you get sitting on a beach? It's like the waves carry all our cares and worries out to sea. You are instantly relaxed. The blue, blue of the sky. The teal blue of the water, the sun, the white sand. The sand is warm and eases into your body. The seagulls squawk overhead.  The beach, so relaxing even if you aren't on vacation, you feel like you are. You can breathe in air, lots of air. Your eyes focus on the horizon which never ends. Your mind wanders, but doesn't settle on anything, it just wanders.  There is the blue, blue sky going on forever. White, ai...

My wellness a-game is to reduce stress. It has been like peeling an onion. I keep finding new layers within myself that I can change to help me reduce stress. As I peel some layers, I have found I do too many things at once. At home, at work, everywhere. And I don’t care what anyone says, when you do more than one thing at a time (currently called multi-tasking), you are not efficient. You are prone to mistakes. Dinner burns (yes, it does!) and your mind feels stressed in the process .  I really feel that when you're multitasking, you are really trying to race to do two things at once. This causes your mind to think that you have to get more things done faster. Two things happen. First whenever I go too fast with anything I make mistakes. I drop things, I type the wrong word, I do something wrong, you name it I've done it. Second, the “race” causes stress. Your body tenses in anticipation of the physical effort. Shoulders hunch. Mind squeezes into gear. Adrenaline start...

When you look around you, what do you see? Usually lots of people racing around trying to get somewhere, or get something done. How often do you see people leisurely strolling along? How often do you get to travel an empty road? Th e mall parking lot is full. The shops are crowded. Streets have an endless stream of cars hurrying somewhere. City sidewalks are a throng of people heading somewhere. At work, people are walking determinately through the hallways.   Last weekend, I drove into the city to pick up our daughter. In this part of town, streets built decades ago were not meant to hold so many cars. One car garages meant one car, not three per house. Navigating them meant pulling over to let others through.  People were rushing all over to do their chores, jaywalking between cars. Cars lined up in the street to get into parking lots. Left turns were only for the fearless.  The grocery store was built up instead of out. The five story attached parki...

So what is simple living?  Honestly, there isn't one right answer. Instead, there are many variations each as unique as the people who practice it. I guess simply put, it is the pursuit to simplify your life.  Many people I have come in contact with have included the practice of decluttering their belongings as a place to start simplifying their lives. This decluttering helps not only lighten the physical load we carry, but allows us to evaluate our life and the possessions that fill it. Learning to be satisfied with what we have, or have left after decluttering, is another aspect of simple living. After all, who wants to go through the process of decluttering only to fill it back up again?  This simplification of our things helps us simplify other areas of our lives, such as schedules and reducing debt, so we have time to pursue positive endeavors such as wellness, travel, connections and experiences.  Angela over at Setting My Intention ...

This is my view as I sat here just about at the end of a week’s vacation. My work has become increasingly demanding to the point where taking a half day off still feels like work. Even a day off gets lost in the business of the rest of the week. Las fall I realized the need to take an entire week off to rest, reset, and just get away. So for every quarter of this year, I planned a week off. My original intent for this week off was to fly to Phoenix to visit my brother and see the Grand Canyon. My husband wanted to see Hoover Dam since we didn’t get there on our last trip to Vegas, and then drive back to Phoenix to fly home. All in a week’s time. All crammed in between two weeks of work. Flight delays due to bad weather, car rentals, finding hotels, the cost of hotels and meals, all seemed like an insurmountable amount of energy and stress added to my daily work. Instead, I chose to spend a week outdoors at our hunting land. Well, almost a week - Monday to Friday. Thus,...

It’s crowded in here today, very crowded. So crowded, I can’t think straight. That place? My mind. There is so much going on in my head that it literally can’t breathe. So much is flying at me, my mind is being reactionary and not methodical.  Work has been a big part of this crowd. Constant emails with things to do, projects not finished because of said emails. Meetings after meetings. Longer work hours. Getting home later. The constant knowledge that I have too much to do. I get brief reprieves when I leave work and head home. Thankfully, our home life, while active, is not as crowded. We have a fairly empty calendar by choice. We prefer to do things as a family and not much with others. We like to set our own pace, blaze our own trail so to speak without the permission of others. We like to go with our own flow. Yes, we socialize about twice per month and that fits just perfectly. Fortunately, my husband and I enjoy each other’s company and like to do the same types o...

There is a new subdivision going in by our house. Soon families will be moving into their new homes. It is exciting to think of designing a brand new home. For years, my friend and I would attend our local Parade of Homes to see the latest and greatest in new home design, dreaming a little at the new ideas and updated looks.  As I walked through the new subdivision, thinking about that first thrill of what a new home would look like, I saw the advertisement sign: “Home and lot packages start at $400,000. When I read that, so many thoughts went through my head.” That is a lot of money for a house. The mortgage with 10% down would be around $1,700 a month with today’s rates. That is just the beginning. You also have to add in the costs for driveways, landscaping and all the “upgrades” you would want to make to the builder’s model home. The money, the decisions, the stress! With my focus on simple living, I can honestly say the idea of building a new home no longer interests me...

One thing I am learning on this journey towards simple living is that we go through seasons in our lives, and shouldn’t try to fight them. When I graduated college, I never really had any expectations for my life other than finding a job. I guess I assumed I would get married and have children, but I didn’t plan on anything or have big expectations. Additionally, I didn’t think there was another plan other than job, marriage, children and life in the suburbs. After college, I was offered a job in a suburb 30 minutes from where I grew up, I jumped at the chance to move there. My husband, then boyfriend, moved close once he got a job. After our wedding, we rented a house, and then bought a house in the next suburb over. Fast forward twenty some years, two kids, two dogs, numerous cars, and possessions later, we are still in the suburbs living a "standard" life. I never questioned where we were at along the way. Yes, I did stay home with our children, go back to school, a...

The slow lane in the Big Easy. The slow lane of the freeway is for those who choose to drive at a slower speed than everyone else. Ironically, they are usually driving at the posted speed limit while others travel at increasingly higher speeds. In the end, everyone gets to their destination, some a little quicker than others. This destination could be a physical destination, a mental one, or even an item on your To Do list. It seems to be human nature to go faster and get there sooner, pushing through the journey in our haste, finding annoyance at things in our way. What if we tried to live life in the slow lane? What might happen? Well, we would still get to our destination. We would probably even get there with less stress and angst. We might even enjoy the journey as much as we enjoy the destination. It is hard to drive in the slow lane. We feel like we are missing out because others are going faster and getting there sooner. They are going to have more time at their...

The American Dream: A big house in the ‘burbs, nice cars, in-style clothes and furniture, exotic vacations… You know what I am talking about - the “thing” everyone is striving for. The goal we have to attain. The constant, yet elusive carrot-on-the-stick that we feel we need to reach. Yep. That American Dream. I had one too, but I changed it last year and I am so much happier for it. Ironically, if you google “The American Dream”, the definition that pops up is as follows: the ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work,  determination, and initiative. This I have not given up on; this I strive for. It is the lake house, and all the trappings that I gave up. What happened? I discovered simple life and minimalism. Minimalist is probably not how I would describe myself. That is until you really start reading what minimalism can be today, and the Minimalists say it best: What is minimalism? If ...

Lookup to the sky. You’ll never find rainbows if you’re looking down. Charlie Chaplin When I walk or bike, I find myself looking at the ground in front of me so that I don’t trip, or ride over an obstacle that might cause me to fall. Sometimes I feel this is how we look at life, down. Down in the mires of whatever we are doing, without paying attention to what is going on around us. In today's society, people are looking down at their phone, more than they are looking up at others around them. While missing out on what is going on around us is one downfall to looking down all the time; I have found another reason why looking up is better: Joy. When I look up, I see this wonderful world around me. My spirits are uplifted, literally and figuratively. When I look up even higher, up at the sky, I feel an immense sense of peace and wonder. I am in awe. My whole mood changes in that moment. I find that whatever I was thinking about is gone, replaced by beauty. On my walk...

This month I am slowly working on replacing the shelf liner paper in all our kitchen cabinets and pantry. It is giving me a really good opportunity to touch everything in the kitchen and decide if we really need it/still want it. We did this a couple of years ago when we removed the cabinets above the breakfast bar and reorganized, but we still have a lot of things. Some wedding presents, some from my grandmother's house,  and some I "needed". All. Done. This round of decluttering has me thinking about how we ended up with so much stuff. We never really earned big salaries, and felt we lived below our means . Yet, we accumulated so much stuff. How did this happen? Gifts and free stuff aside, we bought a lot of it. Why? Instant Gratification Living below our means still meant spending money. We have always been good at saving, but I think we could have saved more. Looking back, we often felt it was more important to purchase things, than to put that money into s...

Oh so insignificant is the lonely piece of gravel. So tiny it is barely measurable. So abundant in our world, it is worthless on its own. No one would buy a piece of gravel by itself. No one would pay attention to it as it sits along the side of the road. You might be inclined to sweep it up if you notice it in the middle of your kitchen floor, especially if it might leave a gouge when stepped on. But really, no one ever pays attention to the lonely piece of gravel.  Until it is inside your shoe. Oh boy, then do we pay attention to it. It is sharp and annoying; it screams at us. You shake your foot constantly trying to get it to move. Walking on it becomes nearly impossible. You just can’t go on. You have to stop and get that minuscule piece of stone out of your shoe! That tiny piece of gravel can be a metaphor for the stressors in our lives. At first glance, the irritation of small things may be barely noticeable, or just a mild nagging feeling. As time moves on, this smal...