Note: I drafted this piece on creating a simplicity statement back in January 2016 as we were preparing to renovate the smaller home we had recently purchased and expected to move into in April 2016. Having spent a week in a 1000sq ft condo in Kauai this past week, I was reminded I can live with a lot less than I thought was possible. Home for less than 24 hours, my initial urge was to begin … Read More
It’s not often a blog posting is 18 months in the making, but the time has finally come to tell a story I alluded to in an August 2016 posting. In that post I shared my husband and I had “been undergoing extensive unanticipated renovations at the new house” and I noted that would be “another story for another day.” When I wrote those words I’d been treading water for a couple of months, having recently surfaced … Read More
I think deep down I’ve always tended towards the idea of less being more. I was the kid who actually wanted the smallest bedroom and who loved to declutter and rearrange my mom’s cupboards. I was the college student who thrived within the confines of a dorm room, where life was all about living tiny and having only what you needed and loved. The first home my husband and I purchased, a 600 square foot condo in … Read More
Why Do You Shop? Have you ever thought about why you shop? If not, I urge you to give it some thought. We all shop for different reasons. We shop because we need things like food or shelter. We shop because we want things, like tools to make our lives easier or trendy clothes so we can feel stylish. We may even shop as a means of coping, what some term “retail therapy.” There was a time … Read More
Silence We were out recently with some friends we don’t see very often when it hit me just how out of the ordinary our family must seem, especially during the holidays. As we drove to dinner the conversation turned to how much holiday shopping they’d done yet how much they still had to do. My response that we haven’t really shopped for Christmas in a couple of years, opting instead to make donations or gift experiences or … Read More
This has always been among my favorite days of the year. The day we turn the clocks back an hour is the day that gives me more of what I value most ~ TIME. At the risk of sounding weird, the old time-starved me always looked forward to this day with the same anticipation as a kid looks forward to Christmas morning. While other people accepted this gifted hour as an opportunity to get some extra sleep, … Read More
We recently started what we hope will be our last round of home renovations. As you know, the first stage of any renovation project is clearing everything out of the spaces being renovated. I’m noticing that clearing out the master bath, guest room and my office is giving me a great opportunity to continue Phase Three of our minimizing process. You may recall that during Phases One and Two my husband and I whittled down our belongings by … Read More
I was lucky enough to wake up twice this morning. The first time, when the alarm went off and the second around 6:30 AM when I completed a short but impactful mindfulness meditation. No, I’m not someone who diligently practices mindfulness every morning. (If you are, I have a great deal of regard for you and the amazing self-care you’re demonstrating.) Instead I am someone who has read a lot about benefits of mindfulness, never really developed … Read More
I need to buy a new computer this year. I have a six-year-old Mac with a 512K hard drive and it’s not long for this world. I was planning to upgrade to a terabyte of memory, but was shocked to learn that doubling the memory would cost me $400! This quickly made me wonder how much storage space I really needed. If you’ve been reading for a while you know that I’m minimizing the rest of my … Read More
It seems everyone I’m coming in contact with lately is adding one more task to their list or one more activity to their calendar. There’s even a commercial on tv that challenges us, “Who wouldn’t want more?” As someone who is actively minimizing I’m paying close attention to the idea of “more.” We’ve been conditioned to believe that more is better. My husband and I often joke about one of our college accounting professors instilling in us … Read More