Boundaries

Three Habits My Clothing Shopping Ban is Teaching Me About

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As of May 1 I’ve completed one-third of my year-long clothing shopping ban.  Through this experiment I’m learning quite a bit about my shopping, wearing and purchasing habits.  Any of you out there who might be trying to curb shopping, reduce spending or just be more mindful about your purchasing might find what I’m learning helpful.   1) Shopping Habits: As expected, I continued to notice during the first few months of not shopping how strong my celebratory … Read More

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Why Do You Shop and How Might You Stop? Thoughts on Minimizing and Shopping

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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

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What you Focus on Becomes Your Reality: Using a Vision Board to Reach Your Goals

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This is my vision board for 2012. A vision board is a collection of visual images pasted or pinned to a board that represents things that you want to bring into your life.  My board, created on a framed cork board that hangs above my desk, represents the reminders of goals aspired to and goals achieved in a particular year.  Creating and regularly focusing on a board like this can be instrumental in reaching one’s goals. A vision … Read More

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Overcoming Holiday Overwhelm: Editing the Holiday Activities

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I used to measure the success of my holidays by how full my calendar was. The above image is from a holiday journal from about 10 years when my kids were younger.   Cookie exchanges, white elephant gift exchanges and neighborhood gatherings filled the blocks on my calendar, but did little to fill my heart with holiday cheer.  Instead they brought on the stress of having one more thing to do, at a time of year that … Read More

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Overcoming Holiday Overwhelm: Editing the Holiday Meals

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Here we are back for day three of my edit your holidays series, where we’ll discuss editing your holiday meals. In our home the holidays have always been about food. Up until a few years ago, it was typical for our small gathering of 8-10 people to sit down to a meal that would have easily fed 20. Our collective girths were proof that food was an important component of the holidays. A couple of years ago though … Read More

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Overcoming Holiday Overwhelm: Editing the Holiday Decorations

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When I was first married I loved decorating for the holidays, probably because I didn’t have that many decorations. As timed marched on though and our family and house grew, the number of decorations grew too. This has resulted in my getting much more selective about what I want to put out for the holidays, as I don’t want to spend more than a day decorating the house, or more than a day packing things up in … Read More

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