Reading time ~ 5 minutes Please don’t laugh, or think less of me when I tell you that I’ve been trying to complete a home inventory since 1988. Yes, you read that right, 1988. 1988 was the year I was married and the first time in my life that I really owned anything of value. Only 22 years old, my husband and I began to amass the stuff that served as proof of our adulthood: tables … Read More
Reading time ~ 5 minutes Until recently, our minimalism journey has been focused primarily on releasing stuff we no longer need or want. My focus shifted a little last month though after noting how many people commented on a particular topic on a professional organizer’s forum I subscribe to. The topic was Ethical Consumption. Unfortunately most of my organizing colleague’s comments related to the back end of consumption, which I’ll call ethical disposal. This encompasses recycling, reusing, … Read More
Reading time ~ 4 minutes Sometimes people in your life have a hard time understanding choices you make. There is a woman I knew, we’ll call her Jill, who was frustrated with a friend of hers, who wasn’t available as often as Jill expected her to be. The friend was happy to hang out with Jill during the day, but every time Jill invited her to dinner or an evening meeting or event, she was turned down. … Read More
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
Have you played the #MinsGame yet? It’s the creation of Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus, two guys originally from Ohio who are now known as The Minimalists. The rules of the #MinsGame are simple. A new #MinsGame starts on the first day of each month. On the first day you release one item by donating it, throwing it away, recycling it, giving it away, etc. The idea is to get it out of your house and … Read More
I recently finished Greg McKeown‘s book, Essesntialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less which is essentially about how to live a more purposeful, focused and intentional life. I’ve been experimenting with minimalism: actively reducing my number of possessions and the number of commitments in my life. As such, I was intrigued by the idea of essentialism. If you’re curious about what essentialism is, McKeown provides us with this explanation, “the basic value proposition of Essentialism: only once you give yourself … Read More
This past Sunday began with my noticing the herbs I grow in my Aerogarden were looking like more of a miniature jungle than a garden I’d actually want to eat something out of. Out came the scissors and the pruning began. The photo to the left represents the results of those efforts – a pile of compost fodder and some now recognizable basil & parsley plants. This impromptu pruning set the tone for the rest of that cool … Read More