Quote of inspiration

Do you realize how GOOD you feel when you get rid of stuff?!

Stuff you don't need. Stuff that clutters your home. Stuff that's falling out of closets and storage spaces. Stuff that you didn't even remember you had. Stuff that you're keeping just in case you need it someday.

Stuff.

So. All of this cleaning out has really got me feeling awesome. And quite different. Maybe it's more of a way of thinking, but it's different. What I've been doing is examining the things we use, the things we do, and what we want to do. I'm trying going to make sure our life and our stuff fit well together.

I love this quote by Seth Godin:

“Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from.”

I suppose you could say that this is what I've been up to. Setting up a life that I don't need an escape from. Sounds great, doesn't it?

Food & Grocery Thoughts

Ok, so let me let you in on a little secret: I buy too much food. Betcha didn't expect that, hah. I can't help it! I'm easily sucked in by fabulous clean foods, seasonal produce, anything unprocessed, interesting meat-free items, all grains, fun pastas, interesting flours, weird beans (fava, anyone?) and most everything that has no GMO's. I love love LOVE good food, or at least good for you food anyway. My kitchen cabinets and fridge are very very full of it.

I have read and considered just about every type of eating out there. Vegetarian, Vegan, Raw, Macrobiotics, Dr Fuhrman... I will most definitely be blogging about our diet changes over the past few years, but not right now. I seem to be chasing a rabbit. Back to the point!

One would argue (not that I would, ahem, know or anything...) that we have enough food for our family of 4 to eat off of for two or three weeks very comfortably. If you count the freezer, well, then we have enough food for about a month, easily. So as you can see, I need to work on this. Food hoarding, hah.

Here are some things I am vowing to work on:
- Trying to eat up what we have before buying a bunch of stuff, grains and all. Freezer too! That's going to be hard because I like fresh produce, but it's one of my new missions... no one ever said going through our house would be quick work.
- Formulate a plan! A menu is a novel idea. But better than a menu is to understand the way our family eats. We don't do well with a menu because it does not lend well to our food impulses ("I feel like eating breakfast tonight! But we didn't put it on the menu. Dang." this scenario does NOT work for us). Which is why we end up with so much food. I need to find a way to work on this.
- Actually sticking with a plan when I go into the grocery store and not impulse buying
- Entertaining the idea of getting rid of our deep freezer. Shock of the century! I have had a love affair with this deep-freeze for quite a while now and I am totally amazed that I am thinking of getting rid of it. But we don't use it like we used to! When we first got it, it held a lot of meats and convenience foods. Both of which we don't eat any more. Hm...

Here are a few embarrassingly incriminating photos:

My baking corner cabinet is full of at least 4 bags of flour - which does not count the small containers of flour in the top pink baskets. Coming from a family of bakers, I have always thought it unfit to have a kitchen without the necessary ingredients for a cake, brownies, or cookies of all sorts (obviously). As our diets have changed, we've still made room for goodies! But perhaps I have too much flour?

This is just oil and vinegar and about 3 rows deep

This cabinet houses our grains, pastas, beans, peanut butter, nuts/seeds, dried fruits, and sea veggies. It used to actually have a lot more food in it, but I've actually been working on getting rid of the stockpile of food in here for a bit.

This one is deeper than it looks and holds at least 5 rows of canned veggies. We have tons of tomatoes. And yes, we do drink, but so rarely that the Jack has been there with about 3 oz in it for the past 2 1/2 years.

Questions for those with less

Here are some questions I have for those people who have few things:

1. If you don't have many clothes, do you have to do laundry more often? Isn't that a benefit of having more clothes? Wouldn't this end up taking you more time and sort-of cancel out any benefit of having less so you can do more?

2. If you only have a very few dishes (say, enough to make it through a day) then what do you do when you have guests?

3. How did you decide what to keep and what to get rid of? Have you gotten rid of something you wish you had kept and what was it?

4. What the heck do you do with memorabilia? Pictures, kids first drawings, really good notes and cards from people you love?

That's it for now!

If you are reading and would like to comment, feel free!! I'd love to know your thoughts, if you have downsized, or if you would like to. Whatever.

Thing Categories

Due to the nature of what I've been spending a LOT of time doing lately (cleaning out my stuff), I've been doing a lot of thinking. Well... while I'm think about when/if I'm actually going to use the item in my hand, I'm watch my 13 month old and make sure her wobbly walking doesn't give her a concussion, and play "house" with my 3 year old, and I've been thinking! Have I mentioned that I love to think? I should have been an analyst. Anyway. Here goes:

Why have I kept so much stuff? I think I was hanging on to stuff in hopes that I would use it, I love useful things. That seems logical, right? Okay... but why? Other times I was hanging onto something because it held some great memories for me. [Infant clothes had amassed in a giant rubbermaid tub. Like, a freakish amount of onsies and pj's. I sorted through those puppies in record time and plan to share them with a friend of mine who's pregnant with a girl.] I am making some great progress, but at times I can get overwhelmed with what to keep. Everything? Nothing? How crazy am I going to get with this sorting thing? I'm working on finding a BALANCE that's right for our family. Not taking someone elses guidelines for important stuff and trying to fit my stuff into their categories and getting frustrated because it's not working for me (are you guessing that this has been happening? :) So while thinking, I've come up with some categories for my things that are listed below.

Here are a few categories for my things (our things, whatever):

I use it every day. Or near about every day. Or I absolutely cannot function without it. There are some obvious things that fall into this category like toothpaste and shoes. It's those things I use every once in a while that I'm having difficulty deciding if it needs to stay or can find a better home elsewhere (more on that category in a second).

I use it to create things. Sewing falls in this category for me. I simply LOVE to sew. I have recently discovered that I don't love to shop, as I had once thought, but only because I discovered how very much I love sewing. Now, I've actually had to question "creating" for once. Because creating for a need is worthwhile, whereas creating for excess is a waste of my time. So I've stopped sewing for the moment until my home has been cleaned out. Simple as that.

It brings me great joy. I love to journal and read, therefore I have lots of books and journals. I particularly love books that will make me smarter (ha) or that I find "useful," such as My art book collection which I once loved (I was an art major), have actually been reduced over the years. Quite frankly, I don't look at them any more. But I kept the really really good one's, one day I'll have time, right? Now, there is an entire shelf of our bookshelf in the bedroom with my journals. Hm... A few nights ago I said to Hubby "I wonder if anyone is every going to want to read those" and he looked quizzically at me and said "Are you ever going to want to read them?" My love of books has spilled over in to cookbooks, of course. But about two years ago we made some serious diet changes and I still held on to a lot of my traditional cookbooks. About 5 months ago I decided since it had been about a year and a half since I had used them, well... they got the boot.

I use it every once in a while. The bread machine, for example, is going on craigslist because I've recently found a fantastic (and I do mean fantastic) way to make bread that I'm a bit obsessed about and will blog about soon. Moving on.

I never really use it but like it. Hm... should I keep it then? Rollerblades fit in here. I LOVE to skate, I did it for years. But since I've had children, I haven't skated. I've run. The verdict is still out on the rollerblades, but I'm leaning towards keeping them because I hope to skate with my girls one day and don't want to have to run out and buy a new pair of skates/rollerblades because I was going crazy getting rid of my things and gave them away. I have a ton of other things that fit into this category, but frankly, I haven't really made it out of the playroom in 3 days because the sorting has been intense (hey, it's where all of my art supplies, the girls toys and craft things, baby clothing, office things, and attic is. I'll probably be in here for a while longer). Another thing that fits into this category is the china we got when we married. China! Agony. I'll have to think about this for a while. I never use it, but I like it.

I never use it. So why do I keep it? It gets tossed! Extra wires, cords, cd cases, strange fabric, clothes that don't fit, bags (I've had a very long love affair with bags and totes of all kinds), lamps, decorating things...

Now that I think about it, I've actually been reducing my stuff for quite a while. But I've still been holding on to too much and that's why I'm on this adventure!

Made it!

I made this smoothie today and it's awesome!!! Very filling and quite good. My 3 year old liked it because it was pink and my husband asked if it had protein in it (um, no). Try it, you'll like it!

How do you like my iphone photography standing in my kitchen? I didn't remember to take a picture of it until after I had finished it.

Simple as it Seems

Many a year ago (back in 2006!) I started following a blog called Walk Slowly, Live Wildly and was enamored with everything the blog author (Sara) wrote about. Some of it was too extreme for me at the time. Well, not just some of it.... most all of it. But I was challenged to my core and God hasn't let me forget it (he's great like that, isn't he?). To understand why, I am going to give you a very very short version (she has a longer one on her site if you are oddly fascinated, like me, about personal background). She and her husband sold their newly purchased home and gradually got rid of most of their possessions and moved into an RV. With a child. They began touring the country on a personal mission to spread how to Live Lightly (they did a tour in 2007 and one in 2008 and are now officially done touring). Currently they are still living in an RV but now have a 6 year old and a toddler and they travel around the country and are still making a living while doing it. Impressive, no?

Hm.

4 years ago I was hooked. Nothing in my life changed as a result of my fascination. I secretly wanted to be like this little family, though my life was nowhere near it - and let's face it, it still isn't. But back in 2006, my spirit (now knowing my mind had been exposed to living differently) began to be dully dissatisfied with my consumption. Which I mostly ignored. At some point -this post to be exact- I realized I that Sara and her ideals were waaay out of my league (er, comfort zone) and she became on of "those" people to me. You know, them. The one's who are able to do that which I am unwilling to. Anyway.

So I've just gone on my merry way falling into the trap of my culture. I've spent countless hours in stores, malls, super centers, and online and come home with numerous things I either returned or was stuck with. I've stared into my closet, kitchen cabinets, and drawers trying my best to get rid of stuff because I knew I needed to, only to come out with one or two things for the Goodwill pile. Don't get me wrong, I definitely made some improvements during the past several years, but I still felt the dissatisfaction in my spirit that I wasn't doing things right.

At the moment, I cannot even remember how many times I've either journaled, thought, had conversations with my husband or friends, and prayed about this unrest in my spirit. I basically felt like I needed to simplify my life. All of my thinking and talking left me with no clarity and I was mostly discouraged by my inability to make my life simple. Dang it.

Now is a good time to mention what my definition of simplicity is. You see, I have never taken the time to actually sit down and come up with a definition of "simple" until last week. Why I have waited this long is beyond me. Striving for a completely undefined ideal was easier, right? But when I actually sat down and thought about what my life would look like if it were simple, I came up with my very own definition. Here's what I wrote in my journal:

"Simple, for me, is this: I know what's necessary, important, and what I enjoy and I'm able to do those things with my time (in an orderly and not crazy fashion. If I'm crazy then I need to re-think where I've been spending my time). It also means that I know what is unnecessary, not important, and what I don't enjoy (as for entertainment and free time) and I have figured out how NOT to do these things."

Some would say this is just being intentional with your time. And I suppose you could condense what I wrote into that one word:

Intentional



For the next several weeks, or however long it takes, life is going to change here in our household. First off, we're going to be getting rid of a lot of stuff. I say "we," but I really mean me. Hubby has no extra time and my 3 and 1 year olds won't be much help in the sorting process (they usually mess up my piles). One thing I know is that we have more than we need or can use. So we'll be getting rid of it and either garage selling, craigslisting, or giving it to those in need. And guess what? I'm going to blog about it!

Talk soon,
Anna

Blog Identity Crisis

So this blog has been under an identity crisis for a while. At least it has in my imagination, anyway. First it was mostly for sewing, then I decided to post whatever whenever - recipes, thoughts, random things of importance. I've wanted to post SO very many things that float around in my head, but alas, my family blog has won many a (imaginary) battle over blogging. However, I am making some life changes and have decided to start blogging about it. And truly, when am I NOT making life changes... I honestly don't know. I seriously love change. So for those of you who actually read my mumbo jumbo, hang in there and stay tuned!

Anna