For several months now I've been reading all the emails/blog posts from Allie Casazza from The Purposeful Housewife and I just subscribed to her podcast, The Purposeful Home, and I can't wait to get listening. But for now I'm waiting for a big enough time-chunk to open up so I can get started. At least that's what I keep telling myself. :) I actually have a lot of fear. Somewhere along the way I've gotten real attached to my stuff. Or in the very least I've felt like my stuff is truly needed. I know part of that has to do with my business. Owning a custom design company where I design and create custom pieces for dancers, children, and brides requires a lot of stuff. And it's not always organized. Sometimes it's so disorganized that I end up buying stuff I already have because I simply can't find it. I'm not proud of this. But it's the truth.
I'm really not exactly happy with my life right now. When someone comes over and I know they are coming I spend hours faking that we indeed are super clean people. I scrub and stuff and vow to NEVER do this again! And, now don't take this personally family and friends, but I kind of get peeved about it. It's so annoying to have people over because I'm never "ready". And quite frankly, I don't have TIME to even get READY because I have too much crap to do. So it's such an imposition that I always curse myself for inviting people over and hence, I've stopped inviting people over.
When having people over is required, I'm bugged. Like when clients have to come pick up their dance pieces I'm always rushing around trying to clean, and look presentable. It's never convenient because I'm always so behind! And I become a resentful, ornery person. UGH! I hate it. I am so ashamed that I don't even want to tell you all. Because it's not other people's fault that I'm letting all my stuff ruin my life. It's my fault. And I want to change.
The main reason why I'm ready to change my life is because of my kids and husband. Our life has become a whirlwind of messes, clutter, practices, yelling, stress, and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. We hardly have any fun any more. Every single Martin Luther King day, or President's Day, or Memorial day guess what we do? Clean. We organize our closets, we clean our garage, we clean my office, we clean and organize the toy room. And guess what? It never lasts. So we do it again and again and again. It's not very fun. And it's not creating fun memories. It's just not the way I want to live and not at all how I want my kids to remember their childhood. I'm so sick of cleaning! But I want to be clean.
Not only can we never go and do anything fun as a family because we have too many chores to do at home; but my kids can rarely invite friends over either. When they do, either we've just spent the last few hours cleaning or most likely I have to apologize for some mess or other. It's embarrassing. So "no, kids, you CANNOT have friends over until we clean the entire house!" Its just a vicious cycle of messes, begging them to help, or giving up and embracing our life, as messy as it is at times.
I can go ahead and blame some of this on my upbringing. I grew up in a mess. Or I can go ahead and accept responsibility for continuing to share the messy love. But I want to be clean. I want to have people over, and I want to have fun with my kids. I would love to not spend every waking minute tidying, and organizing. Just to wake up and do it all over again.
This is where Allie and all her ideas and testimonials are stepping in. I am so hopeful that this is going to be a game changer! Are you down and out about cleaning non-stop? You should check her philosophies out! Minimalism...here we come! I hope...I'm still kind of scared.
I CAN DO THIS!
Friday, March 10, 2017
Thursday, March 9, 2017
Less Stuff = A Better Life?
In all reality, I have a pretty decent life. No one is terminally ill. We all have good health. We have a roof over our heads, access to plenty of treats, and enough money to get by each month (barely, but still) we all have oodles of shoes and toys, and clothes, and craft supplies, and blankets, and pillows, and more toys, and more clothes, and paper, and pens, and broken crayons. Well you get the idea. We have a lot of stuff. I'm kind of like Ariel, from The Little Mermaid..."I've got gadgets and gizmos of plenty, I've got who's it's and what's it's galore." And I think in the past that is what has given me knowledge that we're doing ok. Look at all the stuff we've accumulated. We are succeeding. We've got the stuff to prove it.
I no longer feel that way. Now I feel buried and enslaved by our stuff. I've been reading every piece of content that Allie Casazza has been putting out about minimalism and every thing she says, I raise my hand high in the air and say. "Yep! That's me!" And I'm so ready to be done with all the organizing, and re-organizing, and cleaning all just to wake up the next day and do it all over again. Not to mention, all the time I could be spending with my kids actually having fun instead of cleaning non-stop.
I'm literally so freaking sick of it. And so are my kids. They walk in the door and the first thing I'm harping on is, put your stuff away, go clean your room. It's just a never ending list of jobs spouting from my mouth because with five kids, I can't stop for even ten minutes or the whole house falls apart.
You know how sometimes the Heavens send you a little wake-up call to get you going in the right direction? Well that happened to me this week. It came in the form of a flood. What's weird is that not two weeks ago I was downstairs in my disaster of a basement and thought to myself. "Holy Buckets! Can you imagine if we had a flood down here? That would be SOOOOO bad because we have so much stuff piled on stuff down here." And guess what? Monday morning I go downstairs and our water softener had been leaking for a couple of days and half of my office was completely soaking wet. So I put on my puddle boots and grabbed some garbage sacks and started chucking wet fabric, ribbon and flowers like a crazy person.
The Lord knew I needed a kick in the pants and a kick start to my reduce the crap in my life plan. I'm now on a mission to drastically reduce all the excess in my life. I'll try to write more about my experience and how it changes my life (hopefully for the better). Right now I'm in the midst of chaos. I've gotten rid of a bunch of stuff but not enough. I still am spending all of my time putting it all back over and over again. I guess I'm still scared that once it's all gone, I'm going to go and buy it all again.
How do you keep up on your life? Have you tried to simplify only to go right back to where you were before?
I no longer feel that way. Now I feel buried and enslaved by our stuff. I've been reading every piece of content that Allie Casazza has been putting out about minimalism and every thing she says, I raise my hand high in the air and say. "Yep! That's me!" And I'm so ready to be done with all the organizing, and re-organizing, and cleaning all just to wake up the next day and do it all over again. Not to mention, all the time I could be spending with my kids actually having fun instead of cleaning non-stop.
I'm literally so freaking sick of it. And so are my kids. They walk in the door and the first thing I'm harping on is, put your stuff away, go clean your room. It's just a never ending list of jobs spouting from my mouth because with five kids, I can't stop for even ten minutes or the whole house falls apart.
You know how sometimes the Heavens send you a little wake-up call to get you going in the right direction? Well that happened to me this week. It came in the form of a flood. What's weird is that not two weeks ago I was downstairs in my disaster of a basement and thought to myself. "Holy Buckets! Can you imagine if we had a flood down here? That would be SOOOOO bad because we have so much stuff piled on stuff down here." And guess what? Monday morning I go downstairs and our water softener had been leaking for a couple of days and half of my office was completely soaking wet. So I put on my puddle boots and grabbed some garbage sacks and started chucking wet fabric, ribbon and flowers like a crazy person.
The Lord knew I needed a kick in the pants and a kick start to my reduce the crap in my life plan. I'm now on a mission to drastically reduce all the excess in my life. I'll try to write more about my experience and how it changes my life (hopefully for the better). Right now I'm in the midst of chaos. I've gotten rid of a bunch of stuff but not enough. I still am spending all of my time putting it all back over and over again. I guess I'm still scared that once it's all gone, I'm going to go and buy it all again.
How do you keep up on your life? Have you tried to simplify only to go right back to where you were before?
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