For Posterity...to preserve...to return to.... :)

Good Morning my lovelies! This post will veer away from my usual "Hey look what I learned! Hey hang in there! Hey good job keep it up!" mentality.  This post comes from the very soul of a sleep-deprived person who happened on a couple of good ideas in a row and wants to remember them in the future but if she doesn't blog about them they won't be written down anywhere.  That kind of post.  I thought that maybe if these ideas resonated with me, you could glean some value from them also! :)

A little back story of why I'm spending prime school time blogging versus studying today.  I worked most of the night last night, and can't seem to sleep more than a couple of hours to make up for it.  So the day after a night at work is kind of a wash for me mentally.  The class I'm taking doesn't allow for sloughing or off days, so instead of banging my head against the wall trying to get new concepts into my brain, I spend these types of foggy days cleaning or doing any task that doesn't rely on precision or amazingness. (or legal signatures!)

Sometimes to get going in the morning after a long night, I find myself brainlessly scrolling through the big 3: Facebook, Twitter, & Instagram.  It is a time-suck to be sure, but some days a person just needs to zone and watch endless cute cow videos and digest pointless political rhetoric...or so I thought...until today.  Now mind you, this concept will not be new to about 98.3% of you.  But to my wandering brain cells, it seems like sudden nirvana.  An escape from numbing e-surfing.  I realized that I could be subtly working towards my goals while I am relaxing after a long night of work.  You know that part about what you feed your mind with turns into results later? Junk in junk out?

I started searching for videos and pictures of homes where the person living there has adopted a minimalist lifestyle.  This is something that I need in my life.  All too often belongings accumulate and creep into the corners of our home because all the regular storage areas are filled with the belongings that we seriously haven't laid eyes on for years in some cases.  So much for needing them.  Why then is it so hard to pull the trigger and let go of some of these things?  Yes nostalgia plays a strong role, but I don't think I need to physically handle something to remember all the emotions surrounding that object or time in my life.  A picture will suffice.  It's a mindset thing - - but I digress.

So this morning I looked on YouTube for videos on what a minimalist closet, room, house looked like.  I needed inspiration.  I needed a break from wasting time on social media.  And I found it!  Within 20 minutes I had watched enough videos posted by people with the same desire to live simply, and I had the motivation to set a timer for 15 minutes.  Fifteen minutes to choose an area in my house, pull everything out of that area, clean the space, and only return the items that were loved, needed, and relevant.  I chose the shelf over the washer and dryer in the laundry room.  It's kind of a catch-all for us and I didn't even know the wonders it held by now.  Amazingly I was able to toss 80% of what was up there.  The other 15% got repurposed to a dry-cleaning-needed pile, a return-to-garage pile, and a why-in-the-world-is-this-even-up-here pile.  I found that we had first aid supplies up there from when Reagan skinned his knees. Seriously.  Who needs 2x2 gauze pads that are yellowing around the edges?  Embarrassing actually.  But I'm over it.  All that is gone into the trash.  AND I had enough time to wipe down the washer and dryer.  So now all that is up on the shelf is a small tub used for handwashing, a chlorox bleach stick, and our trusty, loved, and oft-used can of spider spray. (Works fantastically for those of us who didn't quite live up to our vertical potential...)  Yay for 15 minutes eh??

Another epiphany that I had today and implemented was a time counter.  The Husband and I are renewing our efforts to not bring anything into the house that isn't essential.  This is in part to reducing our clutter, but mostly in part to having 3 college students in the house, 4 cars to fuel, insure, tire, and maintain, 2 full-time jobs (one of those being very dependent on moon cycles...) and a bank account that is starting to call me on a daily basis saying "Hello?  Remember me?  How about we deposit something today??"

So I found a time counter app for my phone and I started a counter for non-essential purchases.  This translates into a Days-Since-Kris-Gave-Into-The-Pull-Of-Amazon-Prime counter.  Yes.  I am serious about chipping away at the things in my life that stress me without even knowing it.  Extra things in my house.  Extra bags and boxes being brought in from my car.  This ends now.  

Time for one more epiphany?  Oh good! This one may be the most ground-breaking principle of all for me on this day.  I realized that I have been using others as an excuse.  I say to myself "Well I can't really pare down all of our belongings like I want to, because I am only one of four people living in this house and we all have to be on the same page for this to work.  Not true.  I am the Mother of this home.  And with that comes responsibility.  I set the tone, the pace, and the ambience.  My family is very easy on me.  They give me amazing amounts of leeway in this.  I know that we all would benefit from a more stream-lined appearance in our daily lives and I play a major role in making that happen.  I would never toss anything that belonged to another.  But the family stuff?  Like decades old cleaning and first-aid supplies? Vitamins from Lucille Ball days? Canned goods from the year I graduated high school??  Totally within my purview...and totally GONE.  I'm betting that I will keep chipping away using this 15 minute mindset and my family won't even be aware of all the stuff that we've been keeping for years without using, until they go to put something away and find delicious glorious blank space on which to put it!!  Ahhhh...GOALS!! :)

So thanks for listening, thanks for affording me a platform to organize my thoughts while organizing my life.  I hope you all have a mindful day spent doing the things you love to do with the people you love to be with.  Remember the words of Courtney Carver, (www.bemorewithless.com) "Simplicity is a practice, not a destination."

Make it a great day!!

(photos courtesy of becomingminimalist.com, and flickr.com)