The Daily Minimalist

I received Zara Fagen's book, Minimalist Homeschooling, a couple of days ago, and I dived right in! What it amounts to is a do-it-yourself workshop for discerning your homeschooling values, prioritizing subjects, and resetting your mind to a paradigm of plenty. I'm reading the book with my journal open and pen in hand. 

I'm reordering Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing magic of Tidying Up from the library. Using these two guides together, I'm going to bring order to my home--and my life--once and for all! My key words for this new year are simplicity and contentment. These words encapsulate the minimalist philosophy for me. 

I've changed the byline of Organic Mothering to "The Daily Minimalist" (yes, a bit of borrowing from "The Daily Connoisseur" blog by Jennifer L. Scott!). My plan is to blog a little bit about this journey on a more regular basis, except for Sundays, which are all about rest. Posts will be short and sweet, and I hope, inspiring. 

Today is all about laundry. I got seriously behind again. Clothing is the first category to declutter with the "KonMari Method". I don't have much to do in this area, since I've already pared down my wardrobe. But I recently bought some new items from Dress Barn, and it helps to have all your clothing clean in order to determine what pieces you may wish to purge...  

After clothing comes books. We pared them down in my house, but they are sitting in boxes waiting to be sold to a used book store an hour away! Just moving clutter somewhere else is no good. It needs to leave the house, my friends. Our homeschool co-op has a curriculum sale coming up next week. Whatever doesn't sell there will join the boxes heading to the book store. So in the next two weeks the first two categories for decluttering will be knocked out. Who wants to minimize daily with me?

Goodbye, Things (Book Review)

I had to wait awhile for my turn to borrow Fumio Sasaki's Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism from the library, but it was worth it. I'm not actually finished reading it yet, but I've been so inspired, I just had to share!

Fumio is a single, childless man who lives by himself in a small apartment in Tokyo. He was once a maximalist living with messy heaps of books, CDs, clothes, an antique camera collection that he never used, and various miscellany. He literally lived in the dark, too overwhelmed to open the blinds. He drank too much and squandered his time on video games.

When I was a single gal, I had my own small, cluttered, messy apartment. I didn't play video games or sit around drinking too much, and my lifestyle was interesting, active, and creative. But I can relate to how having too much stuff and living in chaos held me back from feeling as confident, capable, and joyful as I could have. And the thing is, decades later, living with a family in a much bigger space, I am still struggling with clutter. Yes, I've made much progress and have cultivated better habits, but I just wish I had discovered minimalism while I was still single!

I got a lot of help from Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, but I must admit to becoming stalled and never finishing the project, which should have taken only six months. I think her idea of paring down by categories is genius. At the same time, there's something so encouraging about seeing an entire room that is finished.

I started with my bedroom, because the space where you sleep should be a sanctuary. Since I've been reading Fumio's book, I'm looking suspiciously at the books in my bedroom, which I did pare down, and thinking that more of them need to go. But I'm going to write a post specifically about book addiction later! I also have some jewelry on the my dresser that I could pare down, and there are a few things left in my closet that I ought to part with.

Fumio lives much more simply than I would want to. I find interior decorating to be a joy, and I like expressing myself creatively with my wardrobe. I'm not into the "uniform" look, which Fumio adopted from his minimalist hero, Steve Jobs. But even here, I can learn from the idea of honing in on a certain style and owning less clothing, making it easier and less time consuming to get dressed and do laundry.

This young man is not against housework, however. He loves keeping house, because the results of a clean, uncluttered home are so beneficial, and it takes him very little time to accomplish his tasks. Charlotte Mason would wholly approve of Fumio's emphasis on positive habit formation!

This week Ive been digging into my kitchen cupboards while my husband is working out of the house. A woman needs a well-functioning kitchen! I had gotten to a place where I wasn't inspired to cook anymore, and I think this decluttering and reorganizing process is going to take care of that problem. I'm looking forward to going to the farmers market and grocery store today!

It takes time, diligence, and persistence to pare down one's belongings and tidy one's home. But as Fumio has attested, it does change your life. He's a new man, and I want to be a new woman! I want to live better, more fully and meaningfully. Paradoxically, this means living more simply and being content with what you have.

The only criticism I have of Goodbye, Things is that Fumio tends to repeat himself, but I think he revisits stories in order to make an additional point.

My laptop battery is running low, so that's my cue to get moving! Read Fumio's book so we can discuss!!

Summer Declutter

Hear me now, oh, thou bleak and unbearable world
Thou art base and debauched as can be
And a knight with his banners all bravely unfurled
Now hurls down his gauntlet glory
I am I, Don Quixote, the Lord of La Mancha
My destiny calls and I go
And the wild winds of fortune will carry me onward
Oh, whither soever they blow
Whither soever they blow, onward to glory I go!

One of the speakers at the IHM homeschooling conference I attended in May was Colleen Billing, who runs her own company for home organization called Peaceful Interiors. Charlotte Mason wrote that education is "an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life." Atmosphere is a full one third of a child's education. So we can deduce that our homes need to be clean, well-organized, and beautiful. Colleen reminded us that our God is a God of order; that we are created with hearts that crave and desire order. Decluttering our homes is paramount for providing a Catholic CM education!

Home organization is not merely utilitarian; it is spiritual. What we see on the exterior tends to reflect what is going on with the interior life. And we are affected spiritually by the quality of our surroundings. As I have written about before, Marie Kondo, in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, goes so far as to say that once we have cleared our clutter, we will be able to uncover our life's purpose!

But decluttering takes time, and time is a luxury that many homeschooling families do not possess. Of course, "discipline" comes right after atmosphere in the CM motto, and by discipline Charlotte meant habit formation. With good habits, your children should not be accumulating clutter. They ought to be in the habit of picking up after themselves and keeping their rooms and possessions tidy. Encouraging them to give unused and unloved items to charity is a great practice to instill. In the same vein, we adults need to model good habits. There is one room in my home in which I have failed in this regard dismally.

Colleen suggested that we choose one room and work on it from start to finish. She shared that the average room takes between four and twelve hours to declutter! So if you are wondering why you can never get that Terrible Room under control, most of the problem is likely that you haven't taken enough time to diligently put in the necessary hours.

My Terrible Room is part of the master bedroom suite, separated from the sleeping quarters by a set of wooden French doors. I know, I am a lucky woman! This room contains my husband's dresser and his closet. The rest of it is my stuff. My dressing table, a bookcase, and a cabinet. Multiple storage boxes and 3,000 magazines.

Marie Kondo says that before you can organize anything, you must clear out the clutter. She counsels us to touch each object and ask ourselves, "Does this bring me joy?" That is the entire criteria. Believe it or not, you can do this with books and magazines without even looking inside. Colleen adds that we should question whether we use the object on a regular basis, meaning at least yearly. This criteria can work with items which hold no sentimental value. Luckily sentimental items are the last things that we declutter in Marie's method. Again, the bringing of joy gets the last word.

Colleen recommends designating a specific time to work on decluttering and burying your phone and computer away from yourself. Marie admonishes us to get to it and do it all at once, rather than the proverbial "a little at a time". She promises that if you declutter your entire home in one fell swoop, you will have such great practice in making decisions about what stays and what goes that you will never have to go through this decluttering process again! I would add that we have to keep up those good habits we have established in our children and ourselves. Marie insists that we must begin with our own stuff, and no one else in the family can help us decide. Since most of us are on summer break from homeschooling lessons, the time is now to get it done!

A couple of final notes on the spiritual side of this topic. Colleen recommended John Michael Talbot's book, Simplicity. Our homes are like little monasteries. Monasteries are very simple but very beautiful. Come up with a vision for your home. Go from room to room and write it down. Dream a little bit. She was also very enthusiastic about flylady.net for additional tips.

It might feel like you are dreaming the impossible dream, but perhaps it is, after all, not so difficult so slay that windmill.

S & F Series--The Essential Wardrobe Revisited, 2015

Some of you may remember a couple of summers ago when I did my big wardrobe purge, donating several large bags of clothing and accessories to the local thrift store. This was in large part inspired by Jennifer L. Scott's Ten-Item Wardrobe philosophy, extolled on her blog, The Daily Connoisseur, and in her Madame Chic books. Jennifer designates 10 core items for each of two seasons, spring/summer and fall/winter. She lives in Santa Monica, CA.

Jennifer is not hung up on the number 10. That is the starting point for cultivating each wardrobe, and in addition to the core items are "extras", such as t-shirts, blazers, outerwear, shoes, scarves, etc... Today she debuted her spring/summer collection for 2015 at The Daily Connoisseur. She showed 8 dresses, one skirt, and one pair of jeans for the ten core pieces. The extras included 4 t-shirts and 3 pairs of shoes. That makes a total of 17 pieces. Next week she will explain her choices one-by-one, and I imagine there will also be sunglasses, purses, jackets, and similar items added to the extras. Jewelry would be another category, and as with the rest, the number of items is pared down.

As you know, when I recently went through all of my clothing, I decided, at least for now, not to store away the off-season items. So far this has worked out very well, as we have still had chilly weather in Ohio. Yesterday at church, for example, I wore a sleeveless rayon floral maxi dress with a lace-trimmed tank top underneath, and with a long, heavy cardigan sweater over it. The sweater's colors, mostly purple, went well with the dress, and the total effect was perfect for this transitional month of April. Normally I would have stored the cardigan away, but instead I wore it as outerwear with my spring dress. I wore no hosiery, and my shoes were Frye clogs, which I recently purchased for a steal on Ebay. As of yet, these shoes are the only new items I have bought for spring/summer.

If we imagine that Jennifer did not store her fall/winter wardrobe away, then she might have a total of about 35 core items and extras, plus additional coats, scarves, gloves, hats, and other accessories. Her grand total for the whole year most likely does not exceed 50 pieces. I haven't bothered to count all of my clothes, and I still have to go through my accessories. I'll be getting to those today, I have promised myself!

My wardrobe approach is somewhat different than Jennifer's. Her core items are heavy on dresses, which mine for spring and summer also will be. I only have one pair of shorts right now, as well as 5 capris, several jeans, 2 dress pants, and lightweight floral lounge pants. As the weather warms up, those items that I primarily wear will most likely shift and be rearranged accordingly. I find no need to distinguish between the core items and the extras, as Jennifer does. For someone else, t-shirts might be core items, while dresses are extras. The point is not to be a stickler about the exact number, but to cultivate a wardrobe that is essential to you.

I call my style "classic bohemian", like a cross between Ann Taylor and Anthropologie. The best thing to do is to determine a label that reflects your style and to find those brands, of the highest quality you can afford, to shop for your look.

anthropologie.com

Another important thing to note is that you will often read articles about how to put together a core wardrobe of "basics". These typically include a little black (or grey or navy) dress; black dress pants; a white blouse; a leather jacket; a trench coat; jeans; dress pumps and ballet flats. There is nothing wrong with planning your wardrobe this way if that is your style. But keep in mind that women's personal styles and lifestyle needs can vary widely, and there is absolutely no reason that you have to wear your clothes in neutral colors only, or to have any color scheme at all.

If you purchase and keep only clothing that you really enjoy wearing, you will have plenty of separates that will work well together. You will naturally gravitate toward particular colors, textures, and styles, and it will all harmonize well. There is no need to go out and buy your entire essential wardrobe at once. You can build it over time. And if you choose quality over quantity, your clothing will last longer and fit you better, so you won't need to go shopping as often.

As soon as I have have pared down the rest of what is in my closet--the shoes and boots, scarves, belts, purses, etc..., I am going to show you pictures of my entire wardrobe. I have a small chest with 4 drawers, a closet for clothes that prefer or need to be hung, and a vintage cupboard with 4 deep shelves. Right now one of those shelves is completely empty! The family's heavier coats and other winter gear goes in a closet downstairs, which will be a project of its own.

So how is your home-tidying with the KonMari Method going? I'm thrilled to report that my husband has finished Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and has already gone through his clothes and is on to his books! By the way, husbands and wives need to do the discarding of their own things. I don't keep things just because my husband likes them if they don't spark joy for me; and he had to decide on his own what he wanted to save and give away. It is a private matter for you to do alone, with no input from the peanut gallery.

I hope you are having fun with this process, and I'm eager to have you share how it's going in the comments! 

S & F Series--When One Door Closes

Happy April! Tomorrow, April 2, is the anniversary of something that continues to affect my life today. I call it The Day of the Knee. In 2002, only a month and a half after I was married, I was in a serious car accident. I had gone home for a long lunch break from work, excited to have some time to play around in my new house. On my return to work, as I entered an intersection, the traffic light turned yellow. A driver coming from the opposite direction did not yield the right of way and made a left hand turn. We collided. My truck was totaled, and my right knee cap was broken. I might have had time to stop instead of proceeding on the yellow, but I'll never know. I was worried about being late. The other driver was cited for the accident; I had done nothing wrong. I could have chosen differently, but there is no retrieving the past. We can "what if" ourselves to death, and it changes nothing. The consequences remain.

Just the day before, 13 years ago, I took my first belly dance lesson. It was with the sister of the best man at our wedding, Deniz in Dayton. I lived in Columbus at the time. In June I went on my crutches to the Arts Festival downtown and watched a performance of the Habeeba's Dance of the Arts troupe. I took one of their fliers home and registered for classes beginning July 22. Belly dance was a big part of my recovery from the accident. I got strong again. Eventually I danced with the Habeeba's troupe. When I moved to northwest Ohio, I became a belly dance instructor.

Unbeknownst to me, a result of the knee injury was that my right leg is shorter than my left. Evidently the pressure put on the L5 area of my lower back due to the imbalance caused disc damage. One day in February two years ago, while dusting my coffee table, I was suddenly experiencing searing pain. I couldn't even sit up straight. I've had difficulties ever since.

If I didn't have the posterior annular tearing of the L5/S1 disc, my chiropractor said he would encourage me to keep dancing. But as it is...game over.

Loss. A loss of the joy of dancing, the exercise it provides, the opportunities to teach and to perform, the loss of a community. Of course, the dancer friends I have made will still be friends. Many of them I saw only once a year, at the Island of Isis Dance Retreat held every May in Loveland, OH at the amazing Grailville center. Wholesome food, idyllic country surroundings, always a phenomenal teacher, and the camaraderie of women sharing a common passion. Belly dance is a cultural experience unlike any other; you might even say it's a way of life.

The lower back injury can certainly be improved. There could even be a reversal and complete healing, but the chances of that are not very high. Still, there is hope. I was afraid to have the MRI, because I'm claustrophobic. I prayed a Rosary in my mind and on my fingers and survived the experience. I faced a fear, and that is BIG. And now I know what I am dealing with and therefore can move forward. Ironically, the directors of Island of Isis decided to retire the retreat after 20 years. Last year was the grand finale. I am witnessing the end of an era.

My grandmother gave me wise advice. She told me to give myself time to get used to not belly dancing anymore. She said not to put pressure on myself to figure out what I'm going to do next right away. This is pure genius. Because that's exactly what I was doing--rushing the process. I wanted to figure out, in a couple of days, what I was going to do next. I was panicking, because I am an artist, a creative soul, and I might die if I don't have a passionate artistic expression to pursue.

The thing is, I always had a plan. When I knew it was time to move on from a job, for example, before I left I devised a scheme for escape. My dad told me never to quit one job before I had another lined up, so I always had a grand idea and took the necessary steps to make it happen. Yet occasionally, I got unexpectedly fired. One time when this happened, I came home to find my Mary Kay starter kit waiting on my doorstep. Being a Mary Kay Beauty Consultant was my Big Dream at the time, and I was filled with hope. When one door closes, so the saying goes, another one opens.

I suspected that dancing was aggravating my back condition, and I felt that God was preparing me for something else that he was calling me to do. I was willing to accept this if it turned out that I had to give up belling dancing. When I look back on it, I am so grateful. What an exhilarating ride! What stupendous people I have met, what challenges I have risen to, what extraordinarily talented teachers I've had the pleasure to learn from, and what an enormous privilege to be able to serve God with the gifts he has given me. I even made some money for my family along the way.

Knowing that it was all probably going to come to an end doesn't make it any less devastating. My husband has also been experiencing the closing of one door after another. There must be something dazzling beyond our dreams just around the bend!

Please pray for my healing and for my family. I may not know what my next big thing will be, but I do have my tidying up project to keep me busy, thanks to Marie Kondo, who may very well turn out to be a lifesaver. In The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, as I wrote about yesterday, she says that this process of discarding and reorganizing one's home will set you on the course toward what you were genuinely created to do.

I'm not going to lie to you. This process is painful. Letting go of our possessions is hard, even when we know that we must set free those things that don't spark joy. Our fear of letting go, Marie said, comes down to either anxiety about the past or anxiety about the future. We accumulate more and more possessions to remedy these fears. As we all know deep down, the next purchase is only a quick, very temporary fix. The restlessness always returns. Marie Kondo's method is the equivalent of ripping the bandaid off very hairy skin. You just gotta squeeze your eyes shut, take a deep breath, and pull it quick.

Facing your stuff, once and for all, is liberating. Making these decisions of what to keep and what to let go brings with it a growing confidence. When you practice deciding what you really love and what you don't, you get to know yourself better. You learn to know your own mind and heart. You build trust in yourself, because ultimately, you are putting yourself more completely in the hands of God.

Will you die if you don't tidy your home? Is it absolutely necessary? The answer is No. You can choose to keep on picking away at your stuff, a little at a time, and never get anywhere. Or you can keep shoving your stuff into closets, basements, and attics. But out of sight does not equal out of mind. In fact, slowly but surely we go out of our minds, because all of our stuff is wrapped up in the very corners of our being, making us sick. There is no separation of mind, body, and spirit. The clutter is there because something is wrong. Too much has been swept under the carpet, and we're afraid to look.

But you know what? Today I'm going to celebrate my 13th anniversary as a belly dancer! And we will pray for one another. We will begin with our own things, and specifically with our clothing. When that is done, we move onto our books. Category after category, one item at a time, we will sweep through our homes like domestic genies and make all of our own wishes come true.

S & F Series--The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Okay my little chickadees, I know I told you I was going to post on Mondays, and now it's Tuesday. And I said that I would talk about skin care. But so much has been happening that I think I will need to blog more than once a week. Also, a couple of days ago I finished reading Marie Kondo's the life-changing magic of tidying up: the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing (this is how the capitalization appears on the cover). I borrowed it from the library and have given it to my husband to read. While I have referred to this book frequently, it deserves a post dedicated to it. Skin care will have to wait. 

I am already experiencing the results of the KonMari Method. I pared down my spring/summer clothing, took what I am keeping to the laundry room, and bagged the rest up to give away. My dresser drawers have been completely reorganized, and my closet is well on its way. I am paring down so much that I might not even have to store my off season clothing!

Now, Jennifer L. Scott of The Daily Connoisseur blog, who I have also mentioned quite a bit, does not agree with Marie about not storing the off season wardrobe. I haven't decided yet, but I will give you my verdict by next week. At first it might seem to make the most sense to pack away items that you only wear in the summer or winter, so that what you see when you open your drawers and closet are strickly those pieces that you would actually wear.

Then again, I live in Ohio. This means that we have lots of transitional weather. I would never be wearing shorts in winter, and some clothing is way too heavy for summer. Or so it might seem... I'm beginning to suspect that my wardrobe could be considerably expanded if I didn't store anything away, and it would certainly free up my time. We shall see.

One of the wackier elements of Marie's book is that she anthropomorphizes material things. In other words, books don't like to be at the bottom of a pile any more than you or I would. Clothes can be happy or sad. In fact, she seems to suggest that our possessions reincarnate! This is entertaining, but strangely I am discovering that there is some mystical truth to all of this.

I don't want to spoil the pleasure you will get from reading her book by quoting from it or telling you too much about how the method itself works. What I can tell you is that the furniture in my bedroom told me in a very real way that it wanted to be moved. And some of the cardigan sweaters in my closet announced that they were unhappy hanging and getting saggy shoulders and wanted to be folded instead.

I am not joking. I have had very physical experiences and radical shifts in perspective from reading this book and implementing the decluttering process. The promise given is that we will literally figure out what to do with our lives once we have tidied our homes, all in one go. We will be different people. We will be our real selves. We will only have to do this method once, and we will be changed forever. I'm talking metamorphosis, baby! From worm to butterfly.

So just get your hands on this golden nugget of a book, and let's do this! I expect to be reading many comments from you as we go along in this together. It's time to dry off our wings and fly!!

To Simplify & Frenchify--S & F Series Introduction

I'm so excited this morning, because I just received Forever Chic: Frenchwomen's Secrets for Timeless Beauty, Style and Substance by Tish Jett. I've been wanting this book for a long time, which is geared toward the 40+ woman. I've also had an idea for a blog series brewing in my mind, and spring is the perfect time to get down and dirty in the pursuit of a simpler, more meaningful life. Ladies (and gentleman if you are reading), it's time for a merciless decluttering! But we aren't going to think in terms of "spring cleaning" or getting rid of stuff. We are going to pull focus instead on the idea of keeping in our homes and our lives only those things which bring us joy.

The weather is supposed to warm up to the low 60s today, so windows may be opened! I have both my front porch and upstairs balcony already cleaned out and ready for sitting. It's time to live al fresco, but with the protection of screened spaces. A porch can serve as an outdoor cafe. The cafe, in Paris, is the place to see and be seen. In my case, the passersby may not be incredibly chic, but I can be a role model nevertheless, and so can you. Bring up the chic factor in your own neighborhood! This includes walking to as many destinations as possible. Walking is tres French.

Spring is wardrobe transition time. Before you put your winter clothes in storage, go through each piece of clothing you own, actually touching it meditatively in the way of Marie Kondo, author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I began with the tops and bottoms in my dresser drawers and have moved on to the closet. After tops and pants will come sweaters, skirts, dresses, and jackets. Right now I have enough transitional pieces that I don't need to pull my warmer weather clothing out of storage yet. When I do, I will immediately pare down to only those items that warm my soul. We are going to declutter by categories, and categories within categories, as Kondo strongly suggests. And you start with your own belongings. So your own clothes first!

If you don't have good feelings when you handle a particular item, no matter what the reason or for no discernible reason at all, off to charity it goes! If you are currently a size 12 and believe that you will soon be a 10 but know that you will never realistically see a size 8 again, get rid of the too small clothing. Those pieces that you love but that don't fit quite yet can be tucked away for a time but should not remain with the clothes in current circulation. Sentimental items are sorted last, so put pieces that you don't wear but that tug at your heartstrings aside for now. (That's a relief, huh?)


Voila! You have a place to begin. But you must begin it. Today. Throughout this series, I will share with you where I am at in sorting my categories of stuff, and we will explore Tish Jett's Frenchy wisdom. We will be chic--simply, beautifully, and substantially chic--in every area of life. Are you ready to finally meet the real you?