Maximum Gratitude, Minimal Stuff

Many of us have good habits that were taught to us (okay – nagged into us ) when we were small, such as "wash your hands" and "brush your teeth" and "turn off the lights when you leave a room."  (My dad was a stickler for that last one!) And there are  habits  that every minimalist should practice to help keep clutter at bay.  Maybe you also learned some of these habits when you were young.   "Don't just put it down, put it away"  is something my mom often said, and it started with toys and clothes and wet towels and went on from there.  If that's not a habit for you, you might want to learn it now. Practice new, beneficial habits to replace old, harmful habits. "It's a lot easier to keep up than to catch up"  is a catchy way of saying that procrastination is not your friend.  When you have routines for household chores and maintain regular cleaning and tidying, your home will be beautiful, spacious, and inviting.  If you pu...

Clutter and overwhelm may strongly impact your life today, but clutter doesn't need to define or limit you.  It doesn't need to have a say in your life going forward. You can change that picture. Here's what we're up against. Watch TV for just two hours, or read one lifestyle magazine, and you'll understand the messages our culture throws at you all day, every day, from so many directions.  These messages say you need to: look a certain way dress a certain way drive a certain kind of car live in a certain kind of house have a partner who looks a certain way travel exotically buy your kids all they want so they're popular and cool eat out all the time (a lot of it crappy food) drink with the beautiful people work out like an Olympian...  so you can look a certain way ! It seems that the Instagram life is what everyone has.  The fashion and home design bloggers, the fitness gurus, the remarkable home chefs, and all of our friends' amazing vac...

When I was a young mother, if you had asked what was most dear to me, what were my absolute highest priorities, I wouldn't have hesitated to say my husband and kids.  There would have been no question in my mind that they were the center of my life. I wouldn't have said my greatest concern was my house or its décor or the list of things I wanted to buy to "improve" it.  I wouldn't have said it was food, or my next diet.  I wouldn't even have said it was singing, or pursuing my next role.  After all, I had chosen to home school my kids, and opera singing was now a hobby. I wouldn't have said so, but that's where my  thoughts, efforts, and money  went. A spiritual problem I was constantly shopping or planning what to buy next.  I ate junk to fill some sort of lack, but I was still dissatisfied.  How could I be otherwise?  My time and energy were spent on things that didn't really matter. My problem was really a spiritual problem.  I was ...

Looking for a foolproof method to wreck your ability to be present for your own life ?  Just follow my Twelve Step Program for Mindlessness, guaranteed to leave you numb and disengaged. The 12 steps to mindlessness 1.   As soon as you're awake, pick up your phone and flick through social media feeds and email. 2.   Continue to do this as you eat.  Pay absolutely no attention to the calories you're inhaling. 3.   Make sure to ignore roommates, spouse, and kids in favor of your phone! 4.   Determine to fit two hours' worth of tasks into 45 minutes, and do everything while thinking of something else.  Let your anxiety and impatience continually simmer. 5.   Eat lunch in front of a screen, once again failing to notice what you eat or how it makes you feel. 6.   Continue to rush while trying to fit in more tasks than you have time for, letting your temper boil over when anyone gets in your way.  Drive around town like a bat out of...

I used to use gift-giving as an excuse to shop. I had a little shopping addiction, and craved that rush of pleasure you get when you acquire something new.  But when I didn't really need anything, I had to find a way to  manage the guilt  of buying for no reason. So I'd buy a gift.  I could always come up with a gift-giving occasion -- maybe Mother's Day was only a month away, or a colleague had a birthday on the horizon, or I thought I'd save an item for Christmas.  (I had a closet full of potential gifts.) What exactly was I buying?    According to surveys, millions of unwanted gifts are received every Christmas.  Well over half of the stuff we purchase isn't actually brightening anyone's holiday.  And since we all feel a certain amount of guilt when we get rid of gifts, they add to the clutter in our homes, and increase our feelings of stress and overwhelm. I was wasting money to buy things people didn't want, filling their homes with cl...

It's November 1, and you can't go into any store without seeing evidence that as far as marketers are concerned, the Christmas season is here.  There might be a little corner devoted to Thanksgiving, but since that holiday has been celebrated by retailers since Labor Day, it's already getting old, even though, by the calendar, it's still nearly four weeks away. I don't know about you, but the continued pushing forward of every season (bikinis on sale in January, for example) and every holiday kills the anticipation for me.  Change is a natural part of life, and it's good to plan and prepare for it, but it's also good to pay attention to what's happening right now, and to find ways to savor what today has to offer. We like to focus on the big stuff. Weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, graduations, promotions, and trips – the big events and accomplishments command our attention.  As we finish one big project, we're immediately planning for the ...

Many of us long for a simpler life free from the burden of our stuff, but we don't know how to achieve it.  We're overwhelmed, and we feel trapped in our current way of life.  But deep down, we believe that change could bring a huge payoff:  more time and energy, more money, more freedom, more generosity, less stress, less debt, and less distraction.   How do we go about making that change? All progress comes through experimentation. Someone has an idea, and she tries it out.  That's how we learn.  So why not creatively experiment with a more minimalist approach to life to see whether the benefits are worth the effort? The basic idea is to live without a particular possession or practice for a limited amount of time, and then decide if you can or want to do without it permanently.  A few examples might be going for 24 hours without a smart phone , or going a month without TV, the microwave, or eating out.  You might try limiting your ...