Remodeling This Life

This is a guest post from Sara. She blogs at On Simplicity. Her blog is one of my favorites, as it addresses the beauty in a simple lifestyle, and shows an appreciation for the small things in life. Please take a visit to her site and if you enjoy her writing as much as I do, go ahead and subscribe to her feed!

Like a rich, fragrant garden, a simple lifestyle isn’t something that blossoms without effort or dedication. In most cases, a satisfying yet simple life is one that has been carefully cultivated over many years. I’m actually a beginning gardener in both the literal and figurative senses, but here’s what I’ve learned in my few seasons of simplicity.

Prepare the ground. Just as roses struggle to grow in hard, rocky soil, it’s hard to live a simple life in a messy home or office. Make your environment as conducive as possible to the lifestyle you want. Start by cleaning up the obvious messes. Then, move on to eliminating any clutter that’s distracting you. When your home is streamlined and simplified, you’ve created a place where simplicity is free to grow and develop.

Plant the seed. When you plant a seed in the garden, you’re making a conscious decision about what you want to grow and where. Planting the seed of simplicity is similar; you need to make a conscious choice. Each time you create a new habit, such as following the ten-second rule when shopping or batch processing your tasks, you’re planting a seed. The more seeds you plant with new habits, the larger and more fruitful your garden will grow.

Provide sustenance. Just as new seedlings need to be nurtured, so does your lifestyle. A simple life doesn’t have to be a deprived one. (Far from it!) To give yourself sustenance, seek out simple pleasures. Whether that’s catching a sunset with a glass of wine or repainting a room to give it a warm glow, taking a bubble bath or taking your partner away for the day, that’s all up to you. Just remember that simple pleasures aren’t a luxury, they’re a necessity for you to flourish and thrive.

Pull the weeds from time to time. Weeds are incredible nuisances. They siphon off water and nutrients, leaving your favorite blooms to wilt while silently taking over the garden. In your life, weeds are the clutter and commitments that slowly creep in. One or two don’t make a huge impact, but if you’re not vigilant about pruning these weeds away, your simple life suddenly becomes very complicated. Take time to remove unnecessary time commitments and clutter from your life to keep it flourishing.

Enjoy the view. There’s not much point in creating a rich life for yourself if you can’t sit back and savor it. Stop every now and then to look around you. Notice how peaceful your surroundings are after all that work. Breathe in the calm atmosphere you’ve created and sink into the mental freedom you’ve gained. Most of all, stop and smell the roses.

Lynnae over at Being Frugal posted this excellent article about Vacation Tips For Traveling With Children that I have found very useful this week in preparing for our vacation in a few days. Because my kids are 3 and 15 months, I have had to make some special considerations for the needs that go along with travel at those ages. We are driving approximately 1500 miles - considering sometimes a trip to Target is too far before the whining starts, I have been preparing accordingly.

Lynnae has some really excellent tips and I am doing most of them with a little tweak here and there for our needs.

For our trip, here’s what I am doing.

Travel

• We have chosen to do our driving during the day. But we are simplifying things by not over extending ourselves or the kids by taking our mornings slowly, getting breakfast at the hotel and playing in the pool and then piling into the car at around 11 or 12 each day right in time for the toddler’s nap and driving for 6 hours. It’s not the most efficient way, but we think it will buy us the most quiet hours in the car without having to drive at night.
• I have packed lots of entertainment for the car. My mom has a car DVD player so we’ll have that for my 4 year old and I bought her a brand new movie so that it’s new and exciting and she’ll watch it quietly. I also made sure to pack lots of crayons and activity books and her LeapPad for the car. She’s really into reading signs right now too, so I am sure we’ll do lots of games involving finding letters and words on signs as we drive. The key will be to keep things simple and interesting for everyone.
• I’m stocking the cooler with snacks and drinks for everyone. Less stops for every little tummy rumble will save time and money. I’ll pack string cheese, goldfish, granola bars, crackers, and a few other favorites. For drinks, I’ve purchased a backup pack of sippy cups because somehow we always lose the lids. It’s like the missing sock in the pair. No idea where they go. And the last thing we need is open cups in the car.

Packing

• I think I packed pretty lightly, considering we are going away for 6 weeks. I got all of my clothes into a medium duffel and all my kids clothes into a medium shared duffel. To simplify our stops at hotels at night, I have a separate tote packed with clothes and swimsuits just for the 3 days in the car. That way, I am not digging through the car every night and going through all of their vacation clothes for a couple days worth of outfits. I have packed extra clothes for the car taking into consideration that my kids will spill and be messy and need to change their clothes at least once per day.
• I am bringing large ziplock bags to put dirty clothes in from those travel days in the car. I’ll have a stain stick on hand, and clean up wipes for hands and faces in the car.
• For me, I plan to bring a lot of my favorite things to do that I don’t get to do often enough because of kids climbing on me. I’ll have my sewing with me, some magazines, and I imagine a few hot Starbucks coffees

I am hopeful this will be our best travel and vacation yet. I think it will be because both my mom and I have gone out of our way to plan and make this drive as simple as possible for all of us. We want it to be relaxing and not rushed so we feel like our vacation is starting the moment we leave home, and not a bunch of stress and chaos until we reach our destination.

What is simplicity? Well, that is the beauty of it - it’s different things to different people. I love to wear designer jeans and heels but I also like to spend a lot of time in my garden. I love to dig in the dirt and play with my kids in the yard. To me, simplicity is a mindset. It’s about making your life one that is easy for you to live and changing the way you think about and do things.

For me, it’s about getting back to basics, and enjoying small things. It may seem like a contradiction that simplicity often means spending more time doing things. Like line drying clothes. Takes longer than just tossing them in the dryer. But trust me, once you get a system going that works for you? Simple. Gardening? Time consuming. But when you eat food you grew yourself, it is incredibly rewarding and just feels so simple.

I like making things instead of buying them when I can. This often makes more work for me, but that’s a trade-off for not having to drive to the store and pay someone for it. And I like the pride in having made something myself. I especially like if it comes out imperfect because it makes what I do that much more unique.

Life doesn’t have to be about minimalism to be simplistic. I think my life is simple more because of my mindset than anything else. I release all the chaos from my life and mind. I stop worrying about what others think. I forget about the past and just live for today. I declutter my life. All of those things simplify who I am today. They make room for the good stuff to become part of me. By eliminating worthless things from my days, I am making room for things with value. My days feel more relaxing, slower, and fulfilling because I am not doing a lot of things that I don’t want to be. I have finally started to let my life take shape as my very own and not one that anyone else wants it to be.

Some may say that I am an obsessed girl. I prefer passionate. I can’t think of another word to describe how I feel about having discovered the beauty in simplicity and frugality. I have found a love, appreciation, and respect for little things in life. It has not been an easy road to get to where I am today but definitely one worth taking.

The simplicity I have discovered over the past year of my life after all my family went through is just so simple. It’s like for so long we were making everything harder on ourselves by trying to seek external happiness and the approval of others. Letting those things go and knowing that it’s all from within that you find happiness and approval has been like moving mountains in my life. It’s a huge weight lifted.

And now, instead of a life of words, of whining, of complaining, of hoping for better when - I’m just living my life. My life has turned from one of words to one of action. This has come about mostly because of my full on embracing of frugality and all the beautiful things that it brings to life. Instead of the main action of my life being swiping a piece of plastic when I want, need or have a whim for something, I am creative - I am using my hands not for writing checks and entering pin numbers. I am using my hands to make things, to build things, to create and to shape my life into a beautiful, simple specimen. I’m adding love and care and handmade, homemade goodness to my life and those around me.

Tired of talking about what I want to do, what I want different, what I don’t like, I am a woman now that loves to act. To change things I don’t like, or to change my viewpoint about them and see them in a positive light. There is so much pain and suffering in this world. The last thing the world needs is someone like me - living a life of splendor compared to much of the world although not compared to the rest of America - whining about my children’s bad behavior, or wanting more cash in the bank or needing this that or the other thing. A shift has taken place within me that has made me realize my small place in this world. I can make the most of it through doing and acting. I can lead a simple life that involves days of digging in the dirt and creating a home as a haven, and making food, sewing (yes, sewing! I started sewing again this week!), using the hands I was given to provide for myself and my family or I can keep sitting and waiting for another day, another time, when there is more of whatever I may fool myself into believing I need before I can be happy. I choose to act today instead of waiting for tomorrow.

I’ll be making my own salsa in no time!