Less is More

Today is the beginning of the month of letting go. In case you didn't read the last post, the goal is to get rid of one thing on February 1, two things on February 2, and so on until I've thrown away, sold, or donated over 400 items from the house. It is doubtful that I'll make it through the entire month, but I'm going to try (with the support of a minimalist friend whose 2015 goals closely align with mine). If it isn't a necessity or something that brings me joy, it is wasting space. 

This concept isn't totally new to me. My family loves Legos. We love them - we give them to each other as gifts, we put sets together as a family then display them, we have Lego artwork. We even decorated Aidan's room with a Lego superhero theme a couple of years ago. Here's what I don't love about Legos: they collect dust. Dust builds up in every nook and cranny of every set we have, and every time I move a set to clean around it, I break something off, meaning I have to dig out the instructions before spending time making repairs. One of my sets is the Haunted Mansion, which is a huge, complicated set that I convinced myself actually looked more authentic with dust bunnies. But a few months ago, I hit the "over it" point. I carefully packed up all but one of my Lego sets to store in the attic until the family feels like rebuilding. My Legos were becoming a pain instead of bringing me joy (except the Tower Bridge, which still makes me happy from its bookshelf perch). 

While I'm not ready to let go of the Legos completely - rare sets increase in value and are fun for the whole family - I am ready to get rid of a lot of other stuff. Jewelry that I never wear, kitchen items that are taking up space (I seriously don't need four colanders), the cat water fountain that is used for play instead of hydration, books I haven't read and don't intend to read - these things are pointless. I feel like they're in the house only so I can move them out of the way when I'm looking for something I actually want to use. So this February, I'm happily decluttering the cabinets, bookshelves, closets and junk drawers. As I'll be out of town for a few days this week, I've gotten the items from February 1 - 5 together already and taken pictures (see below) to send to my accountability partner.

On a completely unrelated simplification note, my husband finally cut the cable cord! To those of you who don't know him, this is HUGE. He is a politics junkie, and he's been holding out only to have access to cable news channels as they don't have full online streaming access - and when they called the next day to offer him a cheap price and a $200 Visa gift card for changing his mind, he stood his ground. I haven't turned the TV on for anything other than Netflix/Amazon movies or SEC football in at least a year, so I'm really excited to have one less bill to worry about. 

These past couple of weeks have been somewhat more difficult for me in the food/personal wellness categories. We're doing very well with cooking healthier foods at home (but I know we could do much better), I'm drinking more water and very little soda, and I've even managed to work out four times this week. I know I could be doing more, though. It was hard for a couple of weeks because my mouth was sore from surgery. Then came the first business trip of the new year. I ate healthier than I've eaten on many previous trips, but I have two more trips over the next two weeks. One of my absolute favorite things to do on trips is to sample the local food. So with trips three weeks in a row, it's going to be hard to make sure I maintain healthy habits. If you travel frequently, please share your tips on eating clean while on the road.

While I'm not particularly proud of the eating better category, we're all still happy about the CSA and are excited to start planting some of the seeds we've received. And I'm hoping to start a compost heap soon so we can use it in the small garden that WILL happen this year. If you have tips on that, please share those as well.

4DX is working pretty well for us. It's keeping us honest if nothing else - I can look at my scorecard and know exactly where I've failed for the week if I don't see results. Progress is slow, but it's steady - baby steps will get us there eventually, right?!

Thanks for reading my rambling. :)

Feb. 1

Feb. 2

Feb. 3 (the cat fountain is in the bag)

Feb. 4

Feb. 5

Feelin' All Right

So far, I'm feeling good about the changes in 2015!

Foodstuffs:
The CSA is treating us well. We've eaten almost everything that we received in the first two shares, which is where I was afraid we'd fail miserably. I also realized today that our grocery bill has decreased significantly. Because of the holiday craziness, I wasn't able to tell if the food bill dropped from mid-December through January 1, but I can definitely tell a difference in the last two weeks. Pinterest is great for recipes that are helping me cook with what we have on hand instead of dropping into the grocery store for small purchases a few times a week. Other than things we eat all the time like zucchini, peppers, onions and potatoes, I don't think we've had to get much produce at all. 

Simplification:
As of Sunday, my closet is cleaned up. It's not cleaned out yet - that will come - but it's getting there. My clothes, when they weren't strewn haphazardly around the closet, have always been organized by pants, dresses, skirts, shirts, tank tops, etc. This time, I went through almost every article of clothing and have it arranged by what fits me right now, what should fit me in a month (if I eat well and treat my body right), what should fit me in three months, and what will be donated/sold if it doesn't fit me by summer. By summer, I plan to start on whatever version of Project 333 I decide to use. So the change in my closet is a process, but I hope to see excellent results over time.

My friend Melissa sent me a challenge earlier this week. Starting February 1, I will get rid of one thing from my house. On February 2, two things. And so on until Day 28, when I get rid of 28 things. While I know that I might not make it the entire month, if I make it, I will have gotten rid of more than 400 things that I don't need or that don't bring me joy. That's a lot of stuff I wouldn't have to wash, dust or deal with in any way.

Other:
Our 4DX scorecards are posted on our bathroom door and in use as of Monday. I'm supposed to be doing 30 minutes of cardio four times a week. I expect that to start next week (minor oral surgery Monday morning has put a little hitch in my get-along), but for now, all of my non-exercise goals for the week are being met. I'll find out Monday morning if my goals for the week are moving the levers. Cross your fingers for me …

I hope you're all having a wonderful New Year!

Yum

Progress continues! I returned to work today after two glorious weeks off. While I wasn't quite ready to go back, I took advantage of a rare day with no meetings. My inbox is cleaned out, my to-do list for the week is ready, and late in the afternoon, I took an hour to get rid of a bunch of unnecessary desk items that I don't use. By next week, my goal is to do a quick review of the business magazines that have piled up so I can clear out a particularly piled up corner.

On the food side of things, the CSA veggies are treating us well this week. Sunday night, we tried a fantastic slow cooker stuffed cabbage casserole (the link will tell you it might be an "unseemly" site, but it's safe). We used ground turkey instead of beef and quinoa instead of rice. Absolute perfection if you need to use a lot of cabbage, and it was simple to prepare. Jonathan and I loved it. Aidan  hated it. I mean HATED it with a passion I've rarely seen from him. The meal quickly descended from a pleasant family dinner to a nightmarish temper tantrums that led to the kiddo being sent to bed an hour before bedtime. Lesson of the night? Aidan is not a fan of cabbage.

Pinterest is becoming my best friend for recipes with the strange CSA foods. I found tonight's recipe while looking for a way to use fennel - seriously, what is this stuff, and why do the cats love it?! We ended up having a vegetarian roasted vegetable quinoa salad with a few minor changes to the recipe. We used two zucchini instead of a squash combo, no dressing, and added a small potato. I didn't have Herbs de Provence on hand, so I mixed up basil, marjoram, sage, thyme, coriander and some of the fennel leaves. The mix turned out really well. I'm officially a fan of the fennel bulb. I'll figure out what to do with the stalk on another day.

As there was no cabbage involved, this was more of a success with the family child. He requested that we use wild rice instead of quinoa next time, and he would like us to add either kielbasa or chicken. But there were no tears, so I'm happy.

By tomorrow night, I'm going to set up a scoreboard for my Wildly Important Goals as they pertain to health. Tonight, I taught the family the 4DX concept of focusing on one or two primary goals, and while somewhat skeptical, Jonathan is willing to give it a shot (The man obviously loves me a lot). Aidan, on the other hand, is raring to go with his goal - increase the number of push ups he can do from 40 to 50 by March 24. I didn't know he could do 40, so I'm interested to see how this turns out … 

I resolve to change

I want to have a personal way to keep track of my new year's resolutions, which include plans to:

- Simplify. This encompasses a lot of things, some personal and some for the household. It involves things like getting rid of things that aren't needed, being more organized at the house, and doing anything feasible to make a complicated life as simple as possible. My guess is that this goal is going to be the most-discussed aspect on this blog.

- Better myself and my family by cooking and eating better. Expect recipe ideas for our CSA share and from my favorite cookbook ever (Skinnytaste), comments on those recipes, self-flagellation on how much food we purchased and didn't eat, and similar.

- Purchase no clothes, shoes, or purses for a year. That started on Thanksgiving. I plan to add at least one new thing to that list each month. December was scarves, which were initially excluded from the clothes category. I hope to try to make paper towels the January addition, but I have to work a little to convince my husband. It might be modified to be "no more than one roll a month."



As there are people who don't care about my progress, this blog is a simple way to capture my journey without boring my friends and family to death. I am not making any commitments to post regularly or to keep it interesting for the sake of potentially non-existent readers. This is the best way I could think of to create a public record that will keep me honest about what I'm doing while holding me accountable.

So far, a whopping four days in, I'm sticking with my resolutions! :)

Progress under the simplify category has included these things:

- The game closet is cleaned out and organized. We have gotten rid of games that haven't been played in years and made room for the new games Aidan received for Christmas (one of which was sent from the Colorado Barrons that we're trying out tonight). We made room in the closet for all of the outside toys so that they are no longer in Aidan's room. This makes it much easier to keep up with where they are, gave him more space in his bedroom, and has the added bonus of preventing Aidan from getting in trouble because he tries something like, I don't know, stopping a ceiling fan with a baseball bat - a trick he could learn from his uncle Richard. While I was working on the closet, I finally gave up on finding missing puzzle pieces (also known as "cat toys") and threw away the puzzles that will never be whole again.

- We have several glass-front cabinets in the kitchen that I set up to look gorgeous when we bought our house. Now, I'm taking steps to arrange them so that they're appealingly functional rather than only pretty. Work in progress, but I'm getting there. And I already like the results of the one cabinet that's done.

- Since I'm not buying clothes, I'm unsubscribing from all promotional emails that always tempt me to shop. I think I've unsubscribed to all of them, but as new ones come in, I'm requesting removal.  I think I was getting about thirty a day, only one or two of which were even interesting to me, so the removal has made checking email much faster and efficient, especially since only a handful of people I care about actually use email!

We're trying a new recipe tonight to use some of the cabbage from the CSA. Cabbage, quinoa, ground turkey, bell pepper, onion, and seasoning are simmering in the slow cooker now. Here's hoping for good results.