February 2012
12 posts
“I tilt my hand more to the light and the wave frequencies reinforce on bubble’s dome and color bands deepen, fire-blue swirling flame into lurid scarlet. A kaleidoscope planet. Full attention fills the empty ache.
This. Is this eucharisteo the way to that elusive fullest life, the one that lives in the moment? What my sister urges when I get angsty and knotted about tomorrow, when I...
So Long, February
Well, the kitchen has been greatly improved by the addition of the Horizontal Pantry. (I know some of you may be happier when you never have to read that term again. But I, for one, enjoy it. The term and the actual thing itself.)
On Saturday, I did the re-organizing. Put appropriate things in the new Horizontal Pantry. Separated the metal baking pans from the glass ones. Re-organized my...
Late
I never wear a watch. Ever.
I hate them.
For me, the metaphor of time binding my wrists is just too close to reality. Also I have abnormally large wrist bones and I don’t know if the watch should be worn to the North or South of this thing jutting out of my arm.
Plus, I am too much of a free spirit to be confined to the limits of time.
(Ok, I just don’t like to be bossed...
Horizontal Pantry
So the dishes thing. Ya…
(Do you like how I go back and forth between serious and ridiculous? Welcome to the confusion that is Jen. It’s not uncommon for me to cry and laugh at the same time, while my husband looks on with a lot of concern on his face, trying to decipher from which angle he should approach me. Which personality to talk to first. Lord only knows how my parents made it...
Getting There
When you are at the beginning of a journey (or a struggle if we want to be glass-half-empty type people. Which I often am.) it feels as though you will never get to where you are trying to go. Literally. There is no end in sight. You have no map. You have never been to this place before, through this valley. You can see the peak to which you are heading. As the crow flies, it would be a short...
A Cautionary Tale
Sometimes things can become a little too relaxed when heading toward simplicity.
Sometimes you wake up on Sunday morning and your family tells you that they have nothing clean to wear.
‘Really?’, you think. ‘But I have plenty of clothes still left in my drawer. How can the rest of you have nothing to wear?’
(I am sure this has very little to do with the fact that my...
“The world I live in is loud and blurring and toilets plug and I get speeding...”
– Ann Voskamp, — “one thousand gifts”
Anti-Stress
*The above photos were taken on our trip to San Francisco in 2010, a particularly stress-less vacation. (Except the drive on Hwy 1 along the cliffs. Where the power steering went out. At night. In the rain. Ya, all but that part.) Anyway, enjoy the soothing pictures.
So I’ve been in this phase for the past few years. A phase where I just feel stressed all the time. It’s getting to...
The Cup of Shame
So, granted we have only been doing this experiment for about a week and a half or something (we started before I posted about it) but I’m not sure about this dish deal. I feel like we are constantly looking for the kid’s dishes.
Really this experiment (and all of the experiments to come as well) are as much about responsibility as they are about simplicity. Because when you get rid...
January 2012
6 posts
Know Thyself
I have had to learn some things through this whole process. It’s hard to get rid of so many things and as we all know, anything that is difficult in life will of course teach us something as a natural result.
For example, cowl neck sweaters, although glamorous on the lovely ladies at church, are not for me. I will stick with my hoodies and if I really want to get gussied up, I may even don a...
Next Up: Dishes
In a nutshell….
laundry experiment = success = permanent system.
Love it. Keeping it.
I do believe I will add a few shirts to everyone’s “collection”. The extra clothing we have stored away will be our “back-ups”. They’ll come in handy for the times I ruin a shirt by washing it with something blue that stains, as I did this past week with a shirt and...
When Should is a Swear
So this past week, I have done 2 loads of laundry. Total. And one of those was a load of coats that I washed because we had them out at the campfire and they smelled like smoke. Compare that to the 8-10 loads a week I used to do. There are things here and there, but not enough to make a full load. That is a significant change, wouldn’t you say? A thing of beauty.
I am enjoying not having so...
Observations and Confessions
Note: I did my first and second official loads of laundry yesterday. One load containing all our laundry together (and it was fairly small) and one load of towels, which I took out of the dryer and hung up on the hooks in our bathroom. The very definition of simplicity, right?
Observations - Week #1
1) There is no way that The Baby will be able to get by with the same amount of clothing as the...
Wash Day
Let’s talk about clothes in the Miller house. I don’t know what a typical day looks like for you, but here in this house, we go through some clothes.
The 4 year old goes through outfits like royalty. Every time I see him he is wearing a different outfit. The twins did the same thing when they were around that age, but that was because they needed to change personas. I’m Pippi Longstocking. Now...
December 2011
1 post
Guilt Be Gone
I can’t organize to save my life.
A little bit of honesty here. Because if you ever come to visit me and you see the state of my house (or if I get brave and post pictures of my home in its’ current condition…oh boy. I’m breaking out in hives just thinking about it.) you will look at it and think, ‘Why, in the name of Heloise, is she writing a blog on organizing/cleaning/de-cluttering?’ Nope....