Due to all of us getting very familiar with the four walls of our home, home decorating, renovating, and purging have become very popular. While I have not been renovating, I have been able to make some changes to our living spaces and more surprisingly to me, continue to reduce my possessions in areas I did not expect to.
Coming face to face with our things and having the time to contemplate how much value their presence adds to our lives has prompted us to prioritize in our today. Last week I touched on how being tired holds us back from, surprise, not being tired. Yes, what a shocker, yet take a minute to think on how being tired limits the activities you are willing to participate in and how it clouds your mind for making good decisions. I am currently facing that myself and after mulling it over, have decided to give myself 10 minutes to do something I enjoy even though I might not have the energy for it. I need to continue investing in my wellbeing in order to function on a daily basis.
These next types of items might sound superficial and you might not feel like you can relate, but please hear me out.
In this same vein, the ways that I have been functioning have been different this last year. Days pass without me leaving the house, and my routine has become more and more predictable: work, family time, dinner, shower, entertainment, sleep. Searching for something fun to watch, I found a video regarding wardrobes where the lady states a very basic truth: your closet should be ratioed to represent your life activities. I don’t know what hit me, but I started pulling things that I had not worn in years and was holding on to because I liked the color or the stripes on it. I got rid of about a couple bags of items and felt more in tune with my closet. Similarly, I had gotten tired of my makeup setup and I put most of it out of sight, keeping only a few basics handy. This empowered me even more, and after a few days, I brought up what I had put away understanding that if I hadn’t selected it as basics, I didn’t need it, and that most of it hadn’t been touched in a year so it was probably expired. I got rid of about a third of my makeup.
Most of us hold on to things hoping for an opportunity where we can use them. We don’t want to lose our money or can’t bear to be parted with it. Time passes and if we listen, we will learn from it. We might finally accept the change we are ready for and say goodbye to something that represented a portion of us that has moved on. For me, it was accumulating for the fun of it. I don’t think that I will only shop strictly when I need something, but I keep getting closer to that, and I am very happy about it. What I used shopping for, boredom, is no longer satisfied by it and I have understood that I need to invest on myself in order to be truly content.
Relying less on material things to find happiness has strengthened me to find the happiness I had been looking for in the day-to-day. It takes some energy but if I look at it in the span of my life, wouldn’t I be more satisfied with taking the time to do something I like than just saying I am too tired over and over again, and have nothing to show for it? Removing the excess from my life leaves more space for what makes my heart pump harder, and the experience encourages me to keep going for less.
Have you had a similar experience? Have you let go of something and felt like a new you was being born? I’d love to hear about it.
Thriving in Simplicity 