The Dainty Days
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​The Dainty Days


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Where to Begin

7/4/2020

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Hello again!

Far and away the most frequently asked question I get is where to begin this whole minimalism/mindful/decluttering journey.

I have been on this kick since 2016 ish, and I have consumed a lot of material that I am so happy to share with you! It's also worth mentioning that this journey is uniquely your own. You'll forge your own path and find what works for you, and please share with me when you do! There are so many great resources out there, and here are some I've found:
  • The Minimalists
    • These two gentlemen introduced me to minimalism (and my sweet friend Alex introduced me to their podcast!).
    • Netflix documentary Minimalism
    • Authors of Minimalism, Essential, and Everything That Remains 
    • Their fourth book will be out in 2021
    • Years worth of great podcasts on every imaginable facet--this is where I began
  • Gretchen Rubin
    • She is the lawyer-turned-happiness researcher responsible for the Four Tendencies framework, and a treasure trove of free material to jump start you on your own Happiness Project.
    • Author of The Happiness Project and Outer Order, Inner Calm (many more as well but I found these to be most valuable)
    • Cohost of Happier podcast (to be really honest, not my favorite pod)
    • More free content on gretchenrubin.com
  • Dana K. White
    • Blogs at aslobcomesclean.com
    • Incredibly real approach to decluttering
    • Author of ​Decluttering at the Speed of Life and How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind--this book introduced me to concepts like "clutter blind" ness and how to trick your slob of a mind into noticing what you typically don't (this is to those out there who, like me, cover every flat surface possible and then forget that those items don't belong there)
  • Marie Kondo
    • I read ​The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up but don't necessarily find myself agreeing with her approach--you will make a humongous mess before you make real progress but many have found success with this so who am I to say
    • I use her folding techniques and think they are absolutely genius
      • There are countless youtube videos on her folding techniques, to be honest I would skip the book and head straight there
  • Cait Flanders
    • I am a little bummed to say she no longer blogs, and that her blogs are not available anymore
    • Her book They Year of Less is the inspiration behind this little project of mine and an excellent resource for any mindfulness/minimalist practice
    • She mixes the worlds of personal finance, mindfulness, and minimalism seamlessly and has lots of great resources on her website caitflanders.com (including budgeting tools)
  • Fumio Sasaki
    • Author of Goodbye, Things
    • His simple and humble writing style is immediately endearing and I loved to read about his personal experience minimizing 
I hope this is helpful for where to start your own minimalism journey. These individuals have inspired me to really make a change in how I approach the things in life. I am sure you know that people matter, things really don't, but their work has made it possible to put knowledge into action in my life and I hope it does the same for you!

Love,
​Ashley
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The Nitty Gritty

6/30/2020

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Let's get down to it. 

The steps laid out by Cait in the epilogue of The Year of Less are as follows (grossly oversimplified by yours truly):
  1. Declutter your home
  2. Take inventory of the items you own the most of
  3. Write 3 lists:
    1. Essential items you'll need to buy as you run out
    2. Nonessentials you're not allowing yourself to buy for the duration of the spending freeze
    3. Approved list of purchases
  4. Unsubscribe/unfollow emails or social media accounts that tempt you to spend unnecessarily
  5. Set up shopping ban savings account
  6. Tell everyone you know
I think I nailed the sixth order of business, hmmmm?

One of my favorite aphorisms of Cait's is that "personal finance is personal" and so is this experiment. I won't be opening a new savings account for this six month sabbatical from spending or taking inventory of the items I own the most of. I am midway in my decluttering journey and no longer have large accumulations of crap I don't need or use. I do however have medium accumulations of crap I don't need so I will be beginning with step 1.
My plan:

  1. I am getting my floors replaced this upcoming weekend, July 4 and 5. My goal was to have the remaining problem areas decluttered by this weekend. I have all of three days to complete this lofty goal, but I'll take my best shot at it.
  2. Skip
  3. My lists
    1. Essentials I can replace as I run out:
      1. groceries/food/cleaning supplies
      2. basic makeup and haircare
      3. toiletries
      4. gas and basic bills/expenses/upkeep items
    2. Non essentials I'm not buying for the rest of the year:
      1. books
      2. clothes/shoes/vanity items
      3. whatever random thing I'm certain will bring happiness at the moment 
    3. Approved spending:
      1. curtain for over my kitchen window
      2. photo gifts for my loved ones for Christmas - no more than $50 this Christmas **more to come on doing away with expected gifting
      3. a wedding gift for the one wedding I'm attending between now and 12/31
      4. intentional meals with friends and loved ones
      5. one PSL when they launch this year
      6. rugs for Gavin's and my room
  4. I will be muting all of the accounts on Instagram I leave feeling less-than after visiting and unsubscribing from any lingering email lists I haven't gotten to yet
  5. Skip
  6. Nailed it
I won't be perfect at this. I will falter and fail and pick right up where I left off, and I will take you along for the ride as much as I possibly can.

Tomorrow's post will be a compilation of my starting points for aspiring minimalists along with a collection of "before" pics.. 

Thanks for being here, this should be fun.

​Love, Ashley
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A Half Year of Less

6/29/2020

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​Last week I finished listening to the audio version of the book The Year of Less by Cait Flanders. She so eloquently sums up many thoughts and experiences I've had while stumbling through the world of minimalism. Whether or not minimalism has any relevance to your life, I can't recommend the book enough. She also covers topics that are widely relevant to humans in general and honestly calls herself out without tearing herself down. That's a tricky balance and I think she does a great job.

That brings me to my own experiment with concepts derived from The Year of Less. We're about to head into July which means the year is halfway over. I genuinely can't believe the strange turns this year has brought us all, and can't even begin to imagine where it will lead us for the second half. One thing that hasn't changed in my life is my desire to live it more intentionally. 

I recently looked back through old journal entries and realized I've been praying for the same change of heart for years now. I want to put my people first and foremost, pay my full attention to what's in front of me, and surround myself with only the things that add value. I love my people well (though there's always room for improvement), but mindfulness and minimalism have not been anywhere close to "mastered". I could tell you my priorities all day long, but I was speaking about them rather than living them.

I've been on a minimalism journey since around 2016 (or have I always been on this journey, technically?). I became obsessed with The Minimalists podcast, books, YouTube channel, every work of their's I could consume. I went through decluttering and organizing sprees but quickly found myself back to my old habit of shopping to fill my time and the large hole in my heart.

It turns out old habits do in fact die hard.

Shopping has held a special place for me since I was very small. That was always THE thing to do on the weekends, after school, honestly anytime I possibly could. Herein lies a major discrepancy between how each of my parents operate in the world. My dad would buy a new $8 pair of jeans from Walmart and call it good for a decade whereas my mom could easily buy 8 pairs of jeans in a weekend. I'll let you guess whose side I emulated. I didn't understand as a child what I was doing, and I never took the time to question it. I continued these shopping habits into my post college years, though it ebbed and flowed. It's only been recently that I started investigating into why I leaned into shopping so hard and truly came to grips with the place it was holding for me.

The truth is I no longer need shopping to distract me from what hurts. I know how to sit with it now. And though I'm not perfect at it, I at the very least understand that I HAVE to sit with it. 

I did the hard work of burrowing out from under the sad bomb shelter I spent years creating, and I'm ready to embrace the next chapter.

I want to invest this time so that my future journal entries don't read exactly like those of years past, wishing I behaved differently rather than actually behaving differently. The difference now is I've got two gentlemen on the scene who've already taught me so much. Rob is a natural at minimalism and inspires the hell out of me just by getting to witness how he operates in the world. Babies are  minimalist by nature, and Gavin has shown me how little things matter and how much our time together does.

Tomorrow's post will outline what my "Half Year of Less" will entail in detail. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

Love,
Ashley


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Love in the Time of Corona

4/5/2020

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Happy quarantine day 39754836923 y'all.

Mother's Day weekend is upon us. This holiday is one I had no idea was so triggering for so many until I wrote this post on the subject matter two years ago. Motherhood, the lack of our motherhood, the loss of our mothers, our mothers not meeting our expectations, us not meeting the expectations of ours mothers, etc. is very emotional and potentially carries immense hurt, joy, fear, love.

But the greatest of these is love.

In Untamed, Glennon Doyle writes,
"Parents love their children. I have met no exceptions. Love is a river, and there are times when impediments stop the flow of love. Mental illness, addictions, shame, narcissism, fear passed down by religious and cultural institutions--these are boulders that interrupt love's flow.

"Your parent--your sister, your friend, the one who couldn't love you--her love was impeded. That love was there--swirling, festering, vivacious in its desperation for release. It was there, it is there, all for you. That love exists. It just couldn't get past the boulder."
This is something I did not believe until recently. I'm sure I'm not alone in having deemed myself unlovable or the love not existing rather than there being a boulder in the way. It's so much easier to vilify the ones who've hurt us than to release the situation from our hands entirely. It was really never ours to carry.

How others love you speaks only about their ability to love and not about how lovable you are. 

This is applicable to all interpersonal encounters, including the well-intentioned folk who ask when you'll finally have kids, the oblivious well wishers who have no idea your pregnancy was unplanned, those who don't even acknowledge that this is your first Mother's Day since your own has passed.

We never mean to hurt our people. And yet there is so much hurt.

We won't all become mothers, but each of us is a daughter. I am going into this Mother's Day with a heart posture of gratitude for the one who carried me in her belly for nine months, and in her heart ever since. She hasn't loved me perfectly, but that was never going to be possible. The love is there and has always been, and the boulder gets smaller each time I let go of the middle schooler in me who couldn't understand any of that.

I so truly am with you this weekend, regardless of what your mothering situation looks like. Celebrate, don't celebrate, do whatever you need to commemorate or simply get through this Hallmark holiday. I hope you feel seen and loved and appreciated, and that the mommas in your life feel the same--from six feet apart.

Happy Mother's Day.

Love,
Ashley

********************************

PS- I hope you caught it, but just in case the title reference is to Love in the Time of Cholera.
"She had never imagined that curiosity was one of the many masks of love."
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Mommying Me

2/26/2020

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Photo by Sarah Beth Photography
​Maternity leave is quickly coming to a close.

Much as I assumed would happen, the time has flown!
And crawled.
And stood still.
And then flown again!

New parenthood is something for which you can't truly prepare. Sure you can prepare for the baby, and prepare I did! But there is nothing else in the world quite like parenthood. There are ways in which puppy parenthood leant itself to the real thing, but you can't shut the baby in his crate and leave for the day.

Sometimes you'll want to though!!

Motherhood is undoubtedly the biggest challenge I've faced so far. There are plenty of parenting books out there, but not one of them was written specifically for the wriggly little alien they yank out of you and then send you home with. This means you can read each one and still not be any closer to answers for why YOUR baby won't stop crying/pooping/barfing/seems to hate you. "The baby will stop crying" is a fun little ditty I was told while pregnant and the slow repetition of this phrase has gotten me through many a long cry sesh. Not entirely sure if I was trying to convince myself or Gavin of this, but the screams do always end.

Like any new endeavor, it can take a while to establish your sea legs. I'm learning something new each day (if not each hour/minute) and it's so cool to be taught lessons from a being who can't even control their own bowel movements. Gavin is almost 10 weeks old and he's finally starting to coo and smile and even giggle on occasion, but he's very selective about handing those favors out. Guess what else he does?

He notices my phone.

I have tried (and failed) so many times to capture said elusive smiles on camera (phone camera), to no avail. As soon as my phone replaces my face in his line of vision, his expression goes blank and he stares at the phone. Not to go all Aristotle on your ass, but that spoke to me on a much larger scale than failing to capture a smile. I know that I don't want him to be on social media, but what I hadn't considered was that I don't want him to equate happiness/smiles/laughter with a phone either. Sure, that can seem like quite a leap. But if every time he smiles at me I shove a phone in his face, what else am I teaching him? I want him to come to the conclusion he naturally did, which was to smile at the face of a person who loves and cares for him. We learn so early to smile for the camera (not just us millennials screwing up the next generation, even I learned that as a lil tot) but when did that replace smiling in our actual lives/circumstances?

I feel like this is where Instagram comes in to play. We're all too happy to capture a perfect moment and post it for the world to see but by doing so, so often miss out on the real-time moments in the lives we actually live. I am a lover of photographs and that won't change, but already my little guy is teaching me the big lessons. I love so much more that moment when he locks his eyes on me and smiles, and it doesn't matter at all that I'll probably never catch it on camera. It matters that I've stopped trying and am instead soaking it all in while I can. 

I know that I will fail him time and time again, but I also know perfection is not what loving him requires. He has lots of earthly needs and diapers are unfortunately not free, but as for emotionally, his needs are few and simple. (PS-same goes for adults!) 

I need to be there for him -- fully there, without a screen between us and nothing else either (except a diaper, truly they need those things!). I want him to equate my face with smiles and good baby feels; obviously this should evolve as he does but for now I feel like that's a fair ask from a nine week old. He certainly doesn't need to see my iPhone whenever he sees me. 

I am admittedly a novice in the parenting arena, but I'm nothing if not a willing student so cheers to my newest little teacher.

Love,
​Ashley


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    Ashley

    Behind the dainty days is a whole lot of planning. And coffee.
    Here is a look at both, and everything between.

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