All posts filed under: living

When Simple isn’t Easy

Originally posted on Minimal Millennial:
Throughout the past few years, I’ve been moving towards a more simple life. I’m seeking less chaos, less clutter, less shopping, less spending, you get it – I want less so that I can have more of what really matters. More freedom, more mental space, more peace, more time. But that last one is interesting. What if simplifying leads us to do things…that take up more time? How simple can get complicated For starters, let’s make it clear: I don’t have any more hours in the day now than I did three years ago. None of us do. But I have found myself allocating those hours so differently these days, and not in ways you might expect. I clean more often (although it takes less time), I prepare food constantly (or at least it feels like I do), and I spend more time planning days than I have ever done before. So, what changed? Isn’t one of the driving factors of minimalism getting to the point of doing fewer chores? I think I figured it…

It’s 1996: Let’s All Decorate Our Childhood Bedrooms!

Originally posted on Cookies + Sangria:
In this Let’s All Decorate, we’re taking it back to 1996 – one of the summers that stands out sharpest in my memory, although I’m not sure why. The Olympics were on TV and I was obsessed with the entire U.S. Gymnastics team and their flat snappy hair clips. My brothers and I knocked a pint of wall primer onto the hall carpet imitating old people at a wedding dancing the Macarena. I spent my days at acting camp, falling hard for improv. Mitzi, my beloved, gentle mutt, slipped out of the front gate and was never seen again. My mission in life was to be the kind of person who owned a bra, and by fall I had one (I concede that it was, and is, completely unnecessary).  Inspired by the summer’s hit film Harriet The Spy, I took to observing my inner-city neighbors and writing down their activities in a notebook … for about two weeks, when I forgot. There were kind of a lot of drug deals,…