I haven't been on this blog for a very long time. Honestly, I didn't realized that I had blogged some in 2015, so that was a bit of a surprise when I logged on today. The intervening, gosh, almost six years, have been..... well..... full. I completed my bachelor of music in music composition. I completed my master of music in choral conducting. My two oldest children graduated high school and have gone to college. We had a house flood that displaced us for more than four months. My oldest brother died very suddenly of cancer. My other brother stopped speaking to me. My parents moved to Colorado, and then my mother was placed in Hospice care. I have been in counseling to deal with compound PTSD. We lost our sweet girl Janie and adopted Piper, D-Mack, Fisher, and Jesse. So, yea, it's been full.
I have decided to get off of most forms of social media. I have been on Facebook since 2008, and I really enjoy being able to catch up with my friends and follow their lives. However, I always feel like I need to speak up when I see racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. The problem is that I don't really think it helps for the most part because it is usually with random strangers. It is causing so much negativity in my life that it is effecting my mental health. I will continue to stand against hatred, but it has to be in a different form. I thought about blogging and realized that it is totally different for me. It is much easier to use it as an outlet but still keep a positive attitude. Blogging is really for me. So.... I guess I'll give blogging another go.
So many hard and traumatic things have happened over the past ten years that it is sometimes challenging to forge ahead with positivity. I find myself struggling to keep my head above water. I have amazing children, and I really want to be present for them. It's felt like I've been existing sometimes but not really living. I am making some big changes, and I am hoping that blogging about them will help me to not give up and keep going. I am half joking calling 2021 the year of Ms. I don't know how much of it I will talk about on this blog. No one reads it, but it is public, so we'll see.
I have been drawn toward minimalism for years. Also, I have had a hard time connecting with my home since moving back in after the flood. It doesn't feel like a home. It feels like an uncomfortable place where we spend time. The past couple of months I have been trying to work on that and make it feel more like a home. I have made some great strides, and it is feeling better. We have a big, loud, rambuctuous family. We also have a good size house, but during a pandemic, it feels not that big. I am commiting to living a more minimalist lifestyle in an effort to make my home feel more comforting and welcoming as well as giving me more time and space to do the things I love.
I have been decluttering for a while. It was hard after moving back in. I finally realized that we lost things, some things that were really important to me, in the flood. Because of that, I was having trouble letting go of anything. I think I still struggle with that a little bit, but I am getting better. Some of the pictures I post might be a little embarrassing, but I want them to remember how far I have come. I want to make permanent changes. Finally, I think my husband is on board which has been a hinderance in the past. I started my official road to minimalism on the 28th, two days ago. I was having awful vertigo, and I felt defeated because I thought I couldn't do anything because of it. Instead of giving in, I asked my husband to put this big container up on the bed. It is a container of stuff that had been in our bedroom for literaly months. I tackled it. I also spent a bit of time traveling down memory lane because I found a whole bunch of old photos in there. That made me realize that I love scrapbooking. I really love it, but I haven't been able to do it forever because whenever I get my supplies out, things get so cluttered that it is uncomfortable.
I need to make sure that I have space to do crafting. That is one goal with minimizing my life. I know that some minimalist purists would say that my goals aren't in line with minimalism. Well, I don't care what they think. I'm going to do this in the way that will benefit me and my family, and then I'll go from there. My goals may change along the way. We'll see. For now, I am forging ahead. I keeping this online journal to help me. If anyone does find this blog and wants to leave words of encouragement or share your own journey, that would be great. If no one reads this blog, that's cool, too. It's for me.
Here are pictures of my first two "official" days of minimalism. This mound of stuff is the box I mentioned earlier. The cat leg in the back is Fisher. He was "helping." LOL.
The second picture is what was left when I was finished. There were a few things that were put up where they belonged. There was a lot of things that I trashed, and there were a few things put in a bag to go to Goodwill. The octavos were from CU (oops), so I sent them back. The doll and Mickey are my kids' keepsakes, so they were put up in keepsake boxes. It wasn't a big start, but it made me feel really good. It was something that had stared at me for quite some time.
On day two, my oldest son helped me tackle a major problem area. We have a workshop/storage room in the basement. It's where the furnace and water heater are housed, and it is an unfinished room. It could be a usable space though. It has just been a dumping ground and no one really goes in there. These pictures are embarrassing, but here goes:
