September

Once again, it's been a few weeks since I've managed to put my fingers to the keyboard - sorry about that. Things are "challenging" in my world right now and when things get "challenging" in my world, I lose my words. (the funny thing is that I've been sitting here staring at the last sentence for about an hour and I have nothing.)

I've been thinking about how simple living has played a role in the challenging weeks and trying to figure out if I notice any differences in pre-simple living and post-simple living challenging times.
The biggest difference I've come up with is that in my simple living time, even though our world is chaotic and stressful, my house isn't the disaster it would have been in the same situation a year ago. That might just be because since I culled our dishes, cutlery and glasses there aren't nearly as many dishes, cutlery or glasses to sit on the counter or in the sink when no one can be bothered to wash them.   On the other hand, since I culled our dressers and closets of the clothes that didn't make the cut, when things get chaotic and challenging, we run out of clean undies quickly.

For most of you it is back to school/routine month - how has it been going? As homeschoolers, our September is usually quiet and slow. We skip the panic of people out in the world and hunker down at home making plans, dreaming of the year ahead, setting goals, etc. And our September highlight? We each look forward to our favourite tv shows returning (don't judge!).

Over on facebook, I asked people for their best solutions to dealing with all the paperwork that comes in to the house during the month in September (and then for the rest of the year!). Do you have a fool proof system for all the notices, homework, planners, mail, registration forms, etc that pass through your front door? Paper is NOT my strongest skill, so I'm interested to hear what you do in your home. Let me know below in the comments...

hot, hot, hot

In fact, it's too hot to blog. Sorry people but my sweaty fingers aren't good for my macbook keyboard. I'm going to readjust the fan and have a nap...

3 little things.

I have been so enthralled with the Olympics that I haven't really made time for anything else - like blogging - and for that, I make no apology :) I am busy reaping the benefits of having simplified my life. I am doing something that I enjoy and I am enjoying it without guilt! I LOVE it!!

I would like to think that I've come a long ways in the past months, and in some ways I have, but every day I have to remind myself that living a simplified, chaos free (mostly) and uncluttered life is a lifestyle more than a divide and conquer mission. Today at the library that point was put back in front of my face when I found myself staring at a feature wall full of books all about decluttering, simplifying and organizing. It kind of caught me off guard actually. As I was standing there taking in about 30 different books, I kind of had to keep myself from laughing out loud. How many books will it take for us to learn what they all say?? At the end of the day it really comes down to three simple things...

1. live within (or below) your means
2. get rid of all the stuff you don't use, want or need
3. stop bringing stuff in to your life that you don't NEED

Sure, I could expand on all those things and write pages on the psychology of it all and give you pages of organizing tips and encouraging anecdotes. But you know what? You're smarter than that. All it takes is one choice at a time in the right direction and soon you will have made a lifestyle change.
No secret steps. No 25 steps to freedom. Just small changes that lead to big differences.

Anyone else have this problem??

It doesn't matter how hard I try to get things done, my day invariably goes the direction of the picture to the left. I have good intentions at the start of each day, I really do, but I don't know if it's that it's summer, or what, but at about 1:30 in the afternoon (every day!), my intentions go out the window and I decide a nap is probably the most important thing I can accomplish that day.

I keep thinking my tired state is due to my job. [Hey, did I tell you about my job?? Friends of mine own a restaurant and I clean it for 2 hours every morning (M-F). It is a fantastic job because it doesn't really require me to think very much, so my mind can wander, I can pray, I can solve the problems of the world or just sing along to whatever music is playing. AND, I get a bit of a workout every day! The best part is that I am home by 9:15 every morning and by the end of the month I've paid my rent. It is perfect and I am very thankful.] I've been doing this job for a couple of months now so you would think I would be used to it by now and not needing to nap every day because of a couple hours of mopping, dusting and vacuuming.

I also have another job that doesn't require anything physical of me, but wow does it take up my brain space! I am learning to write grant proposals for funding applications for non-profit organizations. Holy complex stuff Batman! I really like the challenge, and I can't wait to see if I can actually bring in the money, but my head hurts at the end of that kind of work. (Another great reason to have a nap, by the way. Nothing gets rid of a headache like a good nap in the afternoon.)

Another reason that I could be so tired every day is my uterus. (my apologies to the two guys that read  my blog!) I am waiting on a hysterectomy because "Eunice" (that's what we call it so the conversations we have out in public are not quite so disturbing to others) is falling out. Apparently, if your Eunice is behaving as badly as mine is, it can be quite exhausting. I am not completely convinced this is true, but it has been authenticated by women who have walked this road before me, so really, who am I to say differently? (By the way, this is one of the many perks to having some women friends who are older than me.)

Of course, there is always the stand by reason for exhaustion... I am a single parent to two teenage boys and teenage boys seem to take way more time and energy (physical AND mental) than baby, toddler, preschool or school age boys COMBINED!

I suppose the point of all this is to say that I am all out of whack and I'm not getting any of the things done that I thought I was going to be getting done this summer. Hey, maybe I should change The Stripper Project to a Sleep Study Project. Now there's an idea...

How are the rest of you doing? Are you lazing your summer days away? And it is totally ok by me if you are (I don't want to be a hypocrite after all.).  Or are you in full stripper mode?

I am going to make one teeny, tiny goal for myself. Before this time next week, I want to have at least listed the stuff from my brother's storage unit on Craigslist. Theoretically I could even do that from my bed. All it would take is to list one or two things before I close my eyes for nap time. Surely I can do that. We'll see how that works out.

There is so much more that I could tell you, but it wouldn't be right of me to complain about being tired and then get caught blogging at midnight, would it?

I can't keep up.

I just want to start off by telling you that my youngest son has announced that he no longer wants to be mentioned in any way, shape or form on the blog, or on either of my facebook pages. No photos, no names, no stories. In order to respect his privacy I have agreed to his terms. The really awful part of that is that he is the source of some of my best stories! So, if I was to start an anecdote with "I have this friend...", I will leave you able to make the connections.

Now seeing as though my oldest son hasn't placed conditions on his presence on the blog, we can talk about him today! He is almost 16 and he is brilliant and funny and mostly good :)  He is a very talented musician, wanted to be a trauma Dr for most of his years, is interested in joining the Army, and most recently announced that he wants to be a chef - oh, and that he wants to be a part of some research project that will have people living on Mars by the year 2023. For his whole life he has been told that he is capable of doing whatever he wants (and he really is a kid that could do WHATEVER he wants) and for his whole life he has played down his intellectual abilities.

Until today.

Today, he was at work and got involved in a lengthy conversation about dark matter (the literal scientific dark matter, not things like sorcery, zombies or the colour black) with a scientist guy who is visiting Vancouver to participate in some kind of research project (I'm not really sure what the research is about, I had kind of tuned out at that point...). Anyways, the point is, this total and complete stranger talks to my kid for a couple of hours and tells him that he is way too smart to be a chef, he should be using his brain power for problem solving science things. (I am in no way implying that you can't be smart and be a chef.) Stranger guy says if Brendan wants to be a chef, that should be his hobby. He needs to get himself a quality science education and get solving. Of course, now Brendan thinks he's the next Stephen Hawking brain and thinks maybe he should take some physics classes next year. (of course, the benefit of homeschooling is that he can take whatever he wants and try it on for size!) I tried to point out that he has the attention span of a fruit fly and sitting in a research lab for years to come is probably not going to work out well for him, but what do I know?? So as of tonight, Brendan is going to join the Army, who will pay for his education, serve his country while cooking in the mess hall and be part of a scientific think tank that will help him successfully get to and live on Mars, all while playing bass in a band that hasn't yet sold out to the mass marketing machine of the music industry.

Well, at least he won't be bored.

Is anybody out there?

I tell you, I get one little award nomination and I stop blogging altogether! Between kids finishing up school things - which require meetings and WORK on my part because of homeschooling - a new border moving in to the house, me working a bit more than usual and a health issue, well, the time has just ticked right on by. It seems that as soon as the routines go out the window, so does all my productivity! So, how has everyone been doing? Have you continued to strip things out of your house, computer, and life? I have to admit that I fell off the wagon a wee bit. I am waiting on a surgery date (hysterectomy - more on that later) and in the meantime I am not allowed to really do ANYTHING! Oh, but I can still EAT! and I can assure you, that is not a good thing. For the past month I've fallen in to a bit of a lazy rut and I haven't really been in much of a hurry to get out of it. And for me, once I fall off the wagon in one area, other areas aren't far behind. In the interest of full disclosure, I can tell you that I have fallen from the stripping/vegan/shopping wagon all at once. Normally, I would berate myself for such failures, but I have to tell you, most of these tumbles from the wagon have been quite fun :)
For example, I know I am not supposed to be buying anything this year, but you know what? I needed a dress for a wedding and that led to shoes and earrings. And then because of the upcoming surgery, I needed to find some simple dresses that had no seams across them so nothing would rub on the staples and scar, so I bought a couple of those. And then my one and only pair of decent shorts bit the dust, so I needed to replace them with something too. Oh, I also picked up some new undies :) I think I might need a shopping intervention...

As for the vegan wagon - it's all my brother's fault. He came to town for a week and we were eating out constantly! But the big one was a fantastic dinner at The Blue Water Cafe in Vancouver. I haven't eaten seafood like that in YEARS!! (I would add here that if I was a vegan for ethical reasons it would be much harder to stray, but for me it's more about health. I figure that if I eat the good vegan fare 95% of the time, I'm doing ok.) The thing is, once I do it once, I could do it a hundred times! So this morning it's back at it. Oatmeal and a banana anyone??

And the stripping? I had been doing quite well actually, but then I needed a break. I got tired of boxing stuff up and loading the car and dropping it off somewhere, so I stopped. And my bedroom looks like a sorting station for crap. So, back at it. (although, the rest of the house has stayed in remarkably stripped order, so yay for progress!) And, while my brother was here we cleaned out both his storage lockers and a bunch of stuff came back to my house so I could get it on craigslist and get it sold.

So lets just consider the last bit of time away from the blog as my summer vacation, shall we? I'm not going anywhere for the next two months, so I will have no excuse to let the blog and stripping slide like that again. I am going to revisit my stripper mapping wall (that's where all the great ideas are!) and find a new focus for the rest of the summer. I can't believe the year is half over already!! Overall I am pleased with the progress in my home, how about you? Are you seeing any changes that have stuck?

Drop me a note to let me know how you are doing. Do you have some big summer plans? Do you need some stripping encouragement? A pat on the back?

Carry on stripper friends...

Wow!! Me? Really??

A very exciting thing happened over at my email inbox today. I received this...

"Living Simply On Purpose has been nominated for the Ninjamatics' 2012 Canadian Weblog Awards in the Best Written and Life categories.

The Ninjamatics' 2012 Canadian Weblog Awards are a juried competition with nominations that are open in 35 categories between February 1st and November 31st, 2012. The nominees shortlist will be announced on January 15, 2013, and the winners will be announced on January 31, 2013. A running blogroll of the nominees is kept throughout the year so that we can highlight Canada's blogging talent. Feel free to grab a button for your website or e-mail to show off your nomination.

Congratulations, and good luck!"

Now, if you look just a little to the right and scroll up a bit you will see a fancy little icon that shows my nomination off to all the people of the world (or at least the people that wander through my blog.) You know how when someone gets nominated for something and they say "oh, it's such an honour just to be nominated..."? and you sit there and totally judge them, thinking "ya right! only people who lose say stuff like that"? Well, it's true! I am so excited that my little blog has been nominated for something that has the word AWARD attached to it. Now to sit back and wait for January to roll around and see if I make the short list. Stay tuned...

Moving on to the business of stripping. We are on weekly challenge #11 and it is a good one. We are doing some digital decluttering. This is a big one for many of us, so we're going to spend at least a couple of weeks on it. I'm talking about things like deleting all the unnecessary emails from your inbox, deleting the 3 638 bad photos sitting on your hard drive and backing up and sorting through the 283 good photos (or in my case, the 27 good ones). Clean up your desktop (your computer one, not your literal one), your documents folders, your facebook friends list - yes, that's right - it's ok to cut loose the people in your facebook friends list that don't need to be there (I realize some people will take issue with that one, and if that's you, then skip that one.) Are you with me? I am starting with my inbox. I want to put 343 emails into the appropriate folders (or trash) and try to keep my inbox at 10 emails or less each day. 

Oh, and for the record, I am not expecting to succeed at this one without many failed attempts first.

What do YOU need to strip away in your digital world?


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