Resolutions Update

I'm taking my resolutions more seriously than usual this year because I think several of them entail fairly major shifts in lifestyle (as opposed to the "make homemade cards!" types of resolutions I've made in the past).  In my opinion, being successful at anything takes a bit of planning and dedication.  Lifestyle changes in particular require consistency at first before it becomes simple force of habit.  Like brushing your teeth every morning. So how am I doing so far?

Tidy kitchen before bed every night, put away dishes in the morning: I'm really proud of myself for sticking to this one since December.  Last night was the first day that I really thought long and hard about not doing this - the kitchen counters were a mess from bread making and other cooking, it was close to midnight and I had spent most of the day working to get an abstract together for a deadline so I was mentally tired.  But I did it and felt great immediately.  Went to bed with a peaceful brow.

Minimize my needs to give away more:  I took a serious look at my expenditures (helped along by mint.com, love this service!) and realized that I was paying way too much for internet at home and that I don't watch my netflix movies enough to warrant the subscription.  So I've made the switch from Comcast to Centurylink ($30/month less = $360/yr) and canceled netflix ($12/month less = $144/yr).  It doesn't sound like much, but it's an extra $500 a year and requires no alteration in my current behavior.  I have also been trying to be maximally sensible about my grocery budget and being careful about food waste.  Bar Method of course, is quite spendy, but I am really good about going and I know that cutting this would eliminate all exercise from my life.  So to me, $175/month is more than worth it as a long-term investment in my health.

Eat less meat:  When I made this resolution a bit over a week ago I had put into place specific non-meat days and days that I could eat meat IF I wanted to.  This actually went well overall - I definitely ate less meat than usual and even on meat days I often didn't have any.  At least, until Thursday when I was derailed by an unexpected meeting that involved free pizza for lunch.  I dashed in late and grabbed the pizza closest to me, which of course contained pepperoni.  The rest of the week was back on track.  So I'm adjusting the details of this resolution to include more flexibility.  I'll simply keep track of days I eat meat and days I don't and make sure the meat eating days don't take over.  This resolution has not been at all onerous.  I only have to watch that I don't eat too much starch to compensate for lack of meats, but it's been very painless since I really like tofu.  Note that this resolution is helpful to my grocery budget as well.

Get to work earlier: This has also been generally successful in principle if not in detail, but also the hardest.  Here in Portland it stays dark out until maybe 7:15am when it just STARTS to brighten.  The earliest I've managed to wake up is 6:45 and it's only because I have to go to Bar Method.  However, since I've managed to get to work earlier (9 to 9:30) despite not waking up at 6am, this resolution is also being adjusted.  Especially since I'm not at all hungry upon first waking up so sitting around at 6am would be a total waste of time.  I think instead, I will wake up at 6:30 so I have time to have coffee, get my lunch together and work outfit laid out.  Then I will go to class and come home and go.  I've been eating a banana for breakfast at work on my class days and this works out great.  On days I don't have class, I have more time for breakfast at home.  On a related note, keeping track of my hours all week turned out to be quite laborious and ultimately, not terribly informative.  The most valuable part was keeping track of when I wake up and when I go to bed, so these are the notes I will continue to make, along with meat vs non-meat days.

Hoo!  I think that's it!  My internet usage is still an area that needs attention probably, but I still have not been able to formulate any specific resolution around it.  This may be a task for 2013.

New Years Resolution

from the nytimes.com

I only have a single resolution to make this year.  I had been wondering what to do and I got my wakeup call in this article from the nytimes.  What I want in 2012 is to remember the really important things in life and help make the world a little better.  To make sure that others have the right to live as I do, in peace and security and with freedom, to be fully human.  I've been making efforts toward a minimalist life, but it was effort without true purpose.  I think I have a purpose now - the goal of this minimalism will be to live more simply so that I can give my excess to others in need.  I can only give my dollars, but hopefully they will allow others to directly help people in my stead.  As women's rights is something I feel extremely strongly about, I will likely focus my giving to these groups.  My charitable giving in the past has been mostly sporadic, sparked by some catastrophic event (earthquakes, tsunamis, etc), so I need to institute a system and schedule.  I'm thinking to start reasonably within my budget at first ($100/month) and then see if I can add to that.  My clothing budget is probably the most frivolous, and I think I have enough to wear certainly, for a year.  So whatever I can manage not to spend in this category will be funneled toward charity.  I want to be less selfish, and when I look back at the end of 2012, to see that I've done a little good, the best I can.

The Beginning of a Minimalist Life

I think my move from Philadelphia to Portland really opened my eyes to how much my stuff had been weighing me down.  In preparation of the move, I did a ruthless cull of my belongings; little did I know what it would be the start of!  The hardest part of that first purge was books.  I was very attached to my books, lugging them around with me everywhere I moved, whether or not I ever reread them.  To me, the books represented my wish to be seen as an educated, interesting person and reflected my love of reading.  In getting rid of these books though, I realized that I didn't need to prove anything to anyone.  The only people I ever invited over were friends, and they already know I'm educated, already find me interesting and are fully aware I love reading.  In other words, I don't need my things to say anything about me, I am what I am, with or without these external things.  So I kept the best loved books, the ones I returned to again and again and donated/gave away the rest.

Since moving then, I've continued to declutter and refine my belongings to only items that are in regular use and/or beautiful.  I try to be fanatic about what I bring in and beg everyone I know not to give me things.  Every time I take another bag to Goodwill I start filling another.  It's funny how much easier it is to part with things over time.  After a while, it is apparent that I really never wear that skirt, even if it's lovely and the material is so fine - it doesn't fit quite right and I don't feel great in it.  Same with the sweater that's 100% merino and feels so soft but looks so awkward on.  In the process, my house and life feel simultaneously more serene and also more focused.  I am never searching for anything because I know what I have and better yet, where it is.  

I don't want to give the impression I have NO stuff though.  Compared to someone like Miss Minimalist, I have a lot!  But I'm totally ok with that because as Miss Minimalist would be the first to say, minimalism is really all about tailoring your possessions to only what you truly use and love.  It'll mean different things for different people.  Since I have done a lot of decluttering in the clothes department, here are a few tips that have worked for me in my journey so far:

• Do not fall for sales (especially with clothes).  It does not matter how much it's marked down, evaluate it as if you would have to pay full price for it.  There are so many clothing options out there that there is no reason to settle.  The only exception is if you lost all your clothes and you literally have nothing to wear!
• On a similar note, be aware of price/wear.  I no longer buy anything from H&M because frankly they don't stand up well to washing in general.  I've had too many $15 shirts/dresses (so cheap!) that shrunk peculiarly after a single wear.  $15/wear is the opposite of cheap.  People say this everywhere but it's really true - stick to a small wardrobe of high quality clothes and you will save money and look put together all the time.  Chances are, you are wearing only a small portion of your wardrobe anyway, so you might as well do this consciously and deliberately.  It will enable you to get nicer things upfront.
• Take care of your things!  Namely your sweaters.  I'm someone who is cold pretty much all the time so I'm constantly in a sweater or cardigan.  Before the great decluttering, I had too many sweaters and most of them were not worn on a regular basis.  Since all of my sweaters were kept together and they were all made of natural fibers, you can imagine the lovely moth community I was maintaining without my knowledge.  This is a great argument for keeping only what you wear - infestations like this cannot gain a foothold if your sweaters are in constant rotation.  In the summer, make sure to put them away safely and they will greet you like old friends come winter (or in my case, don't put them away at all because you will be wearing them in Portland year round!)
• Wear all of your clothes and you won't need so many.  My exceptions are my suits, the two dresses I wear to weddings and my workout clothes.  Everything else I can wear and I do.  My regular style tends to be a little bit dressier than is average for my work place but not inappropriately so, and these outfits take me easily to any social event as well.  
• Base your entire wardrobe on a strict color palette so everything matches.  For me it's black, gray, white, blue and darkish purple.  This seriously makes shopping and dressing 1000x easier and these colors happen to be flattering on me as well.  What you wear should make you happy not tortured, so pick colors accordingly!  The place where I make exceptions is shoes.  For instance I love red, but it looks terrible against my face so I relocate the color to my shoes.  And for me, I have found that red shoes go with every outfit I can put together so they are just as versatile as black shoes.

None of these tips is particularly novel, but the reason you encounter variations of this advice everywhere is because they're true and effective.  Simplifying my life is something that's very much on my mind these days so "Minimalism" will be a regular sort of feature from now on.

Happiness (Number Three): On Having Less Stuff

My mom and aunt ended their two week visit to Portland last night and I spent a quiet evening decluttering every room in my house after they left.  It was lovely having them here, but it also reinforced for me how much I value a life not cluttered with stuff.  My family is composed of women who simultaneously can't resist a "good deal" and also can't bear to throw away/donate anything.  My mom won't throw away 20 year old makeup that she never uses, nail polish I bought when I was 14 years old, etc.  My mom also likes to save her nicer things from regular use because she is afraid of damaging them (for example, my sister and I bought her a Le Creuset pot a few months ago for her birthday and she is afraid to use it in case the paint gets scratched.  She also has a lovely knife set someone got for her 10 years ago that she has never used) and whenever I try to get her to use these things, she counters by saying she is saving them for when I get married.  Which is completely absurd.  While they were visiting me, their favorite thing to do was shop.  They bought a whole bunch of things on sale, which wouldn't bother me except I knew that these new things were not replacements, but additions to already over-full houses. I can't change how other people live, but the thought of ever living in such an environment was enough to spark a cleaning spree.  I tend to have these fairly often anyway, but it was such a cathartic thing to do.  Here are the rules I apply to things:

Clothes - With the exception of more formal attire (should not have more than a very few of these items), everything must work for my day to day life.  I should be able to wear everything and they should all match with each other.  This actually makes shopping much easier because I then stick with a very strict color palette and can't get distracted.  I also end up gravitating toward a few basic silhouettes and that again makes future matching way easier.  This is a category I prune the most often I think, because sometimes I'll impulsively buy something that ends up not being a good idea.  But pruning these is not difficult for me at all.

Shoes - This is a total weakness.  I have 20 pairs of shoes, which I think is too much.  There are about three pairs that I rarely wear (2 for wedding-ish occasions, 1 to wear with my suit) but are functional so I have no qualms about keeping.  But there are also three pairs that I should not have bought in the first place, are completely frivolous and don't match the life I have.  I can't really part with them yet, but have been trying hard not to add to this group.  While I can't get my shoe collection down to a more comfortable number right now, I think starting now I will install a "one in one out" rule to shoes to nip any growth of this collection.

Kitchen - I'm actually ok with this category of items at the moment because I use everything I have, even though I have quite a few things.  The only thing that gives me any qualms is my bread machine, which takes up a lot of space and is seldom used (I bake a lot of bread, but not with the machine), but it was a graduation gift from two of my dearest friends so it's not something I feel ok about getting rid of.  

Bathroom - I wear very little makeup but like any other woman had somehow accumulated random piles of eye shadow and blush, etc.  I have a feeling most of these were samples gifted to me by my mom at some point, but last night I did a major weeding of my bathroom drawers and rid myself of such makeup, cheap jewelry, old nail polish, and random bits of flotsam.  I would actually like to get rid of more stuff, but at least the most obvious things are gone.

Office - I don't have a real office at all, but I do have a drawer of office supplies.  This was also scrutinized last night and many pens and again, random flotsam and jetsam were tossed.  The truth is, there is no reason for a single person to have more than 10 writing utensils in her home at any moment, especially if she can get a pen from work in the unlikely event that all her pens at home should simultaneously run dry.  In my life, I am constantly accumulating free pens from conferences and this can easily get out of hand.  In this case, even if the pens works, I don't have to keep it.  My mom would say that was wasteful, but what is more wasteful to me is maintaining 100 un-used pens all over my house until they finally run dry.

Food - I cook a lot so there are basic supplies (flour, sugar, grains, spices etc) that I have to keep on hand.  My mom and aunt took this to a whole new level.  Despite my protests, I now have 3 bottles of rice wine and a remarkable number of ramen packages.  I know I'll consume all of these things eventually, and if I had a large pantry I wouldn't be bothered, but as it is, I really do not want a 2 year supply of consumables in my house.  At the moment I also have more fruits than I desire to eat, but at least this stuff should either be eaten or spoiled in a couple of weeks and therefore off my hands.  My mom and aunt grew up very poor so I wonder if this stashing away of food is a consequence of that.  I get very stressed if I have too much perishable food in my fridge because there's such a pressure to eat it all before it goes bad.  I like to plan most of my meals for the week and only get enough for that.  Bah.

Mementos - What to do with the little gifts and cards and things that accumulate over the years?  I think the best idea is to keep it as small as you can.  Fairly generic "happy birthday!" cards I toss after about a year, while cards with more special messages I keep.  I still have the MIT stuffed beaver my sister gave me when we were both in college and a small collection of knick knacks from my best friends.  At the moment this category is well under control, but it's important to still be vigilant.  Things of sentimental value are always harder to part with, even if they don't necessarily add value to my life.  I try to remember that my memories and friendships don't rest on any physical things and that makes it easier.  Physical letters though, I always treasure.

Crafts - This is going to take a good bit of time to organize logically and efficiently.  Tackling this is a project for another day (possibly later this weekend since I'm on a roll!)

I think this is mostly everything.  Thanks to digital cameras, I don't have boxes of photos and albums thank god, and when I moved I ruthlessly pared my book collection to only beloved volumes.  Now that I have my kindle, all new books are also in digital format and clutter is automatically a non-issue.  I seldom have the urge to re-watch movies so I don't own many dvds and I expect this to also be completely digital in the future.  Technology is tops!