Category: Simplicity

My world · Simplicity

Only for Today

darceeLeave a comment

Back in November I posted this.  It has become a bit of a reference point for me, something to look at when I find myself in need of a bit of encouragement.   I really and only need to be focused on today.  Plan for tomorrow and review what happened yesterday, but life is live in now; today is what we have to work with.

1) Only for today, I will seek to live the livelong day positively without wishing to solve the problems of my life all at once.
2) Only for today, I will take the greatest care of my appearance: I will dress modestly; I will not raise my voice; I will be courteous in my behavior; I will not criticize anyone except myself.
3) Only for today, I will be happy in the certainty that I was created to be happy, not only in the other world but also in this one.
4) Only for today, I will adapt to circumstances, without requiring all circumstances to be adapted to my own wishes.
5) Only for today, I will devote ten minutes of my time to some good reading, remembering that just as food is necessary to the life of the body, so good reading is necessary to the life of the soul.
6) Only for today, I will do one good deed and not tell anyone about it.
7) Only for today, I will do at least one thing I do not like doing; and if my feelings are hurt, I will make sure that no one notices.
8 ) Only for today, I will make a plan for myself: I may not follow it to the letter, but I will make it. And I will be on guard against two evils: hastiness and indecision.
9) Only for today, I will firmly believe, despite appearances, that the good Providence of God cares for me as no one else who exists in this world.
10) Only for today, I will have no fears. In particular, I will not be afraid to enjoy what is beautiful and to believe in goodness. Indeed, for twelve hours I can certainly do what might cause me consternation were I to believe I had to do it all my life.
~Blessed John XXIII

I have become convinced that year long resolutions do nothing good for me.  They are overwhelming.  My one year long resolution this year has to do with one simple thing, I resolve to re-resolve daily for at least 300 days this year.   With knocking out time for holidays, vacations and sick-days I think 300 is reasonable.  I want the above to be my guide.  So that is my one resolution.

The other different thing I am doing is themes for each month.  This month’s theme is “Taking Stock”  I really need to assess where I am in several areas.   I don’t want to jump in and start making changes in my life without thinking about what is working and what is not.  I want to make intelligent changes to my routines that will result in greater happiness, peace and productivity for myself and my household.

Advent · Faith in Action · Simplicity

Living with less

darceeLeave a comment

Simply Catholic is the name of this place and when looking through the “Search terms” I find that a good number of people come here looking for “Simple Christian living”,  “Catholic Simplicity”, “Living Simply Catholic” and similar quests.  And it has been a while since I have addressed the concept of simplicity.  

Why do people search for simplicity?  Especially Christian/Catholic Simplicity?  I think the root has a lot to do with how cluttered our daily lives are.  We sense something important in our faith and we know instinctively that if we could focus on that we would be happier, more fulfilled, more ourselves and much more at peace.  But life is so overwhelmingly cluttered that we can’t fathom where to start, even how to begin.  So people go online and search hoping to find a solution or a path. 

I am not an expert on much, but I can do simple.  The first step is learning to let go.  And that can be really difficult.  I understand that.  But we do not find happiness in things, we find happiness in living and when our things (stuff, jobs, homes, activities) take away from our living for God and for each other then they are hurting us. 

Advent is coming soon.  For Catholics Advent 2007  starts December 2nd.   I plan on using the time between now and then to start decluttering my house (again) so that I will have more “space” to concentrate on spiritual things this Advent.  I look at it as “unpacking” for the journey.

Simplicity · Uncategorized

Well, life sort of took over

darceeLeave a comment


Two weeks ago I said I would get back to you with my organizing plan on Monday, it is now Saturday.

One of the rules of goal setting that I learned a long time ago was to break any large project down into small pieces.

There are a lot of reasons for doing this.  I am less likely to be overwhelmed, I am more likely to finish something when I can see the end of it, I like having little goals to reach, things I can check off.  I works for me.

So, my office is a terrible disaster at the moment it looks like a filing cabinet and two toy boxes took turns exploding their contents at one another.  Not exactly conducive to work, peace or even walking safely across the floor.

This is an odd room.  It is NOT a rectangle it is some other quadrilateral with a column and a protrusion into the room.   All in all sort of weird shaped.  We have two desks and one table that serves as a third desk/workspace and two book shelves.  There are also bookshelves built into the protrusion.  (you probably have no idea what the room looks like now) Once upon a time this was a back porch.  It is a great room for my office.  I can see the kitchen and living room, I can hear most the house and look out on the backyard.  Very easy to keep tabs on the children no matter where they are.

This room is used for the following things:

I use this room to work, to play computer games and to manage the household
the children use this room to play, to study and do art projects.
This room is an exit point to the backyard, coats and boots tend to end up here in the winter and swimsuits and flip flops in the summer.
I need to be able to store homeschooling things, art supplies, bookkeeping information and references material for work.  The computers and printers are in this room and it tends to be that place where things end up when they don’t have a home.

Other than the “don’t have a home” issue there isn’t anything that I want to move from this room.

Right now the “big problems” in this room are toys, books and papers. 

One thing I had missed before taking my little survey of this room was the fact that the children use it as a “launch” pad for the back yard.  I need to set up a convenient way for them to store coats and backyard shoes/boots so these things don’t end up littering the floor.  I can move one small bookcase, put in some hooks and shoe storages and that should fix the problem.

The paper problem is mostly one of the childrens’ endless drawings and scrapes ending up all over the floor.  I need to set up a box where they can put their “stuff”.  Junk mail is occasionally an issue.  This is just a process thing.

I am setting up two toy boxes in here to deal with the toys.   Some of the less used art supplies are being moved. 

 So that is the basic.  This is where I pull out my mantra, Simplicity.  What do I NEED to be in this room. 
For my work I need the computer and printer, my desk the reference books.  These are the absolutely have to haves.  I also need my office supplies.  For homeschooling I need the children’s books, their notebooks and supplies.  I also keep my files in here.   Everything else is on the “questionable list”. 

My world · Simplicity

Simplicity and functionality

darceeLeave a comment


There are things we need and things we want.  Telling the difference becomes difficult at times. 

Fall is a time where I like to refocus on “culling” the stuff.  Five children and two adults living in a home with a sixth child here a few times a month can produce a glut of stuff.   This was made very clear to me when I had my fourth and my mother in law stayed at our home with the children.   “You have too many clothes.”  I started out trying to disprove her so I went through and inventoried the clothing…. we had way to many clothes.  So I sat down and made a list of what each child really needed with our weather and activities in mind.  I based my list off of several I had found online and my own common sense.  It lists out everything that every child needs in a spread sheet, I go through the drawers and select the items to fill the quota and the rest go away. 

I have thought about applying this methodology to other areas in the home as well but I was always somewhat stuck on where to start… or more precisely where to stop.   I start by thinking of the rooms and areas in my home and asking “what do I do in this room;  what do I need to be in here?”  Some rooms have proven easy.  The bathroom is pretty simple.  Other rooms have proven problematic, my office and the kitchen most bothersome.    The bathroom is rather straight forward in its uses.  Bathing, toilet, grooming and first aid.  The kitchen is food storage and preparation…. but where do I stop with the needs?  Do I NEED a pasta maker, bread machine, coffee press, waffle iron and a wide assortment of baking pans?  Some of them are truely convient and others a deceptive.  They seem like a good idea, but are really just space takers that aren’t worth the effort to pull them out.  

My office has hands down been the worst.  It is a multi-use room that is used a lot so clutter and mess tend to build up at an alarming rate.   This weekend I am doing a serious planning phase for getting it under control.  I will report on my efforts on Monday.

Blogs I Know · Simplicity

Modesty in dress

darceeLeave a comment


Over at Woman Honor thyself if a nice post called WomaN: Cover Thyself.

 I have talked about modesty here before, but there are two nice quotes that I would like to address today:

Modesty, historically granted women the right to ?withhold themselves? from men who had dishonorable intentions. And yes, using a woman for sex without any form of commitment was viewed as ignoble and sleazy by both men and women. 

 When I was younger I was taught that dressing modestly served not only to honor yourself, but was a kindness for those men around you who were trying to be their better selves.  How difficult it is for a young man to NOT stare at that flesh proudly on display at the pool, the school  and the shopping mall.  No matter how much he might want to respect a girl or know her from the neck up it is tricky when she is exposing so much from the neck down.

There is such a hypocrisy to the modern idea of dressing like a street walker while expecting people (men) to respect you for your skills, talents and intellectual ability.  

Nothing frightens me more then sending my children out into a world where casual sex is more and more the norm.  I shudder when I hear other parents talk about how they want their children (daughters) to go out and experience life, they don’t want them to wait for marriage to have sex, they want them to be out there “experiencing” life (sex) before they settle down.  I actually heard a woman I generally respect say “I would be sad for my daughter if she didn’t get to experience a range of different sexual experiences before she settles down.”

Historically women might have been “withholding” parts of themselves.  But in the wider culture out there it seems like there is no longer considered a general goodness to virginity or chastity.  These are thing reserved to the morally repressive fringe.  Not the “sex-positive” open minded folks out there.  

Modesty may not sell.
But that all depends how much of your soul is up for grabs, now doesn?t it.

Sad but true.  Modesty doesn’t sell… but is it supposed to?  Some things shouldn’t be for sale.   Physical appearance is a veneer to the soul.  The quality of the core can not be ascertained from inspecting just the outer layer.  But modesty has within it a dignity.  A care of self and concern for others. 

Simplicity

In praise of Simple White Dishes

darceeLeave a comment

 

I find that simple useful things usually have a great deal of beauty to them. Today I am singing the praises of simple white dishware, the kind you can find almost anywhere, stoneware, solid, usually creamy white in basic shapes. It is inexpensive, easy to clean, usually dishwasher and microwave safe and sometimes even oven safe. The essence of kitchen simplicity

But, its boring. Yes, sort of. If you are the type who has to have something colorful and exciting then I suppose they are sort of boring. Fiestaware or something might be your choice. But for me I like the simplicity of white.

Since you can find them anywhere they are very easy to replace. The five year old dropping a plate will not be a tragedy. White also makes for easy cleanup. Even a young child can learn to wash a dish. Unadulterated white makes it easy to see that a through job has been done.

On the flip side I love fine china. There is something really nice about having dinner on fine plates. I have three patterns that I collect when I have the chance. These are items that bring a good deal of pleasure to me, one set has been handed down from my father’s mother and the other are just two sets I love. My hope is that my daughters and granddaughters will also love them.

But for everyday use nothing beat those nice little white stoneware dishes.

 

 

Simplicity

Spring cleaning part 2

darceeLeave a comment

I will admit that I have a horrible problem cleaning for extended periods of time. One part of this stems from my inability to pay attention to anything boring and the other is that when I am bored I have a tendency to be very distractible. Thus I will start cleaning the kitchen – say cleaning off the top of the fridge, I find a battery that belongs in the pantry and while there I see a dog leash that needs to be in the closet where my husband has left the book he just finished and that needs to be on the book shelf, which is disorganized so I start straightening it out… and “Oh, cool there is this book I thought I had lost”, and the next thing I know it is two hours later and I am sitting in the dinning room thumbing through a book from when I went through RCIA and the top of the fridge looks just like it did at the start…. minus one battery.

Three things I have found to be very simple and affective in helping this. First is to occupy my mind while my hands are working. This is amazingly simple. Audio books, the radio, listening to the children read their lessons, talking with my teen daughter. It all works. The goal is to make whatever I am listening to engaging enough that I don’t get lost wondering about something and end up on the computer reading about the crusades or some such thing.

The second magic bullet is a timer. I run a small home-based business writing code for websites. If you want to migrate a site over to a CMS, need an LMS, want a calendar or catalog on your website I’m your girl. Databases and custom PHP are my thing and there is always something new to learn. Typical to the nerd I am I hyper-focus. This means I sit down to write one or two little functions and four hours later I look up and say “Oh, crap, I haven’t started dinner. Did I have lunch? Did the children have lunch — where are the children?” The timer helps stop that, it also helps on the other end. If I have the timer set for 20 minutes I will actually stay in the kitchen cleaning off the top of the fridge… after all it is only 20 minutes and then I can do something more interesting.

Last, but not least by any means is the LIST. Lists are great for me. I like the feel of checking things off as they get done. I have lists of things that need done and lists of how to do thing. Some lists are long term others are “to do today” sorts of list. So cleaning the kitchen turns into printing out my “clean the kitchen checklist”, giving the eight-year-old his reading, and setting the timer for 20 minuets. I might not get the entire list down, but I will definitely do more than putting away one battery.

 

Simplicity

Spring cleaning

darceeLeave a comment

Lent is a good time to work on spring cleaning. I find myself in more of a mind to let go of things, to start new and to refocus.

My household is a busy place. I have a small homebased business, we have five children in the household and one who is in a residential placement, we homeschool and we are not naturally “stuff-organized” to start with. Our normal decorating style is “tornado just blew through”.

Enter Lent. I look around my home and think “something has to change”. I think this about once a fortnight, but Lent seems to give it a bit of added importance. Cobwebs need to come down, out grown clothing needs to be sorted for storing or donation, toys, books, papers, art supplies, kitchen gadgets all beg for attention.

There are many good organizational resources online if you are looking for a starting place search for “home organization” or “homemaking” a very popular site is “Flylady” I find the Flylady annoying, but I have friends who just swear by her methods. In all honesty her approach is very sound, but all those emails and the constant marketing of the latest “Fly thing” bugs me and it is a wee bit touchy feely for me… I don’t need to learn to finally love myself, I love myself just fine, thank you, but housekeeping is a bit overwhelming for me.

Our most pressing housekeeping issue is stuff. We just simply have to much. We have too many clothes, too many toys and – though it seems impossible – too many books. Storage isn’t a huge issue for us, we have plenty of space, but stuff is.

I am working on my Lenten Organization and Spring Cleaning plan. As I complete sections I will post them here in case anyone else finds them useful (and for easy reference for myself of course)

 

Simplicity

Can One be too Modest?

darceeLeave a comment

Picking up here where I left off Monday. I heard a snippet on the radio not long ago about modesty. The two most surprising things were that the spot was not talking about modest of dress per say but of modest as a whole and it was on a secular station. In reading a little bit more I found this article at webMd which discusses modesty as declining in an age where the cultural norm is to be assertive and self-promoting. I am actually very disappointed in the article. It neither describes the dangers of immodesty nor does it really sell modesty. Worse it attributed lack of modesty to a lack of self-esteem and advises “moderation” in modesty.. which seems sort of like advising moderation in health. Moderation is a manifestation of the virtue of temperance. One could be self-effacing, but but that is not modest at all.

Faith in Action · Simplicity

Simple Christian Living

darceeLeave a comment

It is hard to live a faithful life in a very materialistic and wealthy society. We have so much and there is so much to have. It becomes difficult to separate the needs from the need to have. Materialism seeps like a poison into all our plans and choices without our even seeing it because we are immersed in a culture which claims the pursuit of more stuff as a worthy goal.

 Others have eloquently spoken on the dangers of materialism so I will not belabor that point. What I want to share today is a hope. There is a practical hope that life doesn’t have to be owned by owning and filled with the acquisition of ever more stuff. This hope can become realty only with a dramatic mental shift, a conversion of our desires. The first part of this is difficult It is hard in a society that defines success in such a material fashion to let go of material desires. No one wants to feel that they are not successful and what is almost as bad, and to some no doubt worse, no one wants to feel as if the world looks down on them.

We need to introduce a new way of looking at our lives and looking at success. I would call this a dignified poverty that strives towards a holy poverty. The type of poverty of possession that is chosen, much like many religious take a vow of poverty but with the difference that we are responsible for the maintenance of our selves and our families without the community to support us financially. The goal, to draw closer to the divine remains the same. By freeing ourselves from the goal of owning more we can look at those things that really matter most. For the Christian this is undoubtedly attaining heaven and for the Christian parent educating our children in the faith so that heaven will be their end as well. Western culture, with its maddening race to own more leaves us exhausted, with little time for our families, our faith life or even sleep. This is extremely dangerous to the goals of Christian living and Christian parenting.

 Poverty, even a self willed poverty, itself is not a virtue it is only made virtuous by the motive that propels it. The scriptures don’t advocate poverty as much as they caution against the accumulation of wealth. This is where the concept of simplicity lives. Simplicity in the context of this essay and of this site in general means: living for God unencumbered with ease and modesty, lacking in affectation and pretense. There is a dignity implicit in this approach to living.