This week has been a nice quiet one.
We started the week with the hatching of seven turkey chicks.
Tuesday, I gave a sewing lesson to a friend. It is so cool to see her gaining new skills and getting excited about completing a project!
Wednesday, we tattooed a 4-H'er's goat and helped clip the hooves of another's goat.
Today, another friend is coming over to visit and also share with us clothes that her daughter has out grown.
Tomorrow is our first "Keepers At Home" meeting. We'll be studying Contentment (YIKES!) and making our sashes. Sam and I will be taking Abby out for her birthday dinner, as well.
The girls have completed a good amount of schoolwork, since our days are not filled with so much activity. Next week looks to be just as relaxed and I am really enjoying this new slower pace for our family.
Showing posts with label simplifying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label simplifying. Show all posts
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Half
I finished reading "The Power of Half" the other day. It was a very good book about a family that decided to sell their HUGE home and downsize to a smaller home. They contributed half of the profit from the sale to help villages in Ghana. I know that this family of four moved into a "smaller" home that is still larger than my home, which houses seven people. But, the principle is still a good one: If everyone gave half of what they had, to help those who have nothing, the world would be a better place.
We (the girls and I) were discussing this book one morning and then the conversation moved on to which animals would be going to the auction in a couple of weeks. And then it occurred to us: Our goats this year are named for cheeses from various countries, many of them poor countries. For example, Abby has a buckling named Ayib for cheese from Ethiopia. We decided that we will donate half of whatever the selling price is for that goat, to an aid organization in whatever country they were named for. It will be merely a drop in the bucket of what is needed, but it is still a drop.
The other book I have been reading is "Organized Simplicity". This book is, by far, the best organizing/simplicity movement book I have ever read. Not only is it well laid out, includes worksheets, and great ideas about organization, it also shows you the "why" of it all. While the "motivational" parts can get a little lengthy, with some of it being stuff I already knew, the author does a great job of packaging it all up. The desire to improve your home environment is rooted in facts, not emotion. And we all know that emotions simply won't carry us through the day-to-day tedium of organizing and culling to create order, and then maintaining that order.
The section on "finding your home's purpose" was just what we needed. As a family we were able to really lay out what our goals were and decide if what we were doing was moving us toward or away from those goals. It is so much easier to make decisions about things by checking if they match up with your purpose.
I borrowed this book from my library, but I plan on purchasing it soon.
We (the girls and I) were discussing this book one morning and then the conversation moved on to which animals would be going to the auction in a couple of weeks. And then it occurred to us: Our goats this year are named for cheeses from various countries, many of them poor countries. For example, Abby has a buckling named Ayib for cheese from Ethiopia. We decided that we will donate half of whatever the selling price is for that goat, to an aid organization in whatever country they were named for. It will be merely a drop in the bucket of what is needed, but it is still a drop.
The other book I have been reading is "Organized Simplicity". This book is, by far, the best organizing/simplicity movement book I have ever read. Not only is it well laid out, includes worksheets, and great ideas about organization, it also shows you the "why" of it all. While the "motivational" parts can get a little lengthy, with some of it being stuff I already knew, the author does a great job of packaging it all up. The desire to improve your home environment is rooted in facts, not emotion. And we all know that emotions simply won't carry us through the day-to-day tedium of organizing and culling to create order, and then maintaining that order.
The section on "finding your home's purpose" was just what we needed. As a family we were able to really lay out what our goals were and decide if what we were doing was moving us toward or away from those goals. It is so much easier to make decisions about things by checking if they match up with your purpose.
I borrowed this book from my library, but I plan on purchasing it soon.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
The Power of Less
I recently finished reading "The Power of Less" by Leo Babauta. I had picked it up because I thought it was about reducing the things in your life and that is something I have been "studying" lately. Turns out it's a book about putting limits on yourself and what you do with your time, energy, and focus.
The author argues that we (you know, that collective ubiquitous "we") are too busy. Technology has given us so many things to do and so many ways to do them, that we think we can do it all, and do it all very well. He states that we actually are doing a lot of things not so very well, at all. We are easily distracted and the time and effort it takes us to switch gears to a new activity causes us to be weak and inefficient in those tasks. Essentially, multi-tasking is a myth.
So his solution is to limit what we take on and teach ourselves to focus on completing only one task at a time. The idea is to pare down our goals to only those things that are essential and focus on one project at a time. While his premise focuses on the "business/work world", I was able to think of ways to apply his ideas to the "home world". The author suggests we can actually get more accomplished and do it better, more effectively and completely, than if we try to focus on several things at once.
Interestingly, the sermon on Sunday morning had some insights into limitations in reference to the narrow gate verses the broad gate, mentioned in Matthew 7. My pathway, as a christian on the narrow way, is not wide enough for me take on all the extra "stuff" I think I need. Several things came to mind as a result of connecting "The Power of Less" ideas with the sermon. If I eliminate many of the non-essential distractions, I can focus more on what is essential.
Reading and studying God's word gives me insight into what really is essential verses what only feels essential. So I have made that my first singular task. It seems like the right place to start. I have begun setting my alarm clock for fifteen minutes earlier than normal so that I have at least that much potentially uninterrupted time for prayer and Bible reading. (I say potentially because the second day I did this, I was interrupted by a goat giving birth!) My plan is to eventually increase that to a full thirty minutes by next month.
I have also set myself other small task-oriented goals for my day. While I still like my routine that we implemented from Large Family Logistics, I am thinking that little goals within some of those routines could be motivating. Things like: completing a certain number of sewing projects, decluttering a pre-defined space, folding/ironing a specific number of items, reading a set number of pages or chapters, etc. The idea is that I will eliminate all (or as many as possible) distractions and focus on that activity until the goal is reached.
One of the demands on my time is already in the works of being eliminated, as it has been deemed "non-essential". A few weeks ago I stepped down as an adult fair advisor for our local 4-H fair association. The girls have some obligations on the fair association board that they need to fulfill, but once they are completed, we will be eliminating that commitment from our schedules. We'll still be involved with 4-H, but mainly only on the local club level. This will free up about five hours per month and a large amount of stress! Other activities that we take part in are in the process of being evaluated for their "essential-ness" within our lives.
I am currently reading a book called "The Power of Half", which is about how one family reduced their lives to half of what they had and increased their charitable donations. It's a pretty inspiring story so far.
The author argues that we (you know, that collective ubiquitous "we") are too busy. Technology has given us so many things to do and so many ways to do them, that we think we can do it all, and do it all very well. He states that we actually are doing a lot of things not so very well, at all. We are easily distracted and the time and effort it takes us to switch gears to a new activity causes us to be weak and inefficient in those tasks. Essentially, multi-tasking is a myth.
So his solution is to limit what we take on and teach ourselves to focus on completing only one task at a time. The idea is to pare down our goals to only those things that are essential and focus on one project at a time. While his premise focuses on the "business/work world", I was able to think of ways to apply his ideas to the "home world". The author suggests we can actually get more accomplished and do it better, more effectively and completely, than if we try to focus on several things at once.
Interestingly, the sermon on Sunday morning had some insights into limitations in reference to the narrow gate verses the broad gate, mentioned in Matthew 7. My pathway, as a christian on the narrow way, is not wide enough for me take on all the extra "stuff" I think I need. Several things came to mind as a result of connecting "The Power of Less" ideas with the sermon. If I eliminate many of the non-essential distractions, I can focus more on what is essential.
Reading and studying God's word gives me insight into what really is essential verses what only feels essential. So I have made that my first singular task. It seems like the right place to start. I have begun setting my alarm clock for fifteen minutes earlier than normal so that I have at least that much potentially uninterrupted time for prayer and Bible reading. (I say potentially because the second day I did this, I was interrupted by a goat giving birth!) My plan is to eventually increase that to a full thirty minutes by next month.
I have also set myself other small task-oriented goals for my day. While I still like my routine that we implemented from Large Family Logistics, I am thinking that little goals within some of those routines could be motivating. Things like: completing a certain number of sewing projects, decluttering a pre-defined space, folding/ironing a specific number of items, reading a set number of pages or chapters, etc. The idea is that I will eliminate all (or as many as possible) distractions and focus on that activity until the goal is reached.
One of the demands on my time is already in the works of being eliminated, as it has been deemed "non-essential". A few weeks ago I stepped down as an adult fair advisor for our local 4-H fair association. The girls have some obligations on the fair association board that they need to fulfill, but once they are completed, we will be eliminating that commitment from our schedules. We'll still be involved with 4-H, but mainly only on the local club level. This will free up about five hours per month and a large amount of stress! Other activities that we take part in are in the process of being evaluated for their "essential-ness" within our lives.
I am currently reading a book called "The Power of Half", which is about how one family reduced their lives to half of what they had and increased their charitable donations. It's a pretty inspiring story so far.
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