People make fun of me for wanting/having night lights.
“Only children are afraid of the dark,” they say.
UNTRUE.
See, there’s something about the dark that has always bothered me, and will always bother me, more than the monsters under my bed or the strange man hiding in my closet (we’re friends now, it’s all good), and that is the fact that in the dark, you cannot see.
Let me elaborate. Continue reading “Why You Should Definitely Still Have a Night Light as an Adult”
Writing this post, I was torn between categorizing it as Simple Living and Efficient Living, because there are just so many reasons why shih tzus improve your life. I could categorize it as both, because I’m the damn writer, right? Well no, because I’m going to keep my life simpler and allow myself only one category.
How’s that for some minimalism, you digital minimalist freaks? (I say that with much love in my heart.) Continue reading “Why Owning a Shiht is the Ultimate Answer to the Simple Living Question”
Hoarding can be a natural, almost evolutionary response to the possibility that one day, there might be a lack of something essential to your life. Some people do it with food, newspapers, books, or clothes. They all have a reason and however realistic that reason may be, the collection grows, takes up space, and potentially becomes more of a nuisance than a help.
But there’s another type of hoarding that gets looked over a lot, and that’s the hoarding of money. What’s interesting is that food and clothing are almost an evolutionary response to the basic things you would need just to stay alive. However, in our capitalist society, money is what allows you to get the things that keep you alive. With 401k’s and savings accounts, we have essentially adapted to a modern society by nixing our tendencies to hoard life-keeping things, and instead hoard this digital currency (in most cases, but I don’t discount paper money hoarders) that we can’t even see, that allows us to get anything our little hearts desire.
I’m a self-diagnosed money hoarder, and there are a few more symptoms you might see if you think you may be a money hoarder too.
Continue reading “Money Hoarding & How a Minimalist Mindset Changed my Conception of Volunteerism”
My focus lends itself to the emotional spaciousness that comes with letting things go. I like open space, the ability to move around, and knowing that if I do want to buy or replace something, that old thing will still have a use, whether it be by me or someone else who can use it better. The mindset of having what you need and letting the rest go can also sometimes create an anti-consumerist mentality, which really can be good or bad. In the long run, once you commit to the minimalist/simplistic lifestyle, I find that several factors come into play that lead to a little more feng shui, a little less spending, and a little more mental room to breathe. All generally good things.
But there’s another perspective that is sometimes overlooked, and on occasion represented in a way that is grossly out of proportion, and that is the idea that a minimalist lifestyle requires you to be absolutely loaded. Continue reading “How Much Does it Really Cost to Hang Onto that Extra Crap?”