Simplify with Gabby

Friends/Readers/Followers, meet my dear friend Gabby. Gabby and I met when I was working at a gym teaching postnatal fitness. She had just had her youngest son who was 5 weeks early. In this particular class, I would set up stations around the room for the participants to complete different exercises while I kept the babies happy off to the side of the room. I knew Gabby and I were going to be friends when she came in to the class from this initial interaction… I introduced myself, she introduced herself and introduced me to her son, then continued to say that she would prefer I not take him out of the car seat since it was flu season and he was premature.

A momma speaking truth and not feeling shame to protect her baby – that’s a momma I want to hang with! Gabby and I have stayed friends even though we don’t live in the same town and I value her friendship so much! Gabby is real, she is raw, she is a giver, an advocate, passionate, loving, caring, thoughtful, smart, talented, she is definitely not afraid to get dirty, she is practical, she’s an adventurer, and she listens. This is a friend you want!

I asked Gabby to write something in relation to the mission of the honest truth blog, whatever was speaking to her at the moment, and she wrote about simplification. it seems so simple, but there are so many places/ways to simplify that we often over look. Read below about Gabby’s experience and feel free to comment with your simplification ideas/techniques!

xo, Jessica

“Simplify”

Every New Year’s Eve for the past 9 years my family has gathered with 5 other families to ring in another year of life, love and community. After we put all the kids in bed, the adults gather to share their highs, lows and either a goal or word for the coming year. We’re super cool, I promise 🙂

For 2019, my goal was “intentionality” and my word was “simplify”.

For me, these two things go hand in hand. I want to take the time to enjoy this stage of life with my boys, I want to make space for my husband and I want to be able to look back and not feel like I was sinking through toddler-hood. In order to do this, I needed to simplify my life and be very intentional with my time and energy (because let’s face it, waking up at the crack of dawn ready to roll does not give one endless amounts of energy).

Emily Ley wrote in A Simplified Life that “when we pare down life to its simplest parts, we’re left with room to enjoy each other, to rest, and truly savor life with all our hearts, minds and spirits.”

When I started thinking about my goal and word for the year, I had to really think about what I wanted for myself and my life for this year. Nine months into the year, it’s still a work in progress, but this is what I’ve discovered… I want to remember this time with my boys. I want to not spend all my time cooking, cleaning and keeping our home “functional” but also need it to be “functional”…I use that word loosely as it changes based on my mood, anxiety levels and schedule for the coming days!

So if those are the things that I want, how do I make this work? Our house cannot be a disaster zone and I need time and space for myself to reclaim energy and balance. These may not be issues for you, but for me, I function best in that space.

I’m still tweaking what works for me/my family as we go, but so far, this is what I’ve found…

• Declutter your inbox and social media and set time limits…I unfriended and unfollowed people I don’t know, don’t bring me joy, or haven’t spoken to in over 5 years. I took a couple of days to work my way through the thousands of emails hanging out in my inbox and made folders for events/topics that are important so that I can reference them quickly. I also took advantage of the Screen Time limits on my phone. It doesn’t completely stop me from aimlessly scrolling Insta, but it definitely makes me think twice about my time and I feel better when feeding my brain with interesting new things rather than other people’s pointless musings.
• Early this spring I took part in Emily Ley’s Ruthless Declutter Challenge (after quoting her above and then noting this, I feel like I look like a huge EL fan but I have to admit, a friend recommended her challenge and I just read her book, so no worries, I haven’t gone full happy stripe just yet). Over the course of a month, I went room by room in our house and got rid of all the things that were broken, excessive, didn’t fit, etc. I took 3 separate loads of stuff to Goodwill and it felt so good. I didn’t have to worry about the boys pulling out clothes that didn’t fit and the battle to have them change into something that did, I could open our cabinets without water bottles falling out, and I knew where things were that I previously could not locate.
• Meal prep…I need to be much better about this, but I find that our days go much smoother and I feel less stressed when I have our fruit and veggies chopped and ready to go for the day. I can then pull them out to throw in a smoothie, into a pan or straight on a plate saving me precious time during that awful 4-6pm time frame when everyone is starving and needs all the attention! Some days I prep them first thing in the morning while making breakfast, or if I’m really on my game, on Sundays for the bulk of the week.
• Shoes by the door. This is my most recent adjustment to our life. I’m working on making the change to no shoes on in the house…we have wood floors, I feel like I sweep ALL.THE.TIME so I’m hoping this will help, and it’s just less germy. I bought a big basket from HomeGoods, all the shoes will slowly find their way in to it and there will hopefully be less searching, less throwing shoes back to their rooms, less grime all over and less sweeping! Once can hope.
• This is a shellfish adjustment, but when I looked back over the last couple of years, I realized that I had read less than 3 books (for me, not the kids) in the past 4 years. For me, that’s ridiculous! I LOVE reading. It gives my introvert-self life. In order to pour into my family, I needed to get back to doing things for myself as well. I set another goal to read at least 12 books this year. I’m at 13 and it’s September. I feel better, I feel like I’m using my time wisely.

None of these things are completely life altering, but they are little things that I have chosen to try out. Small changes that make me feel more together and less stressed so that I can focus in on my family and remember this precious time. Now, real truth…have I been totally successful in all these things? Absolutely not. I still could put more effort into relationship with my husband and time with my boys. I decluttered my email and social media but still struggle with spending too much time on Insta/Facebook and have let my emails pile up again. I did declutter all the rooms in our house except two, life got busy and I never got back to those last two rooms. I meal prep when I can and our shoes will probably still be all over the house because I have a 2 and 4 yr old and that’s just life.  These are small things that help when I can make it happen. Do I stress when one of my systems doesn’t work quite right, sure, it’s part of my type A, enneagram 8, Myers’s Briggs J personality. But am I trying? Absolutely. Do my boys care if I’m not successful at being 100% intentional or simplify all the things…not one bit. They care if I have time to sit down and play trucks with them, run through a sprinkler or sing Blippi songs. And those are the little things I want to remember. I care and try to make things better for my family, but not at the cost of being with my family.

How have you simplified your life? What tools, tricks, tips can you share with us that might be helpful? What does intentionality mean for you? I’d love to hear what each of you are doing to be more intentional with your families and how you are simplifying your life.