Friday Blog review: Loving Simple Living

This week's blog review is Loving Simple Living, which is written by an American blogger named Lorilee Lippencott. She and her family have downsized their life - by which I mean their possessions, what they eat and what they do. She has posts on how to simplify your life, be a minimalist and focus on things that you really need or love.

My favourite post is actually quite boring, but eye-opening at the same time - that sounds unusual I know, but you'll understand when you read it. Titled 'Minimalist Living - What we own', its basically a list of what she has in each room of the house (boring), but there's also photos of the rooms and they are amazingly empty of stuff. Now I like to have a little inspirational clutter around me - the results of play or learning on the carpet, a half-made casserole on the bench, that sort of thing - but I am inspired almost about the peaceful look of such a minimalist house.

And so this Mama is thinking that she could perhaps put things away more often. Does all the tea really need to sit out on the bench permanently? Do we really need a fish tank in the kitchen? Do we need all those backpacks up in the cupboard. I feel some de-cluttering coming on (again) ladies and gentlemen.

I read further and see a post for decluttering usable things - this is where I often get stuck. I'm usually confused when decluttering things that are perfectly fine, or I have spent good money on, or someone has given me as a gift, but I don't use - what do I do with these? It seems counter-productive to keep things that I don't use or love...but that clashes with my ideas about money and waste. This post clears things up a little by providing some guidelines for getting rid of usable items. Definitely something for this Mama to work on further.

And this gets me thinking about another book I read recently - Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative. 'Thing' no.9 is; 'Be Boring: Its the only way to get things done'. Reading this was a bit like a revelation to me because it put some things together and made new sense of them to me. Like the bit where author, Austin Kleon, says:

"The thing is: It takes a lot of energy to be creative. You don't have that energy if you waste it on other stuff."

And this makes more sense when you read another quote in the book, this time by Gustave Flaubert:

"Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work".

I like this. I strive for creativity in my life and in the life of my family, but its been very chaotic of late and my creativity has taken a dive. This book, and Loving Simple Living, help me to make sense from this chaos and give me a direction forward. More to come on this I'm sure...

Good days to you all.