The Great Decluttering

It’s taken me quite some time to ease into 2020. At the end of 2019, my family and I took our third trip to Disney World. It was an adventure that felt really great and important to do because in 2019 I finally finished my doctorate and defended my dissertation, and we attended a lot of work events that were held in venues that were beautiful spaces, but not really oriented to families. Going to Disney World then was good fun for us all, and took us away from the pressures that often accompany the holiday season. When we returned though, I found myself asking a lot of questions about what the next year was going to be like for us? Would we take a break from Disney World now? Were there other places in the world we wanted to see? And what should we really be considering as we move into this next phase of our lives—one where I’m done school and have more time than ever in my life to spend with the people I love most and on my writing, language learning and other creative projects? 

These questions also felt really important to answer because earlier in 2019, we learned we were expecting a new baby in Spring of 2020 (yay!). Suddenly, I found myself looking at the home and life we had built in a new way. Did we have enough space for all of these little people? Was there a way to rearrange our space to better reflect what our growing needs were going to be? How was I going to support the needs of these little beings as they transitioned into young adults, with all of the experiences and changes these transitions bring? How could the forest around our home help them stay connected and grounded? Did our house and the things in our house (furniture, clothings, belongings) line up with the way things felt outside? And more, was there an alignment between the different areas of our lives—our work, our schools, our forest, our home? Were we living as sustainably and responsibly as we could? Did our spaces and the activities we were doing in these spaces feel true to who we are and the ways we are encouraged to be as Ogwehoweh—peaceful, respectful, grateful to the human and non-human beings in this world that sustain our existence? 

This last one in particular has been a fascinating question to think about over the last seven weeks and has resulted in a lot of reading, decluttering and thinking about our future. And the answers were, as one might imagine, a combination of yes…and no. But despite the fact that we still have work to do to bring more balance to our lives, shaping our intentions about that work and our space has been a truly satisfying experience. For example, I found myself ending 2019 by doing a massive decluttering to help eliminate the stress I’d sometimes experience when my morning was rushed or our routines were disrupted. With Kehte’s help, I reorganized some spaces in our house to make them more organized or family-friendly, and I started work on building a capsule-like wardrobe filled with fewer items of clothing I actually wanted to wear on a regular basis. Completing these small projects alerted me to the kind of space I wanted to be living, learning and creating in, and I could appreciate how being so busy with school the last seven years hadn’t left me with a lot of time to do be really thoughtful about what I was a) bringing into the house, and b) how the accumulation of those things was impacting the way the house felt. 

All of this wonderful decluttering and thoughtful energy has followed me into 2020, and Kehte and I spent the start of this year introducing new evening and morning routines that allow both of us to use our mornings to have the best and most peaceful days I feel we’ve ever had. To feel nourished, rested, organized, and prepared. And though we still have some unpredictable mornings, it feels good to not punish ourselves or feel like we are falling short, and instead know that we are setting ourselves up to give our all to the work we are fortunate to do, and to each other. It’s been a good experience so far, and over the next year I intend to continue exploring the ideas that have helped me with this transition so far: decluttering, minimalism, low-buy or no-buy, ethical consumption, etc., while also refocusing and going deeper with my creative work. I anticipate this will all be something of a process, and a slightly different one than learning about publishing and making books, but I’m nonetheless excited for all the ways I hope it will grow and support the creative aspects of my life, because the creative parts have always helped fuel the others. And of course, I look forward to sharing some of that journey here :). 

Til next time, happy creating, 

S. 

A few new decluttered spaces. There are before and after pictures, but suffice it to say—this has been a transformation!