Holidays and Simplicity

When did the holidays turn into a source of stress instead of joy?  I'm guessing it happened when we were cutting back on staff at work so that investors and the company could make more money.  A lot of us had our work loads doubled or tripled.  Then there was equal pay for equal work (even though that hasn't quite happened for a lot of women).  So it was worthwhile financially for women to work.  The thing was, they still had their full time home care and child care jobs.  Sometimes husbands helped out - some more than others - and sometimes they didn't.  In addition, extended family may live far away.  But with jobs, home care and child care all together, the extra work of the holidays sometimes fell on only one or two people - thus the stress instead of joy.

So, what to do about that?  What has worked for me is to make a list of the things I love the most about each holiday and ask the people who celebrate with me for their favorites.  Then I do only those things.    I am judicious about what invitations I accept.  Parties are wonderful but trying to go to everything I'm invited to often doesn't work out.  Of course, lots of people start really early getting ready for holidays.  That really works when I do it because I can divide the extra work into tiny little bits that are easy to fit in to my daily life and because they are so small can be enjoyed.  Another stress buster is to stop looking at commercials and ads for ideas for gifts.  Using love as guidance for gift giving makes it easier and more fun.

Grocery Shopping

I'm not fond of grocery shopping.  Since I live alone, I can postpone for quite awhile by doing the drive thru thing.  But, of course, that's quite unhealthy and I feel bad about it.  When I had a MUCH busier life, it was even more of a problem.  Then as I was working on simplifying my life, I ran across a book that had a method I still use.  I made a list of the items I regularly buy, and then I put them in the order that they are laid out in my grocery store.  I did this task on the computer so that the list was stored in the data base. 

Each week I decided on menus, checked to see what ingredients I would need, went to the master list and highlighted the things I needed and anything else that I needed - such as paper products - printed out that list and headed for the store.  Since it was in order of the layout of the store, it took very little time to pick everything up - no back tracking.  Also, I had already done a lot of the work only once.  That simplification probably saved me an hour - maybe more - at the store.  Since the list was thorough, I rarely had to go back to the store during the week.  This method still works for me.

Less is More

I was talking to someone the other day about time management, and she assured me that she never wasted any time and got a lot done.  I guess that's the usual way people think of time management.  But a long time ago I learned that time management is really about priorities.  Careful elimination of low priority things gives me time for the things that really matter which include rest and recreation.  I think the less "stuff" I have to dust, the happier I am.  Things require care.  I'm just not into that.  I would rather listen to music, go to the movies, visit with friends and go to bed early.  Of course, I'm not everybody; so everyone has to make his/her own decisions about what's important to them. 

Commitments and Time

Another part of simplifying life is to look at how we spend our time.  I learned about time studies when I was managing a department full of people with different levels of skills.  I asked them (and myself) to track what we were doing every hour.  This is not as hard as it sounds, by the way.  It just requires stopping for a minute every hour (set an alarm) and writing down what you did during that hour.  After a week of doing this, I was always amazed at what I learned.  At work a lot more of my time was spent checking email than I would ever have imagined.  Email is actually not a priority most of the time.  So I just checked it about three times a day - when I came to work, at noon and at mid-afternoon. 

There were a lot of other time wasters too - answering the phone every time it rang was another one.  So I began to just block out periods of time during the day when I did not answer the phone.  Now in order not to make people angry who were trying to reach me and who thought what they wanted was urgent, I was dedicated to returning phone calls immediately after I finished with a phone-free period of time.  If I didn't reach the person, I left a message as to when I could be reached that day, and I answered the phone during that time period.   I also answered email as I checked it during email checking times.

I also had the bad habit of saying "yes" to everything I was invited to do.  In the process of checking how I spent my time, I looked at my commitments.  Like a lot of people, I think, I was in the habit of thinking I could do everything.  The trouble is, like everyone else, I only have 24 hours a day, and every commitment I keep is one that keeps me from doing something else.  What I decided to do instead was make a list of everything I was doing, thought I should do, and that I wanted to do, and looked at how that fit in 24 hours a day.  To my astonishment, the time needed for all of it would have taken about 72 hours a day.  No wonder I felt unsettled with my life!  So I worked on prioritizing which was a painful experience since it meant I had to cross things I actually wanted to do off my list.  But 24 hours a day, is still just 24 hours a day.

For a time I tried to make 24 hours go further by sleeping less and being productive every second of every day.  Some people can do that.  It turns out I'm not one of them.  I need about ten hours of sleep out of 24 and I also need some do-nothing time as well.  So it turns out I don't actually have 24 hours a day - it's actually more like 10.  When time is that scarce, it really motivates me to give deep, prayerful thought to prioritizing.  This is my life after all.  How am I going to see this day at the end of my life?

More on Simplicity

I really hate to bring this up, since everyone thinks they need just the right car and a big house with big furniture, but are you sure you really need this?  I have a little house and it only takes 10 minutes to vacuum all the carpet.  I have air cleaning machines so that there's almost no dust in my house (almost eliminates dusting). 

I have a small, very simple car.  There's not a lot to keeping it reasonably clean.  I can keep the dash, steering wheel, etc. clean by spraying some water (a tiny bottle in my package compartment) on a cloth (also in the package compartment) and wiping dust off in the amount of time I have sitting at a stop light.  When it rains, I put on a rain coat and go out with a sponge soaked in detergent.  I can wash my whole car in 10 minutes flat, and the rain washes it off.  Then I pull into the garage and the car dries.  Voila!  All done.  Every once in awhile I use my shop vac to vacuum the seats and the floor.  Small car; small job.

Now that I'm in my 7th decade on the earth, I feel the need to simplify as much as I can and use my time only for the really important stuff.  Of course, if I had thought of these things sooner, I would have had a lot more time in my 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s for hanging out under trees, necking with my husband, dancing, playing with my children, playing with pupplies and other vitally important stuff.  Better late than never!

Simplify Your Clothes

This suggestion is probably just for women, but maybe not.  I learned this late in life.  I knew I spent way too much time for my taste trying to figure out what to wear, taking care of my clothes (washing, ironing, taking stuff to and from the cleaners), and moving stuff from closet to closet, etc.  I finally found a style that suited me (meaning I look good, the clothes are appropriate for every occasion, they require almost no care and never wear out).  I got rid of pretty much everything else I owned and settled in for a lifetime of peace in the wardrobe department.  I often say that the brand of clothes I wear cured my dressing disorder.

Everyone is different so the style each person chooses will be different.  But the point is that clothing should add to our quality of life, not create stress, indecision, and time crunches.  The initial work of finding just the right type of clothes and then buying them will be time and energy consuming but worth it in the end.

Busy Work

Defeating the voice in our heads that tries to sidetrack us from the activities that bring us to the life of our dreams can seem like a full time job (and it is, in a way).  One of the favorite ways I get sidetracked is with busy work.  I used to think of things like dusting plant leaves as a way to not start work on something vitally important.  Those plant leaves looked terribly dusty and anything that's dusty must be dusted, right?  Actually, no.  Since we are all supposed to be busy, busy, busy in this day and age, the only way we can legitimately loaf is to elevate busy work to an art form.  Then we can say, "Well, I just didn't have time (to do whatever the vitally important thing is), and we can prove it since we were incredibly busy all day. 

My favorite way of defeating busy work is to make a "to-do" list and put down all the plant leaf dusting.  When I can't think of even one more thing to write down, I just cross off everything but the vitally important stuff.