"No reading at the breakfast table"

One of the changes I'm making in my year of Less is More , is that I've reduced my paid employment to  two days a week.  It was three days in 2013 and four days in 2012, so I'm going backwards at a nice, steady pace! I like my job a lot.  I teach in a school with fantastic staff and kids - it's fun and a lovely environment to spend time in.  I feel smart when I'm there.  I'm always a bit surprised when my thoughts and contributions appear useful to others!  Being honest, I would happily work more.  I like it.  There's nothing much more to it than that.  The money helps us, but we've lived off one pretty modest income for most of our married life so it's not so much about the money. However, I have found juggling work and family really tough. My energy bank seems to be smaller than other people's (or I have five kids and I'm way too optimistic about what can be achieved in a lifetime!).  Ok - it's probably just smaller than I would li...

Then: April 2012 I'm very excited.  It's taken 1 year and 9 months of waiting and waiting and I've now got just grey/white hair.  It might seem strange that this is exciting to someone with so few years under the belt (ha, ha), but after the skunk, two-tone deal I'm glad to get to the end of the process.  Now I'm hoping that my ageing will plateau (for like, about 20 years!).  The rest of you can catch up later! Now: January 2014 I am really happy with the outcome.  I like the colour - it's quite white at the back and underneath so it looks almost blond sometimes (I tell myself …).  And I love that I don't have to do anything to it that involves hours of my spare time.  So many more books can be read instead! You can read more about my hair journey:  starting , the  skunk stage  and the  half-way  mark!

Ahh - I feel organised just looking at this So you've read the book , got inspired by my posts and you're all set to go.  You're psyched.  You're going to get ORGANISED.  At last you're going to get your stuff SORTED.  Unlike the last two times you got serious, you really are going to do it this time.  Because you went to IKEA this morning and got the right shelving and containers and boxes to help you DO IT! Hold on.  Stop - STOP … Do NOT go to the shops to help you declutter.  Don't buy more stuff to help you get sorted.  You're meant to be getting rid of stuff.  And those containers = more STUFF!!!! Storage containers help hide and tidy up stuff.  But they don't actually help declutter.  By storing my things I'm just hiding the clutter.  Sure it's not cluttering up my lounge room anymore, but it's still in my life and I still own it and will have to work out what to do with it at some point in time.  I'm actual...

"Our lives are, by definition, made up of finite resources.  Each of us has a limited amount of minutes, dollars and units of energy with which to live our lives.  Every passing day presents an opportunity to trade our lives for something else.  Unfortunately most of our lives are unintentionally traded down and lived in exchange for returns of limited temporal value.  We never set out to purposefully trade our lives for things of limited value, but in a culture surrounded by similar pursuits, our lives conform too easily " (Clutterfree with Kids, page 33).   During my reading and thinking over the past few months that have led to ' My year of Less is More' , I've been following Joshua Becker's blog,  'Becoming Minimalist' .  As part of his blog, he collects links to articles related to decluttering.  But not just decluttering possessions, but on living more simply.  I've found this reading enormously interesting and inspiring. ...

Time for a little break from the personal oversharing with my 'Less is More' saga! (You can catch up here ) 'Ender's Game' by Orson Scott Card was written in 1985.  I didn't know this when I started reading it and assumed it was more recent because he uses technology like the internet and iPads (not called this in the books, but the same concepts) throughout the story.  Incredible really when you realise when it was written. It's a science fiction book.  Not my genre at all.  But it had been recommended by so many different people that I really thought I should give it a go.  It ended up being my one of my favourite books of 2013 and I even convinced my 15 year old son to read it (unheard of that we'd enjoy a sci fi book together!). The story is set in the future where, 50 years earlier, Earth has survived two invasions by an alien, insect-like race.  Now there appears an imminent threat of another invasion and children are selected to train fr...

One of my gorgeous kids performing at the Opera House So I've started (in case you're not sure what I'm up to, I'm aiming for a year where we do/consume/own less so that we have time for more great, fun, important stuff  - check out my original post here ). Over the past few weeks I've been working towards make the very difficult decision to stop our kids learning the piano.  I know that for some of my readers will be like "Yeah, whatever", but others will be shocked. I'm in a bit of shock and grief myself.   I really enjoy playing the piano and I so wanted my kids to have that same enjoyment and opportunity to learn.  It's pretty deeply embedded in my set of values that feel important to me which is why it's a big deal to let go of it.  Plus it's been a lot of hard work to keep them motivated, to get them to lessons etc. (8 years of it for some the kids!). But … here's what made me rethink it. 1.  With five learning the pia...

                                                                      Image from socialmoms.com In the spirit of those reality shows where all the participant's humiliating secrets are revealed before they proceed with the rest of the programme,  I feel that I need to fully disclose what our life was like in 2013 so that you can see what I'm trying to do in slowing our life down a little. I was truly confronted by the madness of it all when we were chatting to friends (with a similar number /age of kids) during the holidays about our timetable.  We were talking about what happened each afternoon of the week in terms of carting the kids around. Our friend said, "Well, our afternoons are pretty quiet because we have a lot on in the mornings before school". I laughed. "Oh, we haven't even started ta...