Being Realistic

In my dream-life, my dream-self makes all the consumable products we use (toothpaste, makeup, baby wipes, laundry detergent, etc. etc. etc. etc.). My dream-self also makes all the food we eat from scratch using organic ingredients, mostly raised by ourselves or bought locally, and never buys convenience food full of chemicals and additives. My dream-self also is never stressed out, and can somehow do all of this while raising children (who obviously are helpful, whine-free, tantrum-free, obedient and respectful dream-children), teaching them everything they need to know, and enjoying life in our perfectly spotless home where the dishes are done, laundry is washed/folded/put away, and everything is, in general, organized, simple and restful.

In reality, I spent several hours today researching homemade makeup, homemade toothpaste (because we need some), homemade deodorant (I used to make it; where did that perfect recipe we both loved go anyway?), printing recipes, figuring costs, and wondering if it's all really worth it. Is it worth trying to live a different way?

When I thought through our shopping fast, I made a choice to do my best to eliminate all the necessary-but-convenience items that drive up our bills: organic baby wipes (I can make them myself with paper towels plus a little extra time!), laundry detergent, etc. It takes being deliberate, a little extra foresight (making the wipes before I'm halfway through a dirty diaper change and realize there is not a single wipe in the house), and a few extra ingredients. Because I've been working on becoming my dream-self for awhile now, I've stocked up quite a few of these extra ingredients already (score! No need to buy more stuff!). I suppose it also takes faith too. Faith that what I'm doing is worth doing even when I feel like everything is chaos and I can't even do things as basic as feeding my children something other than peanut butter and jelly for the 3rd time in a row.

At our BSF lecture a couple weeks ago, our discussion leader mentioned how when she as a young mother she complained to God about not having time to seek Him with all the constant demands on her life, and He reminded her of Matthew 6:33 - "But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well". I've thought of that frequently since then. I'm trying to accomplish as much as I can between now and Baby #3's arrival (make the products, sew the baby-stuff, make all the gifts we'll want to give over the next year when we're not buying stuff, etc), but there's only so much a tired pregnant mom can do in a day. And I know it will only be harder once she's here, and I'm sleeping even less with an adjusting 2-year-old and always-challenging 4-year-old, not to mention a husband who is away more than ever. I think, being realistic, how in the world can I do basic homemaking tasks (laundry, food, etc), let alone shoot for some of my goals (like a year's supply of home-canned goods and a homemade products)??

What really matters here? That I seek Him first, His kingdom, and His righteousness. He gets it. He understands. He doesn't condemn me when I cannot be my dream self (or even half of my dream-self). What's more important is that He Himself promises that, as I seek Him first, everything else will be added to my life - food, clothing, etc. I don't need to worry. Yes, I can be realistic, and know I may need to buy toothpaste and deoderant down the road. But can I not also trust Him that He will provide the best? Like peace. Strength. Rest. Maybe I will need to buy something, but maybe not! He can provide in unlimited ways, for extra time, extra help, extra energy, etc!

Trust Him first, Kyra. Seek Him first. Everything else will fall into place when I do. Realistically, my dream-self is the mother who trusts Him like that and is at rest in my soul when my children throw a tantrum again about their food or can't leave me alone long enough to do 1 load of laundry! In the bigger picture of life, that's more important. That's an eternal dream-self with eternal value. I suppose, realistically speaking, that's going to add greater value to my children's lives than an all-organic, from-scratch diet and home.

What to do with DVDs?

Flickr: bobbigmac

I'm not sure what your media center looks like, but ours looks beautiful - on the outside. But open the doors (and they always tend to hang open) and it's purely chaotic. There are DVDs stacked up that were haven't been put away since Christmas. Of '13! Really, you could argue that minimalizing our DVD collection could be extremely easy - just throw away all the DVDs that are sitting in our DVD racks! :P This situation is complicated by a couple factors. 1. I've never in my life been in the habit of putting my media (starting c/ VHS and tapes) away when I'm done. 2. Our kids watch the same cycle of about 5 DVDs day in and day out. Actually, that wasn't very many factors, was it...? It's hard to look at the media center and not get frustrated with the way we keep it, but that hasn't yet led to real changes in our system. 

Since starting to work on minimalizing our lives, I've developed this wonderful vision of ripping all our DVDs, storing them on an external hard drive, and streaming them to the TV. PC World has a good article here that describes how to accomplish this using a nice app called Plex. The problem is that doing with require buying more stuff.We could then get rid of all the cases, and just keep the disks in a nice disk binder. At a minimum I would need to buy another external hard drive, a large disc binder, and some way to splice a tablet to our TV.  I've argued with myself that buy more for the sake of minimalizing might be acceptable, but that argument isn't gaining in my mind. When you couple that with our impending shopping fast, it gets halted completely. 

So what options are left to us? The first step will be to do a minimalization just like we've started in the rest of the house. All the DVDs will come out of their racks - added step of going back in their cases - and then we'll decide which ones are really worth keeping. For the sake of ease we'll move the kids' FWDs (frequently-watched DVDs) up by the TV (in their cases!) and put the remaining disks back into their racks. 

The Minimalists advice for your DVD collection was basically this: get a life and stop watching the same movies all the time. Others have said to embrace Hulu or Netflix instead. I get those thoughts, but we're also trying to spend less time in front of the TV completely. We do really enjoy watching the movies we have and we found that when we had a subscription service we were spending WAY too much time watching it because there was always something new to watch. I think if we focus instead of having a core collection of movies that we actually value enough to keep around and watch repeatedly, we'll had the right things that we'll watch the right amount. 

Any thoughts/ideas that I haven't covered here? What have you done to try to mange your media? I'd love to hear some more suggestions!

The Desination

So I've called this a journey and every journey needs a destination, right? My first thought was that our goal in our journey to simplicity looks something like this picture - rural, pristine, farmhouse, farm animals, the pond where I'm fly fishing to bluegill and crappy in the summer, woods where I'm hunting with my sons (only one of whom has actually been born so far) in the fall. But then I realized that this place isn't our destination at all - it's essentially a big collection of really cool stuff - the pond, animals, the barn, the treestand. Yes, Kyra and I want to raise our family on a small farm, but it's not because we want a farm - it's because we want to give our children and ourselves a different lifestyle and to raise them with the work, discipline, and social freedom that will accompany that lifestyle. We also care about providing them and ourselves with healthy, grass-raised, local food that we've managed ourselves. So yes, I love this picture and the place looks positively perfect, but this isn't what I want. I want healthy kids turning into strong adults. I want young adults who can recognize when society is trying to manipulate them. I want children who are capable of anything that needs to be accomplished and are confident that they can do it. I want teens who know who they are and aren't going to let others convince them that they need to be someone else. I want a family that is connected to nature and the seasons and all the different but unique aspects of every part of the year. This is our destination, and I definitely hope that we can keep from confusing the destination with the path along the way.