Power of one

2010 was a year of improving our eating habits, if only in small increments. One night, my husband and I went to dinner at one of our favourite restaurants. I ordered a salad, and grilled salmon with veggies on Naan bread. Delicious. My husband ordered the fish and chips. I had a cranberry juice and sparkling water. He had a Coke. I was just considering how nutritionally lost he is, when he looked up from his meal, and said, "I think you broke me."

"Not enjoying it?" I asked.

"Not nearly so much as I used to," he replied. Score one for healthy eating.

We got rid of our deep fryer in 2010. It was one simple change, one that was within our reach, and one that made sense for us. There was an adjustment period where we had to start figuring out what we would eat in place of french fries, but we got through it, and now I don't even miss it.

It is tough for me to make one change. Finding motivation to make the one change is not the problem. The problem arises when I think that the one change must immediately become twenty changes, and then one hundred, and then continuing until I have the nutritional habits of a mountain yogi.

I attended a nutrition talk a few months back that supplied me with far more food rules than I had ever before dreamed existed. My inner critic had a heyday, dropping my grade in personal nutrition from C to F-. How could I claim to be interested in nutrition, and live like I was living? If I wasn't willing to cut out white flour, refined sugar and MSG completely, how sincere could I possibly be?

The impulses to begin some major life overhaul started to pull on me again. Seems to be just my way. Is there something worth improving? Better jump in with both feet, and turn your life upside down to accomplish it. No sense doing things halfway.

This is a lifelong pattern. When I was young, my mom would send me into the basement with a simple instruction: "Go straighten up your room." Everything would start out fine. It would continue to be fine until I had to actually put something away. I would open the door to the closet to put away it doesn't matter what, and I would think, "Oh, there is no space for this. If only my closet was organized better." And of course, I always thought it would have to be better organized right now. I would start emptying, sorting, and relabeling, and when my mother would check on my room-cleaning progress 30 minutes later, she would find me knee deep in the contents of my bedroom closet, standing in a much larger mess than the one I had initially been sent to 'straighten'.

Thankfully, I have been introduced to the concept of balance since those closet-emptying days, and am starting to realize that doing something sincerely does not automatically equal making it into my new life's purpose. This is a lesson hard to learn, and easy to forget.

In 2011, I am going to make a greater effort to keep these words in mind during all attempts at improvement:

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.

- Edmund Burke

And also, the classic:

A journey of a thousand miles much begin with a single step.

Maybe I will make it my 2011 mantra: Doing a little is not the same as doing nothing. Small changes do add up. Our small changes in eating have added up enough now to see my husband regretting his own junk supper choices. After the restaurant visit, we went to a movie, and together scarfed down movie popcorn, and deliciously devoid of nutrition fountain Coke. It is good exercise for me. It helps me to remember not to chase after perfection. Just progress.

Too much!

Nik's birthday and Christmas both fall in December, so for a couple of years now, we have experienced a double whammy of new toys and other gifts. We are also expecting a new little person at the end of January, and although I know new babies are small, the accessories that multiply around them can quickly take over one's home. Since our house isn't getting any bigger, my thoughts have been turning more and more to decluttering, simplifying and scaling back. We need to make space.

I know I am not alone. Everywhere I look, people are fighting the battle of too much and too many. Too much stuff in their houses. Too many commitments in their calendar. Too much shopping to do (especially at this time of year). Too many things to get done before the day is through. And, like me, most of these people know that there are huge benefits to scaling back: A cleaner and less cluttered home. Appreciation of the little things. More time and space to breathe, to be, to grow...

It sounds idyllic. Who wouldn't want to live that way? And yet, most of us don't. I am as guilty as the worst among us. In one breath, I profess love for simplicity, and in the next, I am adding detail after hopelessly complicated detail to my daily life. This seems most obvious now that Christmas is coming. Of course I want a family-friendly Christmas, centered on the true meaning of the season, with plenty of in-the-moment, unhurried quality time... But what about the Christmas cards with letters and photos, the gingerbread house from scratch, the real tree standing decorated in the living room, the pine garlands over the door and in the basement, the gifts for family, co-workers, neighbours, the new outfits for Christmas Day, the stocking stuffers, the advent calendar, the hamper contribution, the Christmas child shoebox, the church carol sing, the dinners, the parties, the baking... How do you know what to drop? How can you reasonably drop anything?

I wish I was like this only at Christmas, but my tendency to go overboard permeates most aspects of my life, and has been with me for a very long time. My figurine play as a young child involved the most elaborate set ups of most of the toys in the playroom. When my mom got after me to clean my room as a young teen, I would get quickly sidetracked organizing an overflowing 'junk' drawer, and after 30 minutes be sitting in a bigger mess than what I started with. Research projects and papers in high school and university always ended up taking over my life in the last week or two before the due date. At work, I volunteer for extra projects routinely. And, as I've mentioned in previous posts, I have become a voracious reader on all topics to do with children and parenting. As my mother has often said of me, I "don't do things by halves."

This characteristic is undoubtedly affecting my son. Baby Nik, thanks to second hand shopping and the generosity of family and friends, had just about every baby accessory they make. As a nearly three year old, he already has a ridiculous amount of toys. They may be neatly organized into designated spaces in nearly every room of the house, but put them all together and it would be an impressively overflowing pile. Books and clothing have also been obtained in abundance, and, while I try to resist overscheduling, in his first 3 years he has already been to story time, rhyme time, swim, rhythmic movement, yoga, and playgroup style classes. No music lessons yet, but I caught myself eyeballing an ad for them just the other day, and preschool registration has also been on my mind. An intervention may be in order.

I not concerned about having the time and space to do and have all of these things, because I know, through the powers of organization, you can fit impressive amounts into small space. I am worried though, about what effect this lifestyle will have on us, longterm. In his inspiring book, Simplicity Parenting, Kim John Payne writes about the effect of too many. He says, "Children given so very many choices learn to undervalue all, and hold out - always - for whatever elusive thing that is offered." Too many options for what to eat, amuse ourselves with, watch or wear... This is the typical lifestyle of our affluent culture, and we are marinating in it. How can it not cultivate an attitude of discontent?

2011 will be a year of adding a fourth to our family, and a subsequent break for me from my paid work. I would love for it also to be a year of scaling back, focusing on choosing mindfully instead of being swept away by a sea of too much and too many. Practically and spiritually, I think it would be at once extremely challenging and hugely beneficial.

Now, if only I can get my husband on board...

The money diet

I am one of those hateful individuals that has never had a weight problem. I don't crave desserts or sweets, I eat when I get hungry, I eat until I'm full, and my weight stays within a stable 5 pound range with no real effort at all. I even lost all the weight from my first pregnancy in a little over one year, without trying. I was wondering when all that would return to bite me in the butt...

The concepts of nutrition and weight gain have always seemed simple to me. People gain weight because they are consuming more calories than their body burns. If you want to stop gaining weight, you need to consume the same number of calories you burn. If you want to lose weight, you need to consume less calories than you burn, a strategy often referred to as 'dieting'.

While these concepts have seemed obvious to me when it came to eating, I can now see how I was totally oblivious to their application in the financial realm. We were gaining debt because we were spending more dollars than we had. To stop gaining debt, we have to spend the same amount of money that we have. And to lose that debt, we have to spend less than we make. We need to go on a money diet.

To bring the comparison further, it seems like there are basically two ways to lose weight: reduce the amount you eat, or increase the amount you move. Apply that thinking to finances, and you can see that there are two basic ways to eliminate debt, as well: reduce the amount you spend, or increase the amount you make. Suddenly, I have far more compassion for people who struggle with there weight. In theory, the strategies sound easy. In practice, they are hard. No wonder everyone is looking for a quick fix gimmick.

Increasing the amount we make is tricky, much like adding more exercise to someone's already busy schedule. We have found a few ways. My husband got a small salary increase at work, and has brought in some extra sales commissions. I worked a few extra hours at my job over the summer, as the opportunity came up.

But the real doable thing for us is decreasing the amount we spend, the dieting. The same willpower, the same feelings of deprivation affect us as any other dieter, as we try to cut back. Let me share my diet-inspired strategies with you.

Custom weight plan: Friends of mine have done WeightWatchers, and told me that the first thing you do upon joining is meet with the staff to determine your 'points'. You have a set number of points you can spend everyday, and you can't go over, just like a budget. To create our budget, we sat down, looked at all of our expenses, and set spending limits in each area, keeping the total of all the spending under the amount we take in every month.

Cut out junk: High calorie foods --> high interest loans. We traded in our credit card debt, with an annual interest rate of nearly 20% for a personal loan with a rate of 3.75%. It is like switching from sugar cookies to whole grain bread, only you feel liberated, instead of deprived.

Counting calories: We track all of our spending now. One spiral bound notebook for each of us, plus one for the car, were all we needed to invest in. We also added envelopes to the front of the notebooks to store receipts for the things we buy, allowing us to take a closer look at how we are spending our money at grocery and department stores.

Weighing in: Saturday mornings are finances time now. Our budget is in a computer spreadsheet, and we enter all of our actual spending once a week, and compare it to our limits in each area. We have split our budget limits into half-month periods, so we can see if we have spent most of a limit in the first week, there is not much left for the second one, and we adjust accordingly.

Plan ahead: People seem to eat the worst food when they are under-prepared and on the run, and that is when our worst spending happened, as well. Now, we are planning meals for a whole week, and going to the grocery store once to get what we need for them. We also leave enough time in our morning routines to put together take along lunches and snacks. If we go to a restaurant now, it is because we planned to and budgeted for it, not because there was nothing to eat, or we were too exhausted to figure out what to make for supper. We also pack snacks, drinks and toys whenever we go out, so that we are prepared for the day, and don't need to make any convenience purchases.

Avoid temptation: Successful dieters don't hang out in bakeries and fast food restaurants. We are avoiding stores when we can, shopping with lists when we can't, and leaving our credit cards at home. These strategies are adding up to far less impulse shopping, the donuts of the finance world.

Like extra pounds, the debt we have racked up is unattractive, and makes it harder for us to do the things we want to do in our lives. And, along with all the other committed dieters out there, we are looking forward to our 'After' photo.

Everything we need for a Saturday morning 'weigh in'

Eek! Ack! or I hate money.

So, we finally asked for professional help with our whole debt and spending problem, and got the cold shower version of a reality check. I guess when you keep telling yourself it can't be that bad, it stings all the more when a stranger has to come out and say, "Yeah, it's that bad."

My husband and I are the clear product of disconnection from money. I don't have money, I have numbers. You can spend all the money you have, and then keep spending numbers, thanks (or no thanks) to credit cards, lines of credit and overdraft so-called protection at the bank. And we have spent numbers we don't have, more numbers than we bring in combined in a month, and that excludes respectable debts like car loans and our mortgage.

Ick. My parents are good with money. My siblings are all single, and doing well. Couples that I know who I am sure bring in less money per month than my husband and I do are replacing their fences and having laser eye surgery. We feel like the only ones trapped in the spiraling quicksand of debt.

Something has to change drastically if we hope to get out of this situation. In three years, my husband hopes to buy the business he is working in now, and we hope to get into a bigger, single family home. If we keep living the way we have been living, our reality-check professional told us that we will be lucky to keep the home we have, nevermind upgrade. Ouch.

I know that she's right. I hate that she's right. I was brought up with all the right rules: Pay off your credit cards every month. Count your pennies and your dollars will look after themselves. Money can only be spent once. I know these things are true, and that frugal is the way to go, but something gets lost in translation. And when you've moved to Spending-Justification-Land, it is really hard to muster up your courage and return to Reality-land. Consider it mustered.

Goodbye credit cards. Hello tight budget. I am looking to make good friends with meal planning, and to break off connections with the pizza delivery guy. We'll cancel our cable, and make better use of our movie collection. And I am making a long list of all the fun things we can do for free. With summer coming, the list should get pretty long without too much effort. Hooray for hiking, wading pools and the beach! Hooray for the library, and gift museum memberships! Hooray for a house already full of video games, craft supplies, movies and toys!

Maybe this massive cut back will help me realize how rich we are, instead of how poor. At the very least, it will adjust my perspective to living a way we can actually afford to live. Wish us luck! I'll keep you posted.

Homeschooling myself

Wikipedia describes Leonardo da Vinci as "a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer". I have heard it said that he was the last person to really know everything that was known, and that after that, humankind simply had more knowledge than any one person could learn in a lifetime. I wonder if that's true.

I was really lucky to grow up with a good education. I got all the regular preschool to Grade 12 stuff, and then went on to get my university degree. I also took gymnastics, karate, CPR, learned to play the saxophone, got a lead role in a school play and was on class council and student councils. I was a good student, always putting an uncool amount of effort into everything I did.

When Nik was born, a sort of unconscious shift occurred. It isn't that I gave up the uncool amount of effort. That is too deeply ingrained. I just started to direct all that effort toward Project Nik. I was so baby-busy, I felt like I had no time for any of the things I did before he was born. I still made some time for reading and taking classes... But I read parenting books, and took "Mom 'n Me" classes. By the time that Nik was about 6 months old, I was focusing so completely on his development, that it had totally eclipsed my own.

Someone handed me a baby, and I lost my balance. I thought that being a good mom was abandoning myself, and pouring all of myself into my child, and I'm slowly realizing that lack of wisdom in that. If Nik had been my second child, I would not have abandoned the first to take care of him. I would have found a balance between the needs of the two. Why should it be any different if my first "child" is myself? My own growth is still worthwhile.

Additionally, putting all my effort into my child at the expense of myself not only devalues me, it devalues the contributions of all the people who have put effort into me in the past, like my teachers and parents. It also places an insane amount of pressure on my two year old to perform, to "turn out". I am, after all, putting all of my proverbial eggs in one basket.

As part of my parenting reading, I've learned about homeschooling, and felt the attraction. I have also seen that it is not confined to the traditional grades of K to 12. Some people talk about homeschooling their toddlers, for example. One day, I thought: "Is there any reason I couldn't homeschool myself?"

Think about it. Who says education past the age of 18 has to occur within the walls of a college or university? Why couldn't I design my own emergent curriculum, based on my interests, and make it a priority?

I struggle with feeling like the things I do for myself are frivolous, and only deserve to be indulged in when everything else is finished. Thinking about it as homeschooling validates the effort I put into my own development, and encourages me to create a balanced curriculum.

What subjects would you be sure to include? I am thinking of yoga for my first Phys. Ed. unit, creative writing for English, maybe collage for Art... I'd like to learn to get my finances under control for Math, learn the chemistry behind vegetable gardening for Science, and begin to make sense of nutrition as part of Health.

I am not planning on adding cartography or engineering just yet, but even da Vinci had to start somewhere.

From mall to museum

Checking out flyers on a Sunday morning.

I like to go shopping. I like nearly everything about it. I like looking through the flyers, and driving to the store, and finding the good parking spot, and browsing, and choosing, and having something new. I like to be out with people, with the busyness of a crowd. I like stopping off at one store, and then another. I like the food court.

To my detriment, my husband also likes these things. He also likes looking at things we can't afford, and redesigning our home and wardrobes, and the vacations we take... So, between the two of us, we can create quite a little bit of a financial mess. Being neither ignorant of this fact nor completely irresponsible in our reaction to it, we have tried to make adjustments. My mall-walking has turned to thrift-store hopping, and my shopping habit, while down-scaled, lives on.

I recently read Denise Roy's Momfulness. While there were many parts that I enjoyed, that made me laugh, or that made me go, "hmm...", one part in particular stands out in my mind. Roy tells her readers about a monk being interviewed about his move from Eastern or Western culture. He says that in his country of origin, everything is organized around spirituality and prayer. There are rituals and routines in the lifestyle that support the pursuit of spirituality. Then he is asked about life in his new Western country home and says, "It is hard to live in a society that is organized around shopping."

Organized around shopping... Hardly the motto for an enriching existence, and yet, I see my own lifestyle too much reflected in that statement. I dream over things I find on the internet, I know all the good brands, I read the flyers, I watch the sales, I wait for the next paycheque... But a life organized around shopping isn't what I am setting out to acheive. It certainly isn't the life I want to model for my son, and yet, how many hours has he spent in the stroller or a shopping cart, along on one of my not-too-necessary shopping trips?

The new year has recently begun, and spring is just around the corner. In the spirit of this season of renewal, I am aiming to add more shopping-free outings to our repetoire, and we have done not too badly in the last few weeks. We have continued our once-a-week visits to the local library, and have started taking in the storytime for 2 year olds. Nik recieved memberships to 2 local museums for Christmas, and we have used them each once, so far. This past weekend, we took part in the annual Festival du Voyageur, an outdoor event featuring beautiful snow sculptures, that celebrates Franco-Manitoban history and culture.

It is like detox, though, this fighting the urge to shop. When I dropped off a thrift store donation early last week, I still just HAD to go in and look around. $15 and an armful of stuff later... I am not exactly a beacon of self-control. I try to remind myself of the many reasons there are to hate shopping, first among them being those annoying credit card bill deadlines. I also do not want to be sucked into a lifestyle defined by materialism, determining my worth by the things that I buy.

So, I will keep reminding myself to change our outing destinations from mall to museum, from book store to library, from coffee shop to park. And the flyers are going directly into the recycle bin for a while. No sense tempting fate.

Checking out fossils on a Saturday morning.

Simple Living

This photo reminds of the mama I would like to be in the midst of the rushed mom I usually am.

I am attracted to minimalism. Photos of wicker baskets on spacious shelves make me happy. Clean lines appeal to me. I even like the term, 'white space'. When I read of someone living the pared down lifestyle, baking their own bread and making wooden toys for their children with their own hands, I feel wistful. But when I try to adopt that lifestyle myself? Well, let me just say it does not go so smoothly.

Maybe it is because simplicity appeals to my head and to my aestetic self, but not my down-and-dirty day-to-day life self. Like silence, that in concept seems to have so much merit, in practice I am uncomfortably at odds with it. So, I fill that silence with conversation, that closet with clothes, that empty page with the written word. I am the master of the collection, and of the run-on sentence.

It isn't that I am all wishing and no action, either. I faithfully declutter, donating to the local thrift stores every couple months. I empty, and purge and organize. I try to live by William Morris' words:

"Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."

Ah. I love those words. They are like a tall drink of water for my soul. My closed-eyes sitting on a mountain yoga soul. My artist soul. But my reality is generally not so poetic.

Let us talk of real life for a moment, and not of dreams and wishes. Somewhere along my journey of getting to know the part of me that believes in breastfeeding, cloth-diapering, baby-wearing, and co-sleeping, I stumbled into the idea of voluntary simplicity. It seems that there are people out there living contentedly within their own modest means, sewing and baking, homeschooling and gardening, spending less and having less all around. How deliciously counter-cultural! Rather than getting caught up in the race to have the biggest or the newest or the fastest, some people are realizing that it can be enough to simply have enough.

Swept up with this idea, I did what can be expected of me in such a situation: I researched the @#$! out of it. I visited blogs, purused websites, checked books out of the library, and read, read, read. I had so many questions: How did this work? How could you make such a lifestyle change? What were the benefits? What were the risks? Can you live this way in the city, or does it require a hideaway in the woods? Do I have to keep goats? (This would be a deal breaker.)

So much of what I read reassured me that simplicity, at it's core, is an attitude, not a rigid set of lifestyle rules. Authors encouraged me to just start somewhere, and grow from there. Well, baking bread was out, and although I have a hand-me-down sewing machine from my mother, I am a little afraid of it, so that was out, too. But what about TV? So much of what I read recommended eliminating or seriously cutting back on your screen time, especially television. Hmm... That might be a possibility. If we got rid of the TV all together, there would be no more fighting with Nik about whether or not we would be turning it on, that's for sure. But how would I convince my husband...?

Just then, the phone rings. It's my dad. He bought himself a new flat screen TV on his holiday shopping trip. Do we want his old big-screen CRT? Thank you, Lord. I am laughing on the inside.

Skip to the end. After some discussion, I find myself watching as my husband expands our entertainment unit to make room for our new big screen TV. He is happy as a clam. I am feeling like a simplicity school drop-out. So much for my mountain yoga soul.

But as the weeks went by after that, I realized I was putting way to much pressure on the "No TV" change. No TV will not automatically equal more nature walks, more wholesome food, hand crafts and inner peace. I guess I can't build my best life by just cutting things out of my current one. There is probably a little more to it.

So, I am still on the journey. I am learning to knit. I am drinking more tea. And that big screen TV is spending a lot of time turned off, while I build train tracks with my son and mix up brownies in the kitchen. Maybe one day, I'll even crack open that sewing machine.