The Simple Life

We just got back from traveling during New Hampshire’s vacation week, which ended up being a complete tour of New England: Vermont over the weekend to see my childhood best friend and ski for the last time this year at Sugarbush Ski Mountain, then our condo in North Conway, NH, then to New York City to visit my best friend with my youngest daughter Lucy, then we all went to Connecticut for our dear friend’s parents 50th Wedding Anniversary Party. It sounds like a lot, and it was, but after the winter of isolation it was all very energizing, and we went to bed early and I fit in a few glorious runs which always makes traveling better.

It was such a full week that it surprised me to find that the current of my thoughts was focused on simplicity. Mostly because I finished the book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying-Up by Marie Kondo, which is a meditation on getting rid of everything in your home which doesn’t bring you joy. She is from Japan and incorporates a lot of elements of Zen Buddhism in her treatment of home organization. Which basically means it is filled with ideas that will act like a razor and cut out a lot of noise in our thinking that makes us hold on to things.

The title does not lie. This is life changing stuff.

Because you can extend this to your whole life. And her point is that once you tackle this you begin to see your life take shape, since you have more time and mental energy to focus on your deeper passions once your home is in order.

Can I get an hallelujah or two?

I am a BIG believer that books come into your life when they are supposed to, like people, and I think reading this book in the throes of spring fever, where we want to shed everything – all the layers that held us down all winter – really made the book speak to me more then if I read it any other time. Because now, making my life about simplicity is all I can think about. It is not a Pollyanna version of life with out work. There will always be messes and I dig hard work. It is just knowing exactly where to focus my energy, my effort, my elbow grease. It is knowing what matters the most. And somehow, woven in between all that simplicity, all I can see is beauty.

In the perennial classic, Elements of Style by Shrunk & White (as in EB White of Charlotte’s Web fame), they discuss how good writing is all about editing. Remove every unnecessary word. I love this way of writing. Since running a family and a home and writing for a few shelter magazines both happen to be my job, Marie Kondo’s book extended this idea to all the other areas of my life. By removing everything unnecessary, we are left with what is necessary. What matters. As one of Marie’s clients said, “Up to now, I believed it was important to do things that added to my life…but through your course I realized for the first time that letting go is even more important that adding.”

I will be chewing on this idea for a while, I can tell. But it sums up how I want to view everything in my life.  Let go of the noise, superficiality, angst, and bring in the joy of watermelon on the porch, playing hide and seek, reading  good writing, running in this heavenly spring air, and forging friendships over the best things – faith, family and food.

Here’s to closets with piles of folded towels and lavender scented poupori saches instead of skeletons. It may take time for me to get there, but every step feels lighter and happier already.

Now I’m out to go clean out a closet or two. Happy Spring, friends. xo