New Goal: Minimalist Mommy

So. It’s a little scary to put this out there, but I am officially trying to head towards minimalism and to decrease our family’s footprint on the environment. (It’s not scary because I don’t want to do it, it’s scary because I don’t expect to be good at it for a very long time).

Anyone who has ever lived with me knows that it’s a tad comical that I’d be writing about something like this... but here I am. Trying to go from being a pack rat, save-everything-just-in-case, clutter-keeping, mess maker to being a minimalist, environment-friendly, ethically purchasing, penny-saving expat mom. The penny-saving part of things I’m generally more naturally good at. But the rest of it? Yikes. 

I’m still at the very beginning of this journey, definitely not the American-in-Italy version of Marie Kondo (though I did get more than halfway through KonMari method-ing our clothes!) BUT if you’d like to follow me in my endeavors, I’m going to try to write about my plodding progress.

I tend to have “unrelenting standards” for myself and I also tend to be very goal-oriented, so one of my goals in this is to take baby steps and celebrate progress. It’s not productive to allow myself to get discouraged by the slowness or by what didn’t get done. Even if it’s one small thing at a time, I want to allow myself to feel encouraged by any victories. And I’m hoping that positive energy snowballs into more progress.

This little guy really loves the earth. I’d like to take better care of it for him.