Home Life

If You Love It- Use It!

As I work with a client helping her organize and clean out her home office, I keep saying, “If you love it, let’s use it and interact with it!”

Everyone has an area in their lives like this; she isn’t the only one! You are saving the things you have deemed special until the right moment to use them. The most common one is fine china, only used for special occasions. If you look hard enough around your house, you’ll also see where you have done this.

a pitcher that is being used as a vase on a coffee table in front of a sofa. calm cool color palette

I’m not saying this is good or bad. I want you to understand that the moment is now to use the things you cherish. You are alive. You are in this moment, so use what you love.

I have a vase that I absolutely cherish. If anything were to ever happen to it, I would sob, like an ugly cry sob. I would be heartbroken. My childhood private singing teacher gave it to me as a wedding gift for my first marriage. I adored this woman and looked up to her. I wanted to emulate her style and way of living. She gave me guidance beyond voice lessons, for which I will forever be thankful. This case represents her love for me. She gave me the vase three months before the wedding because she was diagnosed with brain cancer and was unsure of whether she would make it to the wedding. She didn’t. Knowing that she was the one who picked out this vase for me meant so much.

For a very long time, it was one of the most expensive things I owned and the nicest. I was scared to use it for fear of it breaking. What it represents in my mind is my singing teacher and her love for me, but in reality, it’s a large crystal vase. If I use it and make it a part of my home, I show the people in my life that I cherish it and that it is special.

My children know the story of the vase, but their memories will be so different. They might recall the stories I tend to tell as I pull it out of the kitchen cupboard about my voice teacher and childhood. But in truth, they will most likely remember it as the vase mom always put flowers in when she received fresh flowers. And that is why it will be memorable and will live on.

So rather than storing the memories of your relatives in boxes in the attic, use those artifacts in your daily life. Use the pottery that your husband made to store office supplies and your grandmother’s knitting basket to hold your mail. Use the things you genuinely cherish, and interact with them so that when people come into your home, they can see what you hold dear.

PS- We will discuss the purging of things later because not everything you own can be “special.” Some things need to go. 🙂

Ways to Reuse Packaging and Save MONEY!

Home Life, Minimalism

Are your Black Friday purchases beginning to arrive? Before throwing the packaging away, let’s reuse it once more. Mailer bags make great liners in small bathroom trash cans. And that paper invoice… fold it up and jot down your to-do list, grocery list, or a love note by the coffee machine.

With the random bits of paper that come into your life, it’s key to dedicate one area to house them. We have a drawer in our house, but a bin also works. Something in a prime location where you open mail to catch the paper that can be used again.

Let’s try to REUSE before we recycle.

Not only is this better for our planet, but it also can save you money and time. And I know I’d like more of both of those things (money and time) in 2023. How about you?

My Intention in 2022

Home Life, Mindfulness, Minimalism

Is to wear what I own.

I’m going to refrain from purchasing clothes, shoes, or handbags unless absolutely necessary. What would define “absolutely necessary“? A huge weight gain/loss or an event that I don’t already have an outfit to attend in my closet.

So why am I doing this? I could say it’s for environmental reasons, and partly it is. But to be honest with you…I’m in recovery, have been sober for nine years, and I’ve been observing myself shopping to numb the pain of this pandemic.

As a small business owner, I am exhausted. I’m tired of feeling at a loss on what to do with my yoga studio. Constantly assessing if and when people will feel comfortable taking a group class again, and keeping up to date with the ever-changing mandates. These last two years have been the hardest I have ever had to endure with my business, to not feel any of those hard emotions I’ve been masking it with shopping. Exactly what I use to do with alcohol. Which has been my wake-up call that there needs to be a shift.

I want an outlet to document this journey, to explore my relationship with shopping honestly and authentically. I hope you will follow along on Instagram as I take this journey! https://www.Instagram.com/schockgretchen Between clothes posts, I’ll also be posting home decor and craft projects that I hope to be focusing on rather than time spent online shopping.

Raising White Boys to be Allies

Home Life, Mindfulness

These are hard times. To say it’s been an emotionally hard few months is an understatement. I am not going to pretend that I magically have the answers or some sort of insight that you haven’t already heard before. But I think it’s important to acknowledge and name the emotions that we are feeling around our own racist behaviors and the deaths of black people in this country. When we name it, we normalize it. And what you are feeling right now is valid.

My emotions have been all over the place. I’ve gone from sadness to anger to fearful of the future. My wife and I are taking the time to listen and educate ourselves more on white privilege. We are reading books, watching movies, and most importantly we learning how to apply this knowledge more into our daily lives and into my business.

We decided to do a project with our teenagers, Listen Learn Act. Each week they LISTEN to black/POC voices. That can read an article, watch a video, or listen to a podcast. In their journal, they write what they LEARN by hearing this person’s point of view. The final step is how they will ACT going forward now that they know what they learned. We are teaching them how to see and take notice of their white privilege and how to educate themselves to be a better advocate for their friends and someday coworkers. To understand that their job is to speak up, as white men it is so important that they speak up when they see or hear someone saying or doing something inappropriate to another person.

It’s been interesting to hear the voices that they are choosing to listen to from fashion designers to you-tubers to singers. And then hearing how they are going to choose to act. I pray that we are sending white men out into the world who will make a difference in society. I hope that they will lead with kindness and compassion and be more confident allies to people of color.

I hope to have more conversations about racial inequality with our teenagers and with our family members. We are choosing to donate to various organizations that support the Black Lives Matter movement and I hope you will as well. Stay open and lead with kindness!