A Minimalist's Thoughts about Art

 Art is, by definition,  whatever you think it is.  Whatever you think to be beautiful and emotionally powerful to admire or to adorn your body or living spaces.  

Here is what it is not:  Live, Laugh, Love signs from Hobby Lobby.  

Can we all just agree that trite sayings reminding you where to "EAT" or how "BLESSED" is our family are just a sin against all creatives out there?  Just stop.  

Consider instead filling your spaces with things that are unique and truly meaningful, not just for the sake of filling blank walls.  Blank walls are really ok! You might find that your children's art looks great in an Ikea frame for a season.  Or perhaps you met an artist at a flea market and her work spoke to you.  Not only did you support local artists, but you have a conversation piece in your home.  

My parents were amateur art collectors, so I am privileged to have some of their pieces on the ranch in a front hallway.  Some of their stuff was weird, but it was meaningful to them and was less weird than the ubiquitous signs telling me where to "GATHER".  Yuck.  

Take a look at what art defines your living spaces.  Do you love what you look at? Is it inspiring?  Or is it the airport gift shop version of decor?  

None of it has to be a bank breaker.  If you want curated one-of-a-kind stuff and it adds value to your life, the Cowtown Minimalist supports your choice!  But if it's what all the neighbors have from Magnolia Market (I still love Joanna Gaines... fight me!) or Hobby Lobby,  perhaps consider a more individual style for your home that represents you and your family.  We know you're blessed; no need to make the rest of us un-blessed feel lame as soon as we walk in your home...

Happy Fall decorating friends!

Daylight Saving Time to Minimize

The calendar says it's not quite fall yet, and we don't lose that daylight hour until after the clock strikes Halloween this year.  Since you may be spending more time at home than at the football field, I hope you have time to get some decluttering done.  

You may have been enraptured by Netflix's "The Home Edit" -  I know I have been glued to the show and the organizing of Khloe Kardashian's garage, wondering how her daughter has a Bentley, and I do not.  It's a mini Power Wheels one, but come on. 

I do love the pretty rainbow styling they put on all the items they organize, and their enthusiasm is contagious.  However... 

They aren't much for editing.  In their book and their show, they clearly establish that they can organize anything, and that you can live with your stuff if it just has a place (and $500 worth of Container Store product).  I love Container Store as much as the next OCD mom, but decrapifying definitely doesn't mean buying more plastic and keeping 95% of your stuff, just because it's labeled.  

The Home Edit gals offer up boxes for "sentimental items, maybe one for each family member" and store them out of sight.  In the attic or basement, for those of you above sea level.  I challenge you to think long and hard about sentimental items or those you feel compelled to keep.  Maybe they were a gift, or you feel guilty sending things along the way to someone who could use them.   Guilt has no place in minimalism; it takes up far too much room.  

Your things have no intrinsic value; they only hold the value that WE assign to them.  This is why gold coins are sometimes a jackpot and sometimes a paperweight.   My litmus test is always to ask yourself  "does this add value to my life or have a purpose?"  For me, Sharpies in every color do both - I use them for various household and work chores, and I am cheered up by their rainbow decoration to my desk.  I am not tossing half the colors to have fewer Sharpies because I don't need to.  I use them, and they make me happy.  

We just have to remind ourselves that every white t-shirt or rubber band ball we possess can't add value or have purpose.  As the adage goes, "if everything is important, then nothing is important". 

As you dust off your fall decor and embrace temperatures below the melting point of steel,  enjoy "The Home Edit" but put the emphasis on EDIT.   Consider what adds value to your life and what you want in your space.  The Cowtown Minimalist is here for you, both virtually and in your home should you decide to seek professional minimizing help!  

Hit me up on email at cowtownminimalist@gmail.com and in the meantime, happy decrapifying!

A Few Tips while you Sip your Quarantini

As the first whiffs of pumpkin spice permeate the sweltering summer air, we turn our hopes to fall and its optimism that the Dumpster fire of 2020 will somehow recover. 

Most of us have been coping in some way with the inconveniences, nay, horrors that the pandemic has brought us.  As we have navigated Covid infections, layoffs, and virtual school, minimalism probably isn't what keeps you up at night.  This reset that we have been forced into control-alt-deleting our lives may, in fact, be the perfect time to embrace a minimalist lifestyle. 

Perhaps you have chosen to keep your kids at home for remote learning for the first semester, or maybe forever.  This means organizing their supplies and work location to promote a decent attitude and a comfortable quiet space to learn.  Time to assess how many boxes of crayons that you saved from the last few years of elementary school are really necessary.

Lots of cooking at home?  Pull out all those utensils that make the drawer impossible to open and do an audit.  You're spending time there, so make the kitchen clutter-less (notice I didn't say clutter-free; I'm not an animal).   Group your often used ingredients together, which makes store runs or click-and-pick-up lists more efficient, and you'll avoid unneeded duplicates.  I like using these clear bins in my pantry and fridge to hold like items.  I label them so no one leaves a sock or baseball in the bin CLEARLY marked "condiments" (note: it still happens).

What about your home office?  Whether you work at home or just run the house from your command center, it's paramount that bills, office supplies, and paperwork are managed accordingly.  Make sure you have a recycling bin and/or shredder near where your mail comes in, and keep stamps/envelopes handy for those few bills that require an actual check (insanity).  Finding only a 40 cent stamp kicking around when the current rate is 55 cents is dang irritating.  I like to keep the paper to a minimum, or even ZERO, so things that require my attention at some later date get scanned immediately from my phone through Genius Scan. I can then email to myself or store on my phone.  The images look pretty decent, too, even if you're not the Ansel Adams of documents. 

You're likely not commuting carpooling as much right now, so use this time to clean and declutter that car!  Empty out all those pockets, console, and the glove box (will you put gloves in there? I can't say...) and only put back what you actually will use.  Tip o' the hat to those of you who keep your reusable grocery bags in your car and USE THEM (although the stores act as if they are a raging hot zone of infection now and won't touch them should you attempt to bag your purchases with your own bags). 

Best wishes and kindest regards navigating the virtual school year, zoom calls, and take out margaritas (definitely the best thing to emerge from quarantine)!  We're here to help; just shoot us an email or DM on Instagram.  I'm not entirely confident when I see large corporations like Apple or Purina tell me "we're all in this together", because I don't see them popping over to check on me or knock a few bucks off my cell phone bill.  But OUR DMs are open for your questions and comments, should you feel led. 

Life in Quarantine

Things have been quiet here on the blog during the pandemic.  Primarily, I guess because things were just grey.  Nothing exciting or innovative to write about.  Everyone at home, TP in the garage stacked to the rafters, and Amazon coming by a few (hundred) times a week.  

As we sweat into the 5th month of mask-wearing and hand sanitizing, I had a few observations.  

I have read in multiple places that thrift stores, Goodwill, and shelters are being inundated with cast-offs as people are purging their closets and garages.  Although, at Cowtown Minimalist we heartily endorse eliminating the clutter, dumping a bunch of bags of your unwanted crap at the backdoor of Goodwill (when they are on skeleton crews due to Covid) is probably not the most responsible thing we can do.   They don't have the staff to sort, price and set all the stuff retrieved from their back porch.  

I suggest you do your quarantine best to garage sale or offer up for free some of your stuff you have outgrown or outloved.   Check out Facebook marketplace or Craigslist and make a dollar and donate the dollar instead.  And when you're done, consider your current wardrobe or kitchen gadget inventory before buying more stuff.  It doesn't go away when you donate it; it just finds a home in another closet (or junkyard).  

With more free time than the spring and summer usually affords us, we found ourselves tidying and repairing things here on the ranch.  Stuff that had been broken or piled up unused became an afternoon activity.  Some string lights that had been out on our dock had fallen down aand hadn't been used in a few summers,  so I cleaned them, replaced the broken bulbs (after finding replacements in a random box in the garage! Score!), and repurposed on our patio.  Amazon brought me a repair kit for our kayaks that hadn't seen water in awhile, and I fixed all the riggings to make seaworthy again.  

Our lives are fairly busy on the regular, but with cancellation after cancellation, we had way more time at home.  I started thinking that our house had become like a storage locker.  A place to keep stuff we needed to use for our lives outside of the house.  Like sports equipment, clothes, and luggage.  A charming 4BR 4BA storage locker.  

We have been trying to actually appreciate the home life we have.  Sitting outside on the patio more, trying out some new cocktail recipes, and using the damn pool that took me 10 years to save for.  With both kids moving out, we had to sort through stuff they wouldn't need in adult lives and organize the house for the empty nest concept.  Plus, the Mayor is working at home for who knows how long, so after my office was commandeered by the Saginaw outpost of his company, I had to relocate to the former bedroom of Boy #1.    

I am sure that all of us have learned many things during our lives in the time of a pandemic.  People are jerks when they are asked/told to wear masks.  People do not know how the constitution works, although they feel compelled to cite passages on social media.  White privilege is real.   I can't stand the way my WFH office mate talks loudly on zoom.  Toilet paper is a limited resource.  Alcohol in Texas can safely be sold to-go, and we all have lived to tell about it.   Lack of travel makes me insufferably cranky.  

I am excited to hear stories of minimizing from friends and readers.  Appreciate whatever homestead you have, and keep it livable.  Now we have all been asked to STAY there more than we usually do, look at it with fresh eyes.  Make it an uncluttered haven.  

And wear your mask without complaints!

40 Bags in 40 Days Year 6!

Hello faithful minimalists, it's that time when we surrender to the peer pressure of intermittent fasting and vow to give something up for 40 days in preparation for the arrival of ....

Cadbury cream eggs.

But really, it's the 6th year we have honored the #40bagsin40days tradition, and shamefully, we STILL have 40 bags around the ranch to dispose of.  To my credit, I have done a pretty good job of making 40 YEARS of stuff at the in-laws somehow disappear or be borrowed permanently.   It is time again, to dig deep in the utensil drawer and the lost sock camp and do some purging.  

I recently met a mom in my office who had lost her family's house in a fire the day after Christmas. They all escaped unharmed, yet they had to tell their six-year-old that all the toys Santa brought were gone.   Tragic. 

Amid the tragedy, she tried to find solace in her forced minimalism.  When the insurance complany was walking through the remains with her, pointing to cabinets and drawers inquiring about their contents, she said she honestly couldn't recall what had been there.  Some of that was perhaps shock from the trauma, but she told me that obviously it wasn't that important or she would be pining for it. 

The message here is stuff is fleeting.  We don't really need the 20 hoodies she said she found partially destroyed in one room of the house.  Put your pictures in the cloud and valuable information like card numbers, passport information, and birth certificates in a fire safe box.  The rest cannot matter.  As the Minimalists say, material things only have the value we assign them.   Don't get hung up on the value.  

Go through your house and do a bag a day til Easter.  It may be a small bag, or it may be a suitcase full.  You've probably got it to spare.  And by the time you're unwrappping those cream eggs, you'll be decrapifyed and ready for summer!

Happy Decluttering, friends!