Taking a tip from Feng Shui and Maria Montessori

Where does inspiration come from for you? What motivates you to consider changing long standing habits? For me, motivation comes from an endless hunger to learn more about every and anything. And as I learn I am motivated to incorporate a little of what I've learned into my life.

Among other things (like lack of money), living intentionally with fewer physical possessions was encouraged, for me, by things I learned about the principles behind Feng Shui and the Montessori method of education.

Feng Shui teaches that chi (energy) needs room to move or it becomes stagnant and drags you down. It needs gentle movement or becomes forceful and knocks you over. So strategically aligning the things you have - and having not too many things - is very important. Stuff under the bed? Invites dust (bad for chi) and blocks the movement of chi. Lots of furniture in the living room? Blocks the chi, draining your energy. Using dishes with little chips in them? Bad chi. As I looked around my home with an eye toward the movement of energy through my space, I discovered opportunities to open up the flow of energy by eliminating that which blocked chi. Living with less opened up the spaces we are inhabiting, making them more comfortable to be in. That's the beauty of chi.


Like Feng Shui, Maria Montessori teaches that too much stuff overwhelms the young child, blocking their ability to do the important work of making sense of the world around them. One of the guiding principles of the Montessori method is The Prepared Environment. Montessori teaches that children learn best in a prepared environment, a place in which children can do things for themselves. In the prepared environment learning materials and experiences are available to children in an orderly format. Each object has its own place on a child sized shelf, and none compete with any others for space. The open shelving makes all the materials visible and accessible, attracting the attention of the young child and sparking their innate desire to learn by working with whatever has attracted their attention. Learning about the Montessori method has encouraged me to consider what is available to my young children and to make sure that there are a few, well made of natural materials, things for them to work with when they want to. We are big readers and have lots and lots of books, but we put no more than a dozen on the book shelves at a time. Every so often I rotate them out, putting new ones in their place. This lets us enjoy all our many books, without overwhelming our limited amount of shelf space.

I'd love to hear where your inspiration came from! Please comment and share!

Unpacking

I am a really good packer. Maybe it comes from enjoying puzzle solving. But I can organize a closet like nobody's business. I've always seen that as a positive personality trait. But as we settled into our smaller digs, there was a downside to being spatially adept. I was way too good at cramming way too much stuff into a single small space. Too much stuff in a small space was leaving us feeling cramped and confined. Within a couple of months I realized that not having every nook and cranny filled would not only look better, it would also feel better. I have found that every couple of months I need to sweep through the house, eliminating the unnecessary and freeing us all from the oppression of the stuff that finds its way onto every flat or empty surface. It was a surprise to me that getting rid of stuff is something that needs to be done regularly when you live in a small space.

Benefit #1 - Fostering Imagination

Just after we moved (to our 825 square foot duplex) a friend sent around an email. Someone she knew was giving away their train table. Knowing that our young one loved, loved, loved trains she passed this fabulous news along to me. Oh I so wanted one of these two years ago!!! I had visions of the delight such a place could hold for DS2. But God's timing was impeccable. I had just worked my way away from three-quarters of the things I used to have. I was still in de-acquisition mode, not acquisition mode. As I thought about it, I realized that lacking the table, with it's defined layout for a train track, DS2 had been 'making do' with the floor. He’s done some amazingly complex bridges across his entire bedroom floor. He's run them out of one room and into the next. He's done so much more on the floor than he ever could on a train table. In fact, by the time the opportunity of the train table was offered, I discovered he'd probably feel confined by the table.

A side benefit of no room for stuff – more room for imagination! And without a table taking up space permanently, when the track is put away, the floor is wide open space for other imaginative play.

How many other one purpose possessions are taking up space? Do we really need them?

Downsizing - step one

The first thing we did as we committed ourselves to a smaller footprint was to start looking at all the stuff we had accumulated. We began sorting it into one of four categories:

1. need it and want it
2. need it but don't want it
3. don't need it but want it
4. don't need it and don't want it

We immediately started posting things in that last category on Craigslist and preparing for a yard sale. The things in the first category - those things we both needed and wanted (clothing, beds, our bicycles) we prepared to take with us when we moved. We went through every drawer, every closet, every shelf and with each thing we encountered we asked ourselves if we needed it. In the kitchen we decided we did not need service for 12, and reduced the number of dishes and glasses to less than half. In our new house we have no more than four of anything. Four large plates, four lunch plates, three cereal bowls (the fourth broke!), four juice glasses....you get the picture. The four of us are living in 825 square feet. There's not alot of room to store things we aren't using every day. (And no, we aren't doing alot of entertaining at the moment. But since I have four of three different sizes, my total plate quantity is 12...entertaining would still be possible. )

If you are not quite ready to start deaccessioning your belongings, there are some great resources available to help you start thinking about the benefits of less stuff. The Northwest Earth Institute has put together a fabulous workbook for their Voluntary Simplicity course. Designed to be used in a discussion group, it is also a great way for individuals to learn more about being intentional about simplifying your lifestyle. The workbook is a collection of essays and questions to promote thoughtful consideration of the ideas presented. I'll be assembling a resource list shortly. This one is at the top of my list.

How?

In April, 2009, DH left his job to stay home with our newly adopted daughter (details about that at And Baby Makes Eight). We brought her home in September, 2008 and I was on leave until December. DH was on leave until March. We put her in daycare for a month. But we both wanted her home with us. We did the math and acknowledged that the second income wasn't doing much more than paying for childcare. It just didn't make sense.

But before it started paying for childcare, the second income was paying the mortgage. So something had to change. We decided we needed to sell our house and commit ourselves to a more frugal life. One that our single income could support. We moved closer to my office, into a small two-bedroom rental. To get there we had to downsize in a BIG way. We were leaving a fabulous 4-bedroom house in the suburbs, complete with double car garage, swimming pool, and gardens and fruit trees out back. It was a dream house. And we loved it. But we didn't love the monthly housing expense, which had always consumed a greater portion of our income than housing ever should have.

Summer of 2009 was spent freeing ourselves from the house and the things we had filled it with. We held multiple yard sales. Craigslist became my new best friend. And things went to the Goodwill. Some days it felt like we were never going to be finished giving things away. We started by selling and giving away all those things that we no longer wanted. That part was easy. The second yardsale was a little bit harder. It included things I really liked having - power tools, garden equipment, canning jars. But they were also things I knew I wasn't going to be needing at our new (tiny, urban) place. And my resolve was still strong. So I said goodbye to these things with a 'fare thee well', knowing I would miss them but happy they were off to a new and happy home. Then we were down to the things I didn't want to part with. They were still things we didn't need, but things I wanted none the less. The last yard sale included things that hurt to give up. Intellectually, I knew they were just things and it was still just stuff. But emotionally it felt like pieces of me being pushed out the door. It was hard. I grieved, but I let them go. I knew I wouldn't miss them in the long run. (And honestly, I can't tell you today what those things were!) It was hard, but we did it.

By September our new life was in full swing. I was (and still am) walking to work and back each day. DH and our littlest blessing were home together all day, and #2 son was settled in to a new Montessori school. We had a roof over our head and a new adventure in simplified urban living ahead of us. And the best part? We were finally truly living within our means.