Category: Uncategorized

This is hardly a revolutionary idea, but it really hit home for me over the past year. My ex moved out with hardly anything. He took his personal possessions, a few rooms of furniture, and a few condiments(?), but he mostly decided to buy new for himself.

On my end, I was looking at a house partially stripped of furniture, but otherwise filled with items that have accumulated over the past 25 years of marriage.

My first instinct was to get a dumpster. I decided that his old things could easily be tossed and it’d just feel nice to get them out. Because my property includes outbuildings that had things in them when we moved in, I had no trouble filling the dumpster with random crap that I definitely didn’t need.

Once I got past that initial purge, I realized that I have a lot of stuff that is still very usable. It’s just going to take time and intentionality.

Some of these items are easy to use up (shampoo, dried beans, lightbulbs), but many of the items require a little creativity.

I’ve been really proud of a few of my upcycling projects. I made an outdoor compost bin out of a mix of old wood and gates. I made a trunk bag for my commuter bike out of a rejected backpack. And, to that note, I basically upcycled my entire old gravel bike into a commuter bike. It did require a few small purchases, but I was mostly able to put it together with items that I had on hand.

As I go into the second half of the year, I’m trying to be mindful of the balance between minimizing for speed (to just get it over with) and mindfully using what I have unless it really can’t be used. If I can save an item from going to the landfill and save some money, I definitely want to go that route.

How about you? How have you found the balance in life?

It’s been a long time, but I’ve really missed blogging.

My life has changed dramatically in the past year. I’m now a single mom. I started a new career. I graduated college. I’m making my life into what I want it to be. I learned a lot of lessons in the first half of life, and I hope to use them in the second half.

I have a million things to talk about, but I thought it might be nice to do a series on small changes that I’m making. Some are completely new, but many of them are more about re-embracing things that I used to do.

In the past decade, I’ve let a lot of things drop. Some, like Evangelicalism, were overdue to be ditched. Others, like my commitment to sustainability, just felt like too much to carry when I was also dealing with a failing marriage, pandemic life, working and being in school full-time, and raising teens/tweens.

As my life has started to get a little space in it, I’ve spent a lot of time considering what I miss and what I don’t. One thing that I really missed was my connection to the natural world around me.

As part of my divorce, I ended up with our little homestead. I’ve always loved this property, and he was never very enthusiastic about it, so it seemed like a good solution. Still, there’s a lot to care for and it’s just me, so I have to be patient. Projects take time and I can’t really rush through them.

Just before Covid (maybe 5-6 years ago?), I started planting one tree a year on my property. I’d pick it out in the spring and plant it just before the summer heat set in.

I started with an apple tree, then I added a cherry tree. My now ex-husband decided one year to include an apple tree as an anniversary gift. After that I added a peach tree and another apple.

I announced my divorce and the anniversary apple tree died an extravagant death. It never even leafed out. I yanked it out and put a nectarine tree there.

The peach tree and apple trees are now probably about 10-15 feet tall. What started as a small project has now completely transformed my front yard.

This year, I decided to add a maple tree. I wanted a tree to give shade and a little more privacy to the front of my house. I found one that I loved and saw that the scientific name for it was the same (oddly spelled) name as the street that my younger two kids were born on. Perfect!

One thing that I love about small changes is that they kind of creep up on you and one day you realize that you’re closer than ever to the life you want. The opposite is true in life, too. I think I’ve felt both of these in recent years, which has really helped me to appreciate the good ones.