Simplifying Life for A Highly Sensitive Person

I am a "highly sensitive person" according to the definition by author Elaine Aron. It is an innate trait of psychological sensitivity. I always knew there had to be some theory to explain the overload I often feel. If you haven't read her book, I recommend it, although not everything in her book applied to me (I have never been considered shy, for example, and I don't mind violent movies and occasionally loud music!)

As Aron kindly points out:

• I am easily overwhelmed by strong sensory input
• I am aware of subtleties in my visual environment (I notice everything)
• Other people's moods affect me
• I need to withdraw on busy days, to a place I can have privacy and relief from stimulation
• I am have a rich, complex inner life (I ruminate on everything...)
• I am conscientious
• I find it unpleasant to have a lot going on at once

As author Elizabeth Gilbert said, "I do better with less on my plate." Amen sister.

Sadly, I don't want less on my plate. I want to embrace life and do everything. So I work full-time, live with chronic daily headaches, take courses, work out regularly and read everything I can get my hands on. However, my trait also means that I sometimes crash and need (prefer) to spend entire Saturdays on the sofa under a big blanket, surrounded by shelter magazines and classical music.

In an effort to manage my brain, I try to adopt systems to simplify life...like only buying white sheets and towels, and wearing a lot of black. I also hate clutter, but I love things, so sometimes it is a battle to keep my life sane and organized...

I love my rules and systems, as they prevent my obsessive brain from melting down.

So I thought I would share a simple system I use to stay organized at home.

I don't have a smart phone and I like to write things down...so I use these wonderful Moleskine black notebooks for everything. I have an annual planner (the big one) for appointments and daily "to do" lists. The small daily notebook is where I take most of my notes (Christmas lists, great quotes, house stuff, etc.) so I don't have annoying little pieces of paper all over the house.

And I file the books at the end of the year (or when the notebooks get full)!

The annual planner is nice as it lays flat, has a week at a glance and a blank page facing each week for my "To Do" lists:

Part 2 is that I only have two kinds of pens that I write with! Years ago, I fell in love with fine-point black markers and I have never looked back. I have not written with a blue ink pen in at least 10 years.

My favorite pen is my Mont Blanc Noblesse Oblige (I love the name), which was a gift:

I also LOVE my black Uniball Deluxe Micro's and buy them buy the box. They are all over the house and in every bag (and at the office):

I am also an inveterate list maker. Here is my Christmas list, where I am recording gift and book ideas for people...

Everyone says I would enjoy an iPhone. I would love to have an iPad or maybe a Kindle. I can see these tools condensing life into a neat little bundle. But honestly, I hate monthly fees for an iPhone, which are higher in Canada (and I am sitting in front of a computer all day at work and all evening at home!). I also don't like relying on a battery for my life.

But above all, I like the tactile bliss of writing things down...

How do you simplify?

Where I Blog: A Mini Organizing

I love wire baskets and cool, old-fashioned office stuff, but sadly, I have yet to acquire many cool old things for this space. In the interim, I was feeling disorganized. So I picked up some cute little organizers with a pretty pattern inside - a paper tray, a magazine box, and a pair of little box trays.

The gray-brown colour inside the organizers works with my new RH "fog" linen drapes which you can see (left side) in the photo above. The drapes are actually not even hung yet - they are just draped in place. I must get to this, but was delaying as I am thinking of repainting the office...

The tray (actually the bottom of a box) corrals my pens (sorry, Martha, I don't have all matching pens) and loose paper, as well as my external backup hard drive. I also keep candy in here for late night blog reading:

The trays match my drapes and the fabric sample for the tufted RH chair I want for this space...

I have been slowly scanning old photos, so I am sharing my small desk with this giant professional scanner (left), an Epson v700. This scanner is amazing. But I can't wait until it's off my desk...

Organizers: Chapters Indigo

Scanner: The Camera Store

Lamp: Restoration Hardware

Ginger Jar: Paris flea market

Thinking & Doing

Sorry I have not been posting.  Instead, I have been busy organizing our home office (I will post about this soon), de-cluttering the house, and doing a little Christmas shopping.

I don't know why, but I've suddenly become very anti-clutter and everywhere I look, another room needs to be purged.  I think it has something to do with our deflating economy and the fact that after we returned from France, I was utterly shopped out. I suddenly had no desire to buy anything at all, neither for me nor for the house, and instead felt like organizing everything we already possess.  

We've decided to substantially reduce our Christmas shopping budget, for reasons of economy (and awareness at how much we spend) since our oil patch jobs may be at risk if this downturn continues.  

I just realized that I needed to spend some time organizing and appreciating the things I own and less time buying new things.  There is always something to want for the house. But we've decided to focus on the things we need instead.  And before I could begin that process, I needed to organize and de-clutter and get my consumer values straightened out a little.

So I am busy as a bee attacking one room after the next and re-deploying the home decor objects and items I already own.  It's really quite fun and nice to see the "want" list disappear and turn into a short "need" list, that can be filled eventually.

I will post more soon on my new-found de-cluttering gene and the little things we're doing for Christmas this year.  In the meantime, check out these pretty eco-friendly gift ideas from Viva Terra, a Colorado-based company.  Some of these things are wonderful inspirations for things you could make yourself!  

My Trip Home: Feeling Useful

I’ve been meaning to write more about my trip home, but since I limit my blogging to evenings and weekends, writing time has been rather scarce!

Suffice it to say, it was a splendid 3-week visit with my family. But I didn’t get much rest.

For the first couple of weeks, I helped Mom de-clutter and organize her house. She's a very clean housekeeper (I’d eat off her floor) but she’s a pack-rat extraordinaire. Which means that by the end of two weeks, we’d thrown out 18 bags of garbage (mostly old clothes and papers) and donated 5 more bags to charity! I organized. I sorted. I “edited ruthlessly”, as they say. I accumulated like with like. Which means that I put the books with the books, the pens with the pens (she had about a million pens) and the socks with the socks. Christmas stuff went into containers with other Christmas stuff and all her greeting cards (like me, she adores cards and buys lovely ones, but then can’t find them later) found homes with all the other greeting cards in a nice box labeled, genuiusly, “Greeting Cards”.

Clothes went back into closets (instead of neatly folded piles) and old hangers went into the trash. We threw out fridge magnets (and the yellowed notes beneath them). We put stuff into baskets that didn’t seem to have any other category but belonged together.

We took things off the walls to help the rooms breathe a little and threw out everything tacky that wasn’t tied down. Mom has lots of beautiful things, and a lovely character home, but it is hidden by “stuff”, much of it stuff that people have given her over the years that aren’t her taste but that she doesn’t have the heart to throw out (like angel ornaments and scented candles and cutesy knickknacks).

And did I mention the photographs? To heck with albums! The photos all went into a nice photo box, which is more fun to look at any way, all the years mixed up together.

Besides the organizing, we also visited Dad a lot.

Dad’s in a local nursing home and hasn’t been doing well at all, hence my trip home. When I was home in May, he seemed to be failing quickly. He has a degenerative brain disease and has completely lost his balance and coordination, and his speech is slurred. He’s in a wheelchair and needs full-time care. He is developing dementia and is often confused. When I was home in May, he wasn’t well and had begun to lose his ability to swallow and had many choking incidents and aspiration. Due to the choking, he became depressed and no longer wanted to eat, so he began to lose weight. This continued as they modified his diet and provided more assistance with meals, but Mom was very worried throughout the summer, each day worse than the previous.

So I went home expecting the worst, but miraculously he seemed to turn a corner in the days before my arrival. The swallowing improved (or stopped getting worse, at least), and with it his spirits. His appetite returned and he is more “himself” these days. So I had some really good visits with him. He still has days when he’s confused and would travel the halls in his wheelchair and seemed to not know I was there. But he was often more lucid and content than when I was there in May. And he’s re-gained the weight, thanks to calorie-replacement drinks and a modified diet and Mom’s tenacity (he will always eat for her and she is constantly bringing him good foods to encourage his eating). So the visits with Dad were good and I was glad I had come home.

We also decorated his room a little, and put up some hooks for his hats (he loves ball caps, mostly with fishing-related mottos, since he was an avid sport fisherman, or Toronto Maple Leaf logos, since he still holds out hope for them to win a Stanley Cup). I framed and put up two lovely salmon prints Mom had bought and a sweet little wall-hanging Mom got that says “Wishin’ I was Fishin’” We also got him a new comforter and a whole pile of new clothes for his birthday.

David arrived for my last week home and together we had a marvelous time, taking care of Mom and visiting Dad.

David made friends with all my new buddies at the nursing home. I love everyone at the nursing home - they are such a great community, from the nurses and the resident assistants and the cooks, to the residents themselves and their families. Thanks to my mother (who is immensely personable and compassionate and knows literally everyone), I now know many of the 30 residents in the home and have developed a fondness for many (some with Alzheimers, who don’t remember you the next day, and some with strokes and speech issues who just grasp your hand and hold on for dear life and smile at you while you talk to them about anything and everything you can think of).

At the nursing home, Mom is a fixture and is loved by many of the residents because she visits them and gets to know everyone. She is the kind of person who is genuinely interested in other people and can make conversation with anyone! There are some wonderful personalities at the nursing home and it’s very easy to fit right in as long as you’re comfortable talking to people and don’t mind having your hand grasped in a death grip by some resident hell-bent on getting you to help them escape.

It’s an awesome place where you don’t feel judged at all and anything you can do to help is appreciated. It’s a place where you feel useful, simply because every twenty seconds there is some miniature crisis in the making – like two residents getting their wheelchairs stuck together (this happens a lot) or picking up their dropped cookie (the 3-second rule is extended to 30 seconds here, due to slowness). There is always someone who needs a cup of water or for you to take back their cup of water because they don’t want it anymore and are now pouring it on the floor. They need you to change the channel when thirteen of them are sitting in the lounge, trapped into watching Baywatch on the big screen TV at full volume because no one remembers how to use the remote. And by the way, they all love CSI Miami.

It was a great trip. I felt useful and loved. I felt at home.

I hope when I’m old or infirm that I’m surrounded by love and a person like my mother who will sit with me for hours, even if I make no sense. There is so much love at nursing homes, but there are also people who spend hours alone.

So when we get back from Europe, I plan to volunteer at either a nursing home or a hospice. The help is needed. Even if it’s just flipping the pages of a gardening magazine for someone who loves the outdoors but can’t lift a finger any more. A voice, a kind word, a little of your time means so much. So if you aren’t raising kids or already caregiving, consider it. Or better yet, volunteer to help someone in your own family, even the grouchy old aunt you never liked. Maybe she has mellowed and could use your help. And maybe she is actually an interesting old coot if you take the time to get to know her.

You’ll be surprised how rewarding it feels to be needed. Plus, the old guys are forever telling you how great you look.

Simple Living

A perfect hallway...crisp white shelves! And a pocket door! And that heart-breaking pink chair! And that art!

*

Since the Christmas season (with all its glorious excess) has ended, I’ve become fixated on simplicity and clean lines.

The hallway and stairwell of my dreams...

*

I think all my new year’s resolutions (or lofty desires, as they should be called) relate to the idea of living a lighter, less cluttered (and more liberated) life. Maybe it's just the claustrophobia of winter and the cold-weather blues, but I'm dying for long hours of soft natural light, fresh air, and wide open spaces. I want my interiors to provide this...

My dream office

*

In essence, I'd like to find some inner peace this year. And where better to start than by finding some outer peace? A cluttered mind is the devil's playground (or something like that...). I'd like less STUFF to tie me down. I want better, not more. I'd like to encourage a still mind, which might become a more content mind with a little meditation, some prayer, and perhaps...a tidy and well-organized home? I can only hope!

Living Room from Domino. A pretty rustic rug and no coffee table!

*

I will admit...I love shopping. I love to browse and touch, to admire things. I love considering where they might fit in my life. But I am not a complusive spender. I see things I like, but rarely things I love. Calgary doesn't have the best selection of luxury goods and home decor. In my estimation, it's rather mediocre for such a wealthy town. So when I go out searching I always seem to end up empty-handed, and have to settle for second-best, third-rate. In this town, if I waited for things I love, I'd be walking around naked and living in an empty house.

But having said that, I still want to try harder, to not bring home things unless I really love them. I want my heart to say a big emphatic YES inside from now on. I can see with this philosophy I will be lucky if i can spend a hundred bucks this year. Rolling storage bins and an utterly adorable candy pink lamp! Bravo!A serene room. Maybe a little too simple. But what's outside that window?

*

My heart is leaning towards restful simplicity, spare interiors. Oh, how they liberate your mind...

Bedroom from Domino. I love the floating shelf.

*

In the last few days I've felt tempted to go through and paint the whole house white, and remove 80% of the things from every room. I feel like a ruthless photo editor when I stare into every room and see clutter. I need space. My body craves it.

This year I intend to sort and organize and appreciate more the things I have. I will improve storage. Storage is my new mantra. I will bring less home, and throw out (or donate) all the things we don't use and don't need. I will strive to create cleaner spaces with less embellishment. There. I feel better already.
*
Our house has a "Needs List" as long as my arm. It needs a ton of cosmetic work (trim, new doors, light fixtures throughout), and there are several rooms I haven't even "decorated" (the laundry room, the family room, the back hall, the office, and the main bathroom) yet.


But I’ve decided to stop fretting over these spaces and take my time and wait until each room whispers in my ear that it is time…time to develop a cozy functionality, and to make it simply beautiful!

All photos Living Etc except where noted from Domino!