Simple habits that make everyday life feel better | minimalism & intentional living

I spent the majority of my 20s moving at 100 miles a minute. We were living in New York City with all of our best friends. I was constantly hustling trying to get my business off the ground and when we weren't working super hard, we were playing super hard. Our social calendar was just constantly packed with plans. To be honest, I don't think I'd ever change it. I just have some of the best memories from that time and you're really only young living in New York City with all your best friends but now that I'm in my 30s and especially now that I'm a mom, things are different. My energy is just not quite the same. My stamina is certainly not quite the same. I just have a much deeper desire for a slower pace of life. In the past few years, I have established some pretty non-negotiable habits for myself that have completely changed the way that I feel. These habits are simple but they allow me to feel so calm and grounded and vibrant in my own body and they allow me to be the best mom that I possibly can be, I think. First non-negotiable is going outside first thing every morning. This has just been a game changer for me. The fresh air feels so good on my skin. It's so great for our circadian rhythms to see the sunrise, see the light first thing in the morning and it's just a way better activity than rolling over and scrolling on your phone or opening up your computer. Now I know I am incredibly privileged to have access to this beautiful covered porch but it was not always this way. I started this habit while I was still living on Manhattan and every morning no matter what the weather was, if it was raining, if it was snowing, I would put my boots on, I would grab my coat, I would grab my umbrella and I was outside. I had a little short loop that took me about five minutes to do just outside my apartment. If I had a little bit more time, I had about a 25 minute route. This just always set me up for such success in the day. I feel like the way that you start your morning is really the blueprint for the rest of your day and we are creatures of nature. We belong outside and so do our children. I am so adamant about getting my daughter outside first thing and outside has actually been one of her first words which is incredible. She wakes up and says outside. Especially while it's fall and the weather is just so beautiful. I'm trying to take advantage of every possible moment I can to be outside and especially be in the sun so we're working out outside this morning. Next up is intentional spending and I don't necessarily mean this from a financial perspective although that is certainly responsible as well. I'm more mean from a minimalism standpoint. If there's anything that I've learned, a cluttered home makes for a cluttered and a cluttered mind is not one that I want to be living in. I've honestly never been a really big shopper and we really were living in a tiny apartment in New York City so that definitely always influenced the things that I was buying but there have always been little things along the way that I just sort of impulse buy. I think we all have these things for me. It's mugs. I love mugs but also at various stages throughout my life, clothes. For my husband it is definitely kitchen appliances and you know all these things they seem so innocent and if purchasing items like this really brings you joy then I don't mean to rain on your parade please continue but for me the more things that I bring into my home just the more stressed I feel. It truly does affect my energy and this has become abundantly clear since having a baby this among many other things but there are just so many things that the baby industry for lack of a better word makes you feel like you need to have and you really don't need much at all. I've been very insistent from the beginning that I did not want an excessive amount of toys and I definitely didn't want any loud toys or any flashing toys and I know I sound like a little bit of a Grinch whenever I say that but those loud flashy toys aren't just overstimulating to us they are also overstimulating to our babies and a cluttered home can also be very overstimulating to our babies. I'm currently 15 months in and I really have stayed true to this intention of being very minimal with my daughter's toys and it's going so well. I could make a whole video on this topic alone so the only other thing I'll say on the baby toys is that there have been one or two times where we've been trying to really occupy her and so we pull out all the toys that we have and put them on the floor and never has she been less interested in playing with her toys but if she just has one toy at a time she can just kind of get lost and play with it and it's so beautiful to witness. She just seems so calm and happy. I think that this habit is especially useful to have in place as we head into the holiday season. You know there are so many kitschy, cute, sometimes cozy items that you could purchase for your home from Target or HomeGoods or wherever and yes they can be special for Halloween, for Thanksgiving, for Christmas but they really add up price-wise and then you have to worry about storing them and then if you ever move potentially moving with these items. I think that we can make our home feel very cozy and festive but in a minimal calming way. Not quite so aggressive as the way that Target maybe makes you feel like your home should be. I always like to make the dried orange garlands to hang for Thanksgiving and Christmas. A couple of candles can be nice and for me cooking and baking are like the coziest thing that you can do in your house. Our home should just feel like such a safe space for us so if you are regularly feeling overwhelmed in your own home, I highly encourage you to do a little decluttering. See how it makes you feel and next time you go to buy something just take a moment and check in with yourself. Do I really need this thing? Do I really need another mug? Does my child really need another toy? And next is getting more comfortable with saying no. This one is a little scary, I will admit. And I did not get very good at it until I actually had my daughter. I feel like having a baby is sort of the perfect excuse to say no. I was just so burnt out when I was 28 and 29 but I felt like I could never say no to anything. I don't know if it was a fear of missing out or if I was afraid that I would hurt friends feelings if they invited me to do something and I didn't go but there were just so many times that I was dragging my feet going to something and then I would end up staying up super late and feeling just really exhausted the next day. So many weekends where I would end the weekend feeling like I needed a weekend from my weekend, if that makes sense. But we don't always have to say yes to every single invitation and when it comes to our kids we don't always have to go and do every single activity. My daughter is still obviously young but I do not plan on being the parent that is in the car driving her kids to a different extracurricular activity after school every single day. I just don't want that for any of us. I'm not gonna ban all extracurriculars but I think it can so quickly spin out of control where you're just constantly doing things every single evening and then all throughout the weekends. I need a moment to rest. I know my kids will need a moment to rest. Rest is so important. Sunday has really become sort of a sacred day for us in just the most beautiful cup filling way during the season of our lives. We always have a very slow morning together. We make pancakes. We go to our farmer's market. We do any house chores that need to be done but in a very leisurely way and then we usually watch football and I love to just read and go to bed early and can I tell you how much better I feel on Monday mornings? It's incredible what a little bit of slow down time can do for you. So anyways if you have plans tonight, tomorrow, later this week that you really don't want to go to you don't have to go. It is the end of the work day. Carson and Murphy are going to be home in just a couple of minutes and it is time for what is probably the most important habit of all of these habits in my opinion and that is expressing tech boundaries. For me the number one is putting my phone on airplane mode. Carson and I started doing this back when we were 25 I think. We would just put our phones on airplane mode at five o'clock whenever we both got home from work and they would stay off until we would leave for work the next morning. Now all of these years later and things are I mean things are pretty much the same. I put my phone on airplane mode right before they get home and then it stays off until either Murphy goes to daycare the following day or if she and I are spending the day together I'll turn it on like if I need to pull up directions to something. I honestly I hardly check it when I'm with her because the thing is these things they are absolutely addicting so it's on us to set a boundary around them. Like it's not an ego thing for me. I know 100% I'm a human being with a human brain so when I pick it up I'm going to get sucked into it because that is how it is designed to work so I never like feel bad or gross about myself whenever I get sucked into my phone because it's like I'm just a human falling for a phone. What I do do instead is set hard hard boundaries so airplane mode and then I also really really limit my screen time at night. Screen time in this case being like TV, YouTube, any computer time. Number one because of the light exposure which I'll talk about a little bit later on but number two because I find when I put all these boundaries on all of this tech it allows me to actually enjoy my family and the company of Carson and Murphy so much more and it allows me to wind down at the end of the day to just kind of move slowly to do my skincare to go to bed on time to relax to read. There were just so many years where if Carson and I weren't out with friends we were binging a show and we would just speed cook dinner so that we could sit in front of the TV and watch however many episodes we could get through that night. Again fun when you're 24 but I think we didn't have as many opportunities to connect during that phase. I always stayed up so much later than I wanted to. It was always so much harder to go to bed because I was wired from whatever it was that I was watching. Yeah I just kind of would feel like disconnected and icky. I just find the boundary to be what I need in place in order to like actually follow through and not get sucked into my phone or computer or TV. Then it makes for a very special occasion like probably once a week I would say maybe on like Saturday nights Carson and I will watch something together that is super fun and special. So our next simple habit is definitely not a hack. This is not a quicker way to get dinner onto the table to make your life easier but it's hopefully a habit that encourages you to slow down and connect with your family more and help you feel more grounded as a human every day. And that is to treat mealtime as a sacred time. I've talked a bit about our relationship to food in previous videos. We mostly eat seasonally. We do the majority of our shopping at our local farmer's market. Food is just really precious to us and introducing our daughter to food has been a really special experience for us. Every meal where we are home we are sitting down as a family at the table together. You know of course our daughter is a baby so sometimes it's cut short. Sometimes she's not tolerating her chair. There's often spills and food thrown everywhere but it's really important to us to show her that this is what we do. That we commune around the table and enjoy food that we have made together as a family. I am quite certain that this is going to get more and more challenging as our family gets older and as we have kids who are in high school. I'm sure that that is a challenge but for as long as we can this habit is one of my favorites. And now for the ultimate question. How long did this take you to make? It only took like 45 minutes. 45 minutes. Now for someone who typically is just like heating up a frozen dinner that probably sounds like a really long time. Anything under an hour cooking like if you're gonna chop all your vegetables from whole. I consider anything under an hour to be like a fast weeknight dinner. But also like there's a lot of vegetables in this one. Definitely some things go faster but if you want to make like a veggie curry. I spent a good amount of time chopping. Everybody's hungry. But as I was saying earlier we're not rushing off to go do a show. Murphy and I have just been playing outside. Playing in the kitchen. Nursing together. Playing with the neighbors. And now we're just gonna eat and go to bed you know. So I mean today you guys are playing outside which is also great. Usually we hang out as a family in the kitchen. We cook together. Like it's part of it. It's not just like a chore that one of us is doing alone. Right. So true. Murphy is asleep. My teeth are brushed. Face is washed. And I am just settling in and getting ready for bed. The final habit is really the newest habit that I've adopted in my life. And that is keeping the lights dim after sundown. I've definitely always enjoyed cozy lighting at night. But it wasn't until March of this year that I really made it a full-blown habit that I was committed to. Primarily because in March I really wanted to work on my sleep. I was just so tired and I was having trouble falling asleep at the end of the day. So I just started learning more about light and how much that affects our circadian rhythm. I was already you know really trying to get sunlight on my eyes first thing in the morning. But I wasn't as diligent about allowing my body to wind down with the sun at the end of the day as well. So in March I got this little reading light which has been such a game changer. I just attach it to whatever book I'm reading and that allows me to still be able to read but not need lights larger than this on. We have a salt lamp on and then one little like very dim incandescent bulb in here. And then I have a little salt nightlight in our bathroom. I will say I'm a little unsure as to how this is gonna go in the winter time. The sun literally goes down at 4 45 in the afternoon in December. But I think in general just after dinner is when lights go low. That's been really helpful for Murphy and cuing her body. Really helpful for Carson and I. Obviously this is very integrated with the limitations on screens as well. But I've got to tell you it is so much easier to fall asleep. I feel connected to my natural circadian rhythm in a way that I don't know that I've ever been. Because I was always staying up late in middle school, in high school, doing homework on my computer, chatting with friends on my computer. Obviously all throughout my 20s. And it is really really refreshing to get the clear signal that I am tired but not have that wired feeling attached with it. I hope that you've enjoyed this video and had your interest piqued by at least one of these habits. If you feel like you're going to give any of them a try I'd love to hear about it down in the comments below. As always thank you so much for watching and until next time.