This year I picked the word SIMPLICITY.
During winter break, I put the laptop away and truly focused on resting and relaxing. While doing this I was able to think about life: myself, my kids, my husband, our house, and work. As I was doing some cleaning before our guests arrived I started to focus on STUFF. Part of my anxiety deals with clutter. When there is STUFF everywhere I get overwhelmed and instead of being able to clean it up, I just shut down and leave it there. This triggers the anxiety of feeling like our house is cluttered.
So I decided that this year I am going to focus more on living simple. I'm going to go through our house room by room and decide if the STUFF has a place and purpose, or is it just taking up space. I turned my closet hangers around like people suggest and anything that I haven't worn during this year is getting donated. Those pants that I keep holding onto because I am sure one day I will be back down to my pre-kid size, gone.
I also felt this way as I sat and watched my kids open presents at Christmas. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love watching them open presents and will never take that way from them. But there were SO MANY! (our families are large and people enjoy buying them things) For birthdays we have already made the shift to just one or two gifts and focusing more on experiences, and I think I am ready for that to happen during Christmas as well. I think even the kids get overwhelmed with so many new things at once that they end up not playing with some of the things.
Honestly, one thing that sparked this idea of simplicity is the craze of people buying Stanley cups. I'm sure they are amazing cups, but I have a hard time paying that price for a cup when I already have a cabinet full of them. So I plan to carry this "simple life" over to purchasing items as well. Next time I want to click that Buy Now button on Amazon, fill up my Target cart and place a pick up order, or fill my cart with impulse buys at Walmart, I'm going to stop and think do I truly need this? Not only will this help with my desire to reduce clutter and simplify my life, it will also help save money in the long run!
I decided that this idea of simplicity can also carry over to my school-life as well. I decided that I can be more intentional about the activities that I have my kids do. Less copies, more hands-on learning. Less busy work, more activities/practice games. Less focus on grades, more focus on feedback. Feedback is something that I struggle with sometimes and it goes back to that idea of anxiety/clutter. Sometimes I end up giving more assignments that require feedback than is truly needed. Then these assignments begin to pile up waiting for me to give them feedback. Instead of being able to tackle the pile, I put it off due to anxiety. Then I realize that it has piled up for so long that even if I did sit down and give them feedback it wouldn't be relevant to their current learning anymore. This is where the more intentional activities/assignments comes into play. Understanding that some activities are just practice and don't require feedback, while others can be used to assess learning and provide students with an idea of how they are doing.
We live in a world that is always on the go. We live in a world that loves material things. However, I am making the choice to slow down and live with less this year.
I always enjoy seeing what other people have picked for their one word for the year. So what is yours?
PS - this word also comes from a book that I read during 2020. Our local library was doing mystery bundles from the library where they would pick 3 random books for you to read since people could not go into the library to browse the shelves. The book is called 7 Days to Simplicity by Jen Hatmaker and it also really helps to put things into perspective.
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