Minimalism and Green Living Update

After several initial purges, I have been going through a minimalism dry spell.  We've gotten rid of several large pieces of furniture, at least half of our wardrobe, at least half of our books, and the more we get rid of, the more stuff we notice we don't need.  But it's been a bit tricky with some items, as we want to sell some, gift others, and not just donate things that we feel are more valuable.  

The other problem is that the biggest category in need of decluttering is paperwork, and that's really hard!  I scanned and recycled all of our photos, leaving only our military scrapbook, wedding album, and an album with old photos of older relatives and our countries of birth.  Now we have these three albums on a shelf for easy access to share with guests, and all the other photos are on our external computer drive for whenever we may want to find them.

The next project is converting VHS tapes to DVDs at Walmart, which I intend to get done before the next update. 

As for green living, I was holding off on composting because we were going to buy a house, but then we put a hold on that and I want to get an apartment-compatible composter, which isn't being met with equal enthusiasm from the hubster.  Other than that, hubby is growing some jalapeno and ghost peppers on our balcony, which does me no good because I don't like or tolerate spicy food.  As for the cloth versus disposable diaper dilemma, we're sort of out of that, as Natalia is 90% potty independent, so we no longer wonder if it's better for the environment to launder cloth diapers or to dump disposable ones into the landfill :)  Win-win!

Tweaking Hodgepodge Parenting

I'd like to be more regular, though not monthly, in my updates on the various aspects of what brings me joy.  In looking over my introduction to the reinvention of Hodgepodge Parenting, I see a somewhat long list.  The spaces between the topics indicate how I envision grouping them, into four more manageable parts.  

attachment parenting
gentle discipline
stay-at-home parenting

raising a multilingual childhomeschooling

minimalism
green living


spirituality

General parenting encompasses my staying home, as this has a direct effect on how we parent, and our ability to reach various parenting goals.  Attachment parenting was the philosophy I heavily subscribed to throughout Natalia's first year of life and beyond.  But as she entered toddlerhood, gentle discipline began to seem more pertinent, though there are aspects of attachment parenting that I continue to ascribe to, especially breastfeeding and co-sleeping.

The educational aspect of our parenting warrants a separate section.  Raising a multilingual child and homeschooling both fall under this category.

Minimalism and green living sort of play off of each other.  I have to admit that my enthusiasm for this section and the next (spirituality) comes and goes.  But when it comes, I'm very into it.

The spirituality section started out having a non-religious label - spiritual independence/deism.  I have since gone on a Catholic women's retreat and decided, for the sake of not splitting hairs and to keep a consistency within the family, to embrace Catholicism once again.  As my confessor told me on retreat, God will meet me where I'm at.  Regardless of what I do and don't believe.

So with these four categories in mind, and without further ado, I shall get to updating!

Minimalism - January Update

Got rid of our entertainment center, which freed up lots of space in our living room.  Also served as a catalyst to finally start going through our photo albums in preparation for digitizing them.  I don't want to scan a bunch of photos we don't need, so part one of this project has been to go through and get rid of all duplicates, blurries, photos of people we don't know (!), and tons of unflattering pics or pictures that just don't need to be immermorialized.  We are about half way through with the first edit.  Once we're done, I intend to go through them again and see if I can't get rid of some more photos, leaving us with not more than half the stack we started with.  At that point, we'll scan and organize digitally the pictures that remain, and then get rid of the hard copies.  Two exceptions to this:  our wedding album, and a scrapbook I made about how Alex and I met.  I also want to create a photo album specifically for Natalia with up-close photos of people we want her to recognize and know.  Other than that, no more paper photos or photo albums to take up space. The second project will be to digitize videos that we have.  There are several homemade VHS tapes that need to be converted; We will allow Walmart to do the honors.

We have an ongoing large plastic tub that we fill with items we collect from around the house that we can part with, and as it fills, we take it to be donated.  We've had this system going for the past year, since moving into our apartment.  As soon as the tub is empty, we are motivated anew to start filling it again.  It did finally occur to us to try to sell some of the items, and we've been able to do so with our Ikea wardrobes and some cloth diapers.  Several additional items are waiting to be claimed on Craigslist.

The goal of our minimalism efforts is to make room in our lives - both physically in our home, and psychologically in our minds - for the things that matter most to us.  I'm finding that as I've gotten rid of old letters, cards, newspapers and other mementos (several tubs of stuff!), I don't miss it, and what remains is much more meaningful now, because it has become a representative sample of times gone by.  Also, since we are/will be homeschooling Natalia, we need to make room for tools we'll need for that.  Part of that will be being able to find random items that we can actually use in our homeschool. The other part will be to simply have the room for new items as they become necessary.

My wardrobe is pretty bare at this point.  I was able to get rid of bags of clothing and shoes that I simply don't wear anymore.  I think there are a few more items I'll need to part with, but I will also need to go shopping (something I despise) for new items.  This will be the part of minimalism where getting rid of excess stuff makes room for fewer but better quality and more useful items.  I'm not there yet.  Paring down Alex's wardrobe is another story!  He's been participating, though because he works outside the home, he actually requires more clothing than I do.

There are a few more large items we need to part with, as well as acquire a few more.  But since we are undecided about our long-term living arrangement at this time, we don't want to take in anything. We're making do with our old sofabed that won't be moving into our new place, wherever that will be, and our dining room table has been with us since our first apartment 14 years ago, and is barely holding on.  But that's our table while we're here because it still gets the job done.  We're also going to be parting with our TV, which Alex has had for over 16 years!  We don't have cable tv; we watch our shows online.  We may consider a projector or a wall mounted flatscreen in the future, but again, that is not a priority right now.

I've had to stop getting rid of books because I realized that most of what's left are children's books in Polish, and I don't want to limit what Natalia has access to when she gets older.  For English books, there's always the library, even many Spanish books may be available that way.  But I'm not going to reorder and pay for all new Polish books when we already have them.  I've cut my original library size by at least half since I started parting with the written word.  I'm quite proud of that accomplishment, and I'm now able to actually reference and reread my favorite books because I can easily get to them!

Hodgepodge Parenting is Branching Out!

I have decided to open up our family blog to the wider blogosphere.  After keeping the first year of this endeavor private and focusing on maintaining what's essentially been a virtual scrapbook of photos and videos, I've decided that I want to focus more of my time on a long-standing passion of mine - writing.  There have been a few written posts here over the past year, but with a limited audience, I tried to keep those to a minimum.  However, I'm ready to join the blogosphere of mommy bloggers as I share my thoughts on some of my favorite topics, especially as they influence my parenting in some way.  Here's what you can expect:

attachment parenting
gentle discipline
green living
raising a multilingual child
stay-at-home parenting
minimalism
homeschooling
spiritual independence/deism

That last one is a relatively new development that I finally feel ready to be open about.  I am a spiritual seeker, and I've spent years mulling over big existential questions.  It took motherhood to finally show me what's really important in life, what adds to authentic living and what doesn't, and that belief in God need not be limited to membership in an organized religion.

Homeschooling doesn't technically apply to us just yet, but since I take a long time to get used to anything (I'm a spirited adult, an outgrowth of a spirited child), I have begun to incorporate preschool activities into our daily routine.

Minimalism has been something I wish I had discovered years ago!  For me, it helps to have a label for things in order to better incorporate them into my psyche.  As it turns out, my mom has been a minimalist for years, but it wasn't until I discovered the term and concept online that I - and Alex - got on board.

Stay-at-home parenting didn't seem like much of a topic for me until I recently realized that it's going to take more effort for both me and Natalia to make friends.  If she were in daycare and I were employed outside the home, our social lives would not be an issue.  But since our domain is the home, I see that it is an issue worth considering.

Raising a multilingual child was a no-brainer for Alex and me.  For years we've said that any children we have will grow up knowing our respective native languages.  Luckily, I've since discovered an online presence of like-minded parents who are making an effort to raise their children as multilingual, seeing the benefits and embracing the challenges.  Natalia is learning Polish, Spanish, and English simultaneously, plus we use some signs with her to help us communicate.  If you're wondering, no, she is not "talking" yet, but this is a very fluid milestone, not something she just wakes up doing one day.  She does, however, communicate with us both through signs and a few proto-words, as well as gestures.

Green living has sadly taken a bit of a backseat since we downsized to an apartment, mainly because we stopped composting.  However, it is still an issue near and dear to my heart, and it gives me great pleasure when I can do something in an environmentally conscious way.  We use cloth diapers and elimination communication along with organic disposable diapers, as an example.  And as the blog title states - hodgepodge is my approach.  No extremes.  There are ideals, yes, but there's also real life.  No guilt, just ongoing effort and education.

Gentle discipline is something I'm learning about as Natalia has moved from the relatively "easy" phase of infant into toddlerhood.  Coming from attachment parenting, where a baby's cry is understood to indicate a need and not a mere whim, I'm having to learn new strategies as I lovingly set limits for Natalia while allowing her as much independence as possible.

And speaking of attachment parenting, it was a rough start (there are a few posts on the subject in the archives), but both Alex and I are now starting to reap the benefits of forming a secure attachment with our daughter.  For anyone interested, we are extended breastfeeding since Natalia is nearly 14 months old and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends nursing "only" to the first birthday.  However, the World Health Organization recommends nursing up to the second birthday, and that is the goal I have undertaken.  Natalia and I also cosleep, which is absolute bliss and I'm so sad for babies (and parents!) who don't or can't embrace this type of nighttime parenting.  Finally, I wear Natalia in a carrier on walks and while vacuuming as a matter of course.  As she's become more mobile, she prefers to be running around instead.  (She started walking at 11.5 months old.)

So there you have it, an overview of my parenting strategy.  I hope over the coming months and posts, I'm able to share who we are and why we do what we do with anyone interested.  I know I've gained a lot of insight by reading about how other parents do what they do, and I just want to keep that synergy going!