Minimize that Wardrobe

It is said that we use 20% of our belongings 80% of the time. Despite practicing minimalism for the past year, every week I find more items that have so far evaded my minimizing purges. Every time I think I have nothing left that I could live without, I find myself staring at a piece of furniture or a knick-knack and imagining life without it. Inevitably, it's the next thing I get rid of and the cycle continues.

My 'decluttering' is usually pretty unfocused in nature, and I never developed a system beyond It Must Be Beautiful, Bring Me Joy, or Useful. This system works less well on minimizing a clothing collection. I still have duplicates of black sweaters, farm work jeans, tank tops, etc. 

Until recently I moved every 6 months, and traveled a lot. All my clothes fit in a backpack that wasn't heavy enough to burden me. The climate was not as harsh as Canada, so I didn't need long-johns, snow pants, winter coats, mittens, etc. Mostly I lived in Scotland where summer clothing was equally unnecessary, so no need for summer dresses, multiple bathing suits, or shorts.

Remembering my slightly nomadic existence inspired me to go through my wardrobe as if I still lived that way. Considering my current circumstances I asked of each item of clothing:

If I was going on holiday for several months, somewhere where temperatures ranged from -30C to +30C and I was planning on working on a farm while I was there, would I bring this with me?

It occurs to me that this formula could help others declutter and return clothing into circulation. All you have to do is alter the details within the commas according to what your life and climate look like.

Suddenly it made a lot less sense to hold onto some of the 'just in cases' that have survived monthly clothing purges. 

Perhaps the same trick can help you on your way to living more lightly.

House Plants

Welcome to my home. 

This is one of my three clusters of house plants. In doing research for this post I found some studies that surprised me. The presence of plants has a measurable effect on the happiness and well-being of people. Whether the study involved interacting with plants or being in a room with plants, the effects were measurable even weeks after the initial experience took place. Plants make us feel better. I know that every time I look toward my wall of plants I feel joy, but I never thought science would back me up on this.

Even Meecho gravitates towards the plants

What I expected to find from my research was that plants purify the air. Again, surprise! The science on plants as air purifiers is inconclusive. They do have an effect in laboratory settings, but our homes circulate air so rapidly that their effect in purification might be minimal. Plants do emit humidity, which is good during a Canadian winter. With the house closed off and the heating on, this place can get very dry. I keep adding more plants to protect my cats from getting static electricity shocks to their noses. 

You'll find a million lists of the "9 Most Unkillable Plants" or the "5 Best Air Purifying Plants", so what I wanted to say was what you won't find anyone else saying: You don't have to spend money to get a wall of plants like mine! Plants want to live! They want to grow in all of the spaces. Sure, there will be plant deaths because you over watered one or put a shade loving plant in full sunlight, but with trial and error you can fill your space with plants for minimal investment. Here is how:

1. Get plants. Plants are easy to obtain for free. If you see a plant with branches or vines, just snap a bit off the end of a branch (three inches is enough to work with). When you get home cut the wound open again (as it will have dried out), remove the bottom leaves, and place in a glass of water. Refresh the water after a week and after a couple weeks the plant part will likely be growing roots in that water. 

 All but three of my house plants were propagated from plants of friends, family, fellow gardening club members, a cheeky snip of a plant in a restaurant, or grown from seeds from grocery store-bought fruit.

2. Put them in pots. You can now plant in a pot with soil, or a soilless mix. All of my plant pots were picked up from the side of the road on garbage day, or a friend or co-worker offered them to me when they were cleaning out their garage.The houseplant potting soil is the one of two purchases I have ever made for my house plants (the other being a water-solluble fertiliser but a lot of people don't bother with this). A huge bag of soil mix cost me $9 and I'm not even halfway through using it. 

3. Water. The most common cause of houseplant death is over-watering. A good way to prevent over-watering is to let the plants exhibit signs of wilting. This can trigger flowering in plants that flower. With practice you'll get comfortable with ignoring your plants until they show you stress signs. If a plant looks unhealthy but the soil is wet don't even think about giving it more water! If it looks unhealthy and the soil is dry, go ahead and water.

If you're not sure whether you can spot a healthy plant from an unhealthy plant, don't worry. Get a plant and through trial and error you will learn what it wants.

4. Light. This is pretty tricky. Plants want to be somewhere bright, but not be cooked in direct sunlight. Some like shade, or partial shade, or partial light, or full light. Frankly, they can be pretty picky. My solution to this is to choose a place for the plant and leave it there for 3 weeks. If it looks unhappy and the reason isn't over- or under-watering then I move the plant to a new location that receives either more or less light. Some kinds of plants are very picky and will die quickly. Others just stay stagnant and don't grow until they find the right spot. I have a lipstick plant that stayed the same size for a full year and just grew darker and darker in colour until a couple months ago I finally moved it to a place it likes. Now it is growing lovely bright green leaves and branches. We needed to have patience with each other but finally we can both be happy.

5. Propagate. Now that your plant is happy and growing, take cuttings from the ends of the branches and vines. Or if you have plants like Aloe Vera which make babies that grow from the roots, harvest these babies and put them in their own pot. Grow your army of plants and gift them to friends and family. 

Cover the world in plants!

Want to Start a Business?

Get fed up.

Every person I've met who has started their own business has done so successfully because they got to the point where they could no longer work for someone else. The reasons for getting fed up vary but it all boils down to the same thing.

Want to start a business?

Get fed up.

Then get to work.

Holiday Gift Giving Guide!

It's mid-November, so naturally everyone is losing their minds about Christmas. I thought I would write a quick no-nonsense guide to gift giving.

1. Ask someone if they want a gift.

This sounds very unromantic, but frankly a lot of people I know would prefer their relatives and friends stop giving them gifts. 

Those of us who have a healthy income can purchase what we need/want when we need/want it. Receiving a throw pillow shaped like an owl might be your idea of an excellent gift, but the person receiving might not actually want another pillow, or a pillow that doesn't fit with their style or colour scheme.

On the flip side, when you have a limited income gifts can be also be a burden. You likely are not able to afford to live in a large space to fill with stuff. My experience with uncertain employment involved me moving apartments every 6 months, extra stuff would have been no gift at all. 

2. If the answer to number 1 is yes, ask what they would like.

Again, this eliminates the element of surprise, fine, but even as a kid going out to choose my own Christmas presents was hugely exciting. The anticipation of knowing added to the joy of unwrapping them several weeks later.

Think about it, when someone gives you a gift out of the blue there is stress involved in receiving it. When you open it, no matter what it is, you have to look delighted in order to make the giver feel appreciated.  Opening a gift when you've told someone what you want is much easier. It's good to give people a few options so that they choose what is appropriate to their budget. Knowing what someone wants doesn't take away from your ability to be thoughtful. It's thoughtful to take the time to ask.

If you have children, this is also a good opportunity to introduce the idea that maybe if they have enough stuff that they would like an experience as a gift. Like a rock-climbing lesson, or taking their two best friends out to see a movie.

3. Whatever the person's answer to 1. or 2., respect it.

The expectation that someone needs to love a gift that you give them is unhealthy. If a man buys a woman a drink in a bar, does she owe it to him to thank him so much for his generosity? No. She doesn't even have to drink it. Why would you expect any different from your loved ones?

Consent is something we undermine constantly in our culture. If someone doesn't want a gift and you want to get them one anyway, at least give them an out. They don't want to hurt your feelings, but by virtue of ignoring their wishes, you are hurting theirs. At the very least mention "I really loved this, and I know you didn't want a gift so no pressure at all. If you don't like it, just give it to me and I will happily have this in my house." Certainly do not make them feel guilty 6 months from now when you don't see that sculpture of a dog sitting proudly in the middle of their living room.

4. Zero Waste gift ideas

A lot of items we buy as gifts come with a lot of packaging- I like to say 'no thank you' to having my food  or soap wrapped in garbage! Here is my favourite stocking stuffer gift idea: jars of treats. Glass jars come in various sizes and can be taken to a bulk food store and filled with smarties, chocolates, dried mango slices, cranberries, gummi worms, nuts, whatever! My godmother last year gifted me two decorated mason jars with cake and brownie mixes inside!

Glass, metal, and paper/cardboard are very easy to recycle and compared to plastic much less wasteful and toxic to the environment. Gifts in these kinds of packages are preferable. 

Glass bottles? Think wine, spirits, maple syrup, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. 

Experiences of all shapes, sizes, and budgets are out there, be creative!

5. Wrapping Without Waste

My family has been re-using gift bags for so long, I don't remember ever buying a gift bag.  If you haven't already got a collection of gift bags in your closet or holiday trunk, then I usually wrap a gift in cloth. If it is material that I particularly want back then I mention that to the recipient. Usually people offer it back anyway. Other alternatives exist, like using the pile-up of re-usable bags that you have as gift bags, but I leave that to your own creative minds.

6. Relax. 

Enjoy the holiday with people who you love and stop making something that is about life, love, and family, into something about consumerism. Happiness comes from within.

E

Deadlines

There are deadlines in all lines of work. In agriculture deadlines come in the form of weather forecasts, lambing season, ripeness of fruit, moisture content of crops, inspector visits, customer orders, and availability of labour.

One thing I have learned about myself in the year and a half since planting my orchard is that I am fundamentally a lazy person. If I don't have to do it this week, I put it off until next week. I have a huge to do list and more often than not when I cross something off it is usually because I have finally admitted to myself that particular item was simultaneously ambitious and completely pointless. 

This is surprising to me since every time I work for someone else, I give my all. Yet when left to my own devices I struggle to move on things. My to do list could be completely crossed off in two full days of work, but I procrastinate and procrastinate.

Except when there is a deadline. 

In the winter I plan my tree order for the spring and when the trees arrive it is a race to get them in the ground. Now, in the fall, I received two hundred flower bulbs (I want to experiment with bulb propagation) and as the weather forecast promised a week full of rain I spent a couple hours of my Saturday preparing beds, amending the terribly sandy soil I have at my home, and planting my bulbs in tidy rows. 

My to do list still has many items on it, with deadlines as far away as next spring. Some items, like protecting my tree trunks with wire cages, have more urgent deadlines. Realistically, having now begun to understand my relationship with my own self motivation, I now know I will likely get the cages onto the trees a few days before the first snowfall is forecast. 

Why should I be so surprised? This is how we were trained! Study the night before a test, do your homework the day before it's due. Deadlines got me this far, soon an orchard full of different fruits with different fertility, pruning, and harvesting deadlines will be managing my life and keeping me moving. For now, let's just do what needs to be done today.

Benjamin Franklin — 'Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today.'

Eden Valadez — 'For now, let's just do what needs to be done today.'

Between Stress and Semi-Retirement

This time last year my job involved driving an average of four hours per day. I bought food in take away containers. I stayed in motels every other week, and used the tiny disposable shampoo bottles. I opened the plastic wrappers on bars of soap. I made coffee in the motel room and no matter what the coffee maker situation was, this was always guaranteed to yield several items of garbage.

Suffering from imposter syndrome (thinking that I had got into my job by accident rather than merit) I worked seven days per week and didn't bill all my hours because I wasn't sure that I had been as productive as I should have been. I guess my employer must have liked my results because every time I was nearing the end of my client list I would be sent another inspector's client list and asked if I could expand into their region and take over their clients.

The result was that I was stressed out all the time. The job itself was great and I believe in the work the company does, but it wasn't allowing me to live the kind of life I wanted.

Less than a year ago I left that job for a lower paid position that I am extremely qualified for (so no need to worry about imposter syndrome!). I also decided to work part time instead of full time. In order to make my decision look more deliberate and impressive in the eyes of my peers and family I refer to my 'part-time' employment as 'semi-retirement'. I work 38 hours in 4 days, and have three days off per week. 

Since adopting this simpler life, I have been able to devote more energy to what I care about beyond my career. Mainly, the environment. I got myself into the zero-waste movement, and have a zero waste kitchen. This summer I have been bicycling to work almost every day. I use my car once per week. I have time to read about the issues. I email politicians. Because of my research I can have more intelligent conversations and have occasionally broken through to someone who was willing to do more but wasn't sure how. 

The past few weeks have been busy . As my time becomes more in demand and my levels of stress increase, so has the use of my car and my cravings for sugary or salty snacks wrapped in disposable wrapping. It is useful to notice that stress and a lack of time are so heavily linked to our reliance on convenience. The less time we have to fulfill our own personal needs, the less we care about the needs of others.

Working four days a week has been incredible for me. Five days per week going to school, then as an adult working five or seven days per week meant that the majority of my time belonged to someone else. Now I feel my life is mine and I have an adequate amount of time to pursue my hobbies, see friends and family, and sleep! By the time Monday rolls around I am looking forward to going back to work, and by the time I start looking forward to the weekend, I am already very close to it.

Working four days a week is not accessible to everyone, I know. My luck in life has gone up and down and this part of my life is clearly an up. There have been times, and I am sure there will be times in the future, where I needed to take all the hours I could get just to pay my rent. But if semi-retirement is accessible to you, and having more free time is appealing to you, then I highly recommend it. 

A cool way to approach it if you are paid hourly is to ask your boss for a raise. Then say you also want to work fewer hours per week. The employer spends less money paying you and they'll be getting a fresher and more productive you for the hours that you are working. It is a win for everyone.

Whatever your life struggles are; everything is temporary. If things are good, enjoy them while they last. If not, well, it's only a matter of time before things change.

Gardening for Butterflies

After my last post I received an excellent question: apart from leaving milkweed in my garden, "How else can we encourage the monarchs?"

Milkweed is known to be critical for monarchs as it is the only  plant upon which monarch caterpillars can feed. The adult monarch butterfly however, can feed on any nectar producing flowers. If you want to give them a nutritious pit stop, plant flowers in groups. This allows butterflies to hop from one flower to another using relatively little energy while getting a full meal. 

Here are five great flowers for attracting butterflies.

Coneflower

Purple Coneflower

Aster

Aster

Black Eyed Susan

Black Eyed Susan

Bee Balm

Bee Balm

Lupine

Lupines

This is a beginner's guide as the truth is any flower/plant is useful as a habitat or source of food for an insect. Clumps of grass are great shelter during rough weather, for example. There are flowering charts and extensive lists of flowers and plants that attract butterflies for those who want to be meticulous.  If you aren't interested in having a binder of study material rest assured that having a diversity of plant species is guaranteed to attract winged visitors. Hummingbirds will certainly be attracted by the red flowers of your bee balm.  The only way to go wrong when planning a butterfly garden would be to create a lawn or to use pesticides. 

Biodiversity is the best thing you can offer. Try having perennial flowers that will flower at different times during the season, so that there is always a nectar source. Indigenous weeds are awesome when your gardening budget is low, letting them grow to flower before pulling them up is a great way to create a mini habitat with a huge amount of biodiversity. Indeed, these plant might be host plants for caterpillars from other species of butterflies.

Simply put: have a garden! Your garden is a space you are sharing with wildlife and insects. It is a refuge for these species from the acres of conventional fields and from the pavement and buildings that cover our cities and suburbs. 

Lastly, do them one huge (obvious) favour; don’t cover the plants and soil with pesticides and herbicides. The land might be in your name, but the earth cannot belong to a person. Animals and insects constantly have their food poisoned for something as superficial as a 'perfect' rose bush.

Go forth and make Eden rise! Really, it is that easy.