EP 002: Embracing Essentialism in Your Home
July 6, 2020 | By Ashley Brown
I’m all about ease and elegance. And the best way I know how to achieve that in my home is through essentialism. In this episode I’m explaining what essentialism is and how you can begin embracing it throughout your home. I’ll also be discussing essential home systems and why all of this matters.
IN THIS EPISODE ASHLEY DISCUSSES:
What essentialism is.
Highlights of Greg McKeown’s book; Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.
Explains how essentialism isn’t just one more thing, but the ONLY thing.
Her thoughts on essentialism and how it relates to home management.
Why you should implement essentialism in your home.
Examples of ways you can add essentialism to your home.
How to take action so you can start embracing essentialism in your own home.
LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
I get it some days it feels as if you're riding the "hot mess" express and there's no end in sight. Hello, I'm Ashley Brown, mom of three little kids who used to let life's chaos get the best of me. Then I discovered that you can elevate your life, raise kids and make what matters happen all while adding a little more elegance into your everyday lifestyle.
I'm on a mission to help busy women overcome the hot mess and create an elegant life they love by starting with the essentials. Everyday life doesn't have to be so chaotic. Join me in discussions about ways to help you embrace simplicity with practical solutions and easy to implement ideas. So you can design a home and life you love. This is a source of encouragement. This is the change you've been looking for. This is the always elegant living podcast.
Hello, again, and welcome to episode 002 of The Always Elegant Living Podcast. I'm your host, Ashley Brown. And in this episode, we're going to talk about embracing essentialism in your home. Now, essentialism is a word that gets thrown around so much. It's one that you're constantly hearing on the news, I'm sure. And in the world that we're living in today, it's just a word that everyone's using. It's kind of one of those buzz words, but really, essentialism has been around for a very long time. And it's a word that I am always drawn to and really cling my family beliefs around. It's similar to minimalism, but, very different. I wanted to take a little bit of time to introduce what essentialism is, define it and then discuss how we can embrace essentialism in our homes, so that way life can just be so much easier for us.
A few years ago I read a book called Essentialism by Greg McKeown. I've heard several different interviews with him and he's just an amazing author. And his book is just one of those books that in my mind of what has changed my life, it's definitely one of the top five books. If you've ever seen the book, the cover is just so interesting. It has a drawing on it that reminds me of a hot mess. And then after essentialism is implemented the drawing becomes a repetitive circle. And to me, that just makes sense in my mind. That's why I was so drawn to this book. After reading it and understanding the concepts and learning how to apply it into my life throughout the past five years, everything has changed so much. Just by embracing that one word it's really helped me live life on purpose and with ease.
All because of essentialism. In my life and in my home, I'm all about elegant essentialism. I love the concept of essentialism, but I like to add a little bit of elegance to it because I don't want things to be the bare minimum. I want things to be fun and beautiful and pretty but essential at the same time. Essentialism has changed my home life, my personal life, and so much of my business. It's even changed how I make decisions.
Essentialism is the home is a concept where you have to understand what things need to get done on a daily basis in your home and what you need to manage every day for your home to run efficiently. And once you understand what is essential and what has to get done, managing your home is so much easier, so much more rewarding and it doesn't take very long, which are all things that I'm a huge fan of. It's also why I'm such a believer in essentialism.
I really try to live my life that way in everything I do. So essentialism isn't about doing the bare minimum, but rather it's about getting the right things done so you can live life well. It's not just about, "Oh my gosh, here's my list. I need to clean up the closet, right? Got to do this. I have to wash the floors. I have to clean the bathroom. I have to do the laundry. I have to do the dishes," yada, yada, yada, you know how long those lists go for managing our homes, but rather it's about understanding what is the bare minimum that we need to do to make our homes run efficiently.
And that's what I'm all about. Because I want to do less work in less time so I can go do anything else. Because managing my home, isn't something that I'm passionate about. It's not something that I want to spend every waking moment devoted to. It's something that I know needs to be done and I love doing it because it's my way of providing for my family and providing an environment for myself to thrive in. But it's not something that I want to take up my entire life doing or my entire day doing. So essentialism has helped me understand what is the bare minimum that has to get done, get those things done and then go and live life well, and don't worry about the rest. And for me as a type A personality, not worrying about everything else and the perfectionism and all of that stuff has changed my life dramatically.
So what are the right things that we need to get done when it comes to essentialism in our homes and how do you know what's essential? And what's not? I believe it comes down to understanding the word essentialism. The definition of essentialism which is pulled straight from the book, Essentialism, the Disciplined Pursuit of Less written by Greg McKeown is... Essentialism applies a more selective criteria for what is essential. Greg discusses in the book, how the pursuit of less allows us to regain control of our own choices so that we can channel our time, energy and effort into making the highest possible contribution toward the goals and activities that matter. That's a lengthy definition, but really it's just about understanding what you need to get done, what you need to have control of and letting go of everything else. That way we can just cut the crap and move towards the goals and activities that matter most to us in our life.
Greg also goes on to say that essentialism isn't one more thing. It is a different way of doing everything. So it's a discipline that you apply constantly and effortlessly. And we all know that I'm all about ease and elegance. Essentialism, isn't one more thing, but it's a different way of doing everything. And once you let that sink in, that's exactly what essentialism is. It's not this new age concept that you have to sit here and try to figure out how to implement into your already chaotic life. It's relaxing and realizing that it's just not one more thing. Essentialism isn't one more thing, but really it's the only thing.
Once we figure out what's essential in our homes and in our lives, then life becomes so much easier. And with that ease, then we can go out and do what matters most to us. And that is why I cling to essentialism like with dear life. That is my word. I know some people kind of confuse essentialism and minimalism, but to me, the words are very different and essentialism is the word that I just really try to structure my home, life and business around. It's the word that I always go back to. It's one of my favorite words, and this is why. Because it's not one more thing, but really it's the only thing. Greg also makes one more point. Actually, he makes a ton of points, but in my notes, one more thing that just really stands out in my mind is that essentialism is a mindset and it truly is.
It's a mindset and it's a way of life. And obviously I completely agree with that. Once you start learning how to get into that mindset of essentialism, your whole life changes, and it changes in ways that you can't even imagine because things just become so much easier and everything just takes so much less time. You'll be able to relax and breathe and figure out, what you really want? What you want to accomplish? And that all goes back to that mindset of a essentialism.
Essentialism is a massive mindset shift. And I believe it's incredibly powerful, especially for women. And not just women, busy women. Busy women who work high power jobs. Women who are making a difference in the world. Women who are making an impact, women who are raising their families and kids and trying to do what's right. Essentialism is everything. And it's a mindset shift.
In a world where we believe that we're supposed to do it all and we have to be everything to everyone. Where we wear busy-ness as a badge of honor, the idea of essentialism definitely challenges the status quo. And for some that can be really uncomfortable. For me, it really was in the beginning too. I mean, people would come into my house and expect it to be the way it was the last time they visited and because of essentialism, and the different things that I did and implemented throughout my home, all of a sudden my home ran smoothly. It was clean and picked up and things were in order. And it all went back to essentialism. I honestly lost a few friends because of it. Because they just couldn't understand how I was no longer this chaotic hot mess, and really transformed into this calm person who embraced a essentialism.
So essentialism really gives us the permission that for whatever reason we need to hear to unapologetically decide what matters most right now and make that happen. And as an essentialist, overcoming that daily chaos that life can throw at you becomes so much easier. And like I've said, I'm all about ease and elegance. That's my whole thing. I want life to be easy. I want it to be beautiful. I want it to be elegant. I want it to be full of everything that matters and spend very little time on the things that either just have to be done or no time at all on things that just absolutely do not matter. So for example, in your home, we all know that there are things that need to get done each and every day for your home to run smoothly.
Obviously we can't just show up at home and do nothing because then we would never have clean clothes. We'd never have clean dishes. We probably wouldn't have groceries. We wouldn't have any meals, all of that stuff. So you can't just say, "Oh, I don't like this. This doesn't matter. So I'm not going to do it." I mean, I guess you could, but life would be very hard. Really embracing that idea of essentialism in your home comes down to understanding what has to get done each and every day for your home to run smoothly. And the essentialist does those things each day. And they often do it with this understanding that these things are enough. They simply do them efficiently and they move on with their day. And I like to call those things or those essential tasks, high impact activities. Because to me, those are the activities that I need to do every single day and they make the most impact, and they help my home run smoothly, and that's enough.
I don't need to worry about washing the floors. I don't need to worry about cleaning toilets. I don't need to worry about any of the extra stuff. As long as I have, my basic essential items done it's enough. And yes, I will clean up if there's a huge mess. I'm not going to leave it. But for the most part, I just stick to my essential activities or my high impact activities. And I call it a day because I know that that's enough. That's all my home needs to run efficiently. That's all my home requires of me, and that is enough. And it's okay. But before I discovered essentialism and how to implement it into my home, I would pretty much clean and pick up all day long.
I would end my day feeling super tired. I would be defeated. I would just feel like my day ran me and I didn't run my day. I would feel like a victim. Like my home would just always be a mess. Even though I picked up all day and I did dishes all day and I cleaned up the toys and I did this and I did that and I checked all the things off my to do list, I would always feel like it was never enough. And I was just so tired and defeated and yes, like maybe my floors would be clean, but that would be it. Like the dishes would still be on the counter. The laundry wouldn't be done. None of the stuff that needed to be done was getting done because I was focusing on things that just didn't even matter or like things that were not essential at the time.
So when I really understood essentialism and I changed my mindset and I figured out that these are the things that had to get done every day. That these are my high impact activities. Then I switched my days to only doing those high impact activities. Life got easier. And the rest of the house followed because once you're in a routine of doing those high impact activities, it's easier to add something else when you need to. So it's so much easier to look up and see, "Oh, there's cobwebs on my fan. Let me get a duster and dust that real quick," because all of the sudden you have this extra brain space that wasn't there before, because you were so overwhelmed with all the daily tasks that had to be done.
Why implement a essentialism in your home? In my opinion, implementing a essentialism into your home, ensures that when you've completed your high impact activities or your essential activities for the day, then your home will continue to run smoothly. It really allows us to create the necessary home systems we need. And those systems will begin to happen habitually without much thought or effort. And that's what you want. You want these systems or these high impact activities to be habitual. So that way they're just happening in the background of your life.
It's no longer something that you literally have to write down on a to do list, to put a load of laundry in or to run the dishwasher because that stuff's just happening. And when it starts to happen, habitually, it takes out that whole thinking component, stuff that clogs up your brain, and it allows you to just get it done. And then think about other things, whether it's adding another task onto your list, like maybe you do want to wash the floors that day, or whether you want to start a project with your kids, or you want to record a podcast or write a song or play a song, whatever it may be by having these essential activities or these high impact activities on autopilot, just frees up your brain space to allow you to do so many other things.
And basically it allows you to do anything else other than what you know has to be done to run your home. It also keeps you from running around all day long, feeling tired at the end of the day, that you're just trying to constantly keep up with your to do list. It allows that space that we just kind of talked about.
Essentialism is about highlighting what you really need to get done and forgetting everything else. So figure out what has to get done, highlight those activities and forget about everything else for now. You can add those back in as needed, but on the day to day, you really just need to focus on the things that have to get done. And that's where essentialism helps so much. And that's why embracing essentialism in your home is key and my light bulb moment to managing my home with ease and hopefully it will be yours too.
That's really what a life of ease is all about. So when you start embracing essentialism in your home, you'll be able to take breaks. You'll be able to rest and relax or do something more valuable with your time. Something more valuable than worrying about managing your home, running your home, getting the floors clean and checking off all those annoying to do's on your to do list. When you start implementing essentialism in your home systems, everything changes. And it allows you to set that time and space and that freedom from having to be tied down to your home management.
Here's some examples of ways that you can add essentialism into your home. For me, a few essential tasks include making my bed every day. And I also have my kids make their bed and I've made it super easy for them to make their bed because their bedding is zip up bedding, so all they have to do is zip, zip, and their bed's made. That was an easy fix to all the bedding everywhere. And that's an essential task for me. It makes the rooms look clean. It makes me feel like at the end of the day, I have a nice, beautiful place to crawl into and relax. And it's just one of those high impact activities that when the bed is made, the room looks clean and I feel put together. So to me that stays, that's an essential task.
Other essential tasks are the dishes, the laundry, making sure you have your grocery shopping completed for the week or the month or the couple of days, or however it is, you space it out, but making sure you have groceries. So that way you can eat when you're hungry. I include meal planning as an essential home task because it's so frustrating to get home at the end of the day and not know what you're going to eat for dinner. Meal planning is huge on my list and I make it super easy. And I'll probably do another episode about that. So I'll link to that in the future if something does come out about meal planning.
Another example is a nightly pickup. Now some people do their nightly pickup, right before they go to bed. I do my nightly pickup before my husband comes home from work. So when I know he's scheduled to be off work, I just start picking up the house a half hour before because I am home during the day with the kids and we do make messes because we live here and that's okay. That's what home is for. So I just make sure I allow the time to get it picked up before he comes home because who doesn't like to come home to a nice picked up home.
And those are my essential tasks. That is it. So I know that in my days, if my bed's made, my dishes are done, my laundry is kept up. I have food in the fridge and the pantry. I know what we're eating for the week. And I just do my quick pickup before my husband comes home or just even if it's the weekend, we just do quick pickups just to make sure that there's not crap everywhere. That it's enough. That's all I need to accomplish each and every day to run my house.
Now around each of these essential tasks, I have systems. And if you need help with any of this, download the FREE STARTER GUIDE HERE. I have linked my essential home systems list on there and I break down how I've created some of these systems. I also give you ideas for other essential systems that you need in your home.
I consider it a great day if I just get these things done. And these things do get done each and every day because I have systems around them. So once you start to change your mindset and really start embracing essentialism in your home and essentialism becomes your mindset instead of chaos, then your story can really change. I know that mine did. After I started creating these essential systems in my home and really understood what was enough, then everything changed for me. My entire home changed. All of a sudden the messes that the kids made didn't stress me out anymore because I knew that every day, a half hour before my husband was supposed to come home, everything was going to get picked up. And it was easy to pick up because I made systems around that. I also knew that I had decluttered a ton of stuff. (If you need help decluttering, check out this episode of the podcast HERE).
So even if everything was pulled out, it would still only take five minutes to pick up. And that's an episode for another day, but you can do that. There are so many ways to make these things that are essential in our everyday living easy. And that's what it's about. We have to make this easy on us. We have to understand what's enough. Notice on my list you do not see cleaning the bathrooms. This is going to sound super gross. But to me, I clean the bathrooms as needed. And trust me, I have two boys and a little girl and my bathrooms always need to be cleaned and they're quickly getting cleaned every other day. But I never put it on a to do list because I know that when it looks kind of gross in there, I need to clean it. And I just do it.
Because the other things are happening in the background, habitually like the dishes, the laundry, the meal planning, the nightly pickup. It's super easy to spend five minutes and wipe down a bathroom. The same thing with the floors. You know, my kids eat in the kitchen. And things are messy. Life is messy and it's okay. It is so much easier to just get a bucket full of water and wipe up the floors in 10 minutes than it is for me to sit there and schedule it out.
It's not essential for me to wash my floors every other day. I do not care. They're clean enough. And like I said, things are going to get spilled on and I'm going to clean it then. Just like the bathrooms are going to get messy and I'm going to clean them then. So those don't need to be in your essential daily tasks. They don't need to be on a to do list. It's going to happen when it needs to happen. Just alleviating all of that and really embracing the essentials that do need to happen allows us to run a home full of ease. And that is so life-giving and it allows you to create a home that's so purposeful and allows you the freedom to do the things that you want to do and not worry about managing your home. If you need help implementing these systems into your home, I have my free guide for you, which is ESSENTIAL HOME SYSTEMS.
In this guide I talk about the seven essential home systems that every home needs to be managed efficiently. So go check that out HERE. Now that you know what essentialism is and how you can start embracing essentialism in your home, how do you take action? What do you want to do next that'll allow you to start embracing essentialism in your home?
First I would say, you need to figure out for what your daily tasks need to be. What are your daily essential activities or high impact activities that need to be done every single day for your home to run efficiently. So make a list and figure that out. And don't put stuff on there just to put stuff on there, put what HAS to get done?
What would be enough. For me, it's enough to unload the dishwasher and put some dirty dishes in. It's enough to throw a quick load in the washer. And it's enough to make sure that my family has food, that they can go to the fridge and grab such as apples and whatever they need. My nightly pickup is also enough. So those are my essentials. Dishes, one load of laundry, nightly pickup, and making sure we have food to eat. I also love the beds made. Sometimes that doesn't happen and that's okay. But for the most part, I love it when the beds are made and all the other stuff is done and that's it. That's all I need. And that is what embracing home systems is all about. So figure out what your essential daily tasks are, write those down and then create systems around those tasks.
You want these tasks to start becoming habitual, where they can run on autopilot so just stick to a few things. Maybe you don't need to do a nightly pickup because nobody's home during the day. So nothing ever comes out after the morning. Maybe you need to do a morning pickup, whatever works for you, figure it out and then create systems around that. And remember, that once you have completed your essential daily home tasks, that's enough. Everything else is extra. We have to remember it's enough.
We don't have to be busy all day managing our homes. Even if you are home all day, there's no reason that you have to spend all day managing your home. And I think at the beginning of me being able to stay home with my kids and work from home, that was a huge mindset shift that I had to make. But that's just not the case anymore. So if you are a stay at home mom, I encourage you to really think through why you feel that you have to be cleaning and picking up all day.
That's it. That's what I like to get done each and every day. Everything else is extra. And we have to remember that. Everything else is extra. I hope this episode helps you decide what has to be done every day and what is extra so that you can spend more time doing what matters and not wasting time maintaining the mundane.
Until next time, I'm Ashley Brown and I'm always cheering for you.
The episode is over and now it's time for you to take action.
What can you do today that will help you create who you want to be? Little by little progress adds up and in turn makes a big impact.
If you'd like to continue the discussion head on over to facebook.com/groups/alwayselegantliving.
If you loved listening to this episode, as much as I love sharing it, then please leave a review on iTunes. And if you're ready to take action and dive deeper into the topics that I discussed on the podcast, visit the courses.
You have the power to create who you were made to be. You can move past the chaos and start living a life you love with ease. And remember, I'll be there cheering you on.
Until next time. I'm Ashley Brown.
