I recently read the new book Lose the Cape: Realities from Busy Modern Moms and Strategies to Survive by Alexa Bigwarfe and Kerry Rivera and was also a guest on Alexa’s podcast (you’ll hear more about that later).
Reading this book made me think A LOT about letting go of the idea of Super Mom and doing it all. Because I have. I have completely let go of expectations and obligations and have really focused on only doing the things that work best for me and my family.
I think there’s a backlash brewing. I can feel a sudden shift away from the frantic, over-scheduled family life we see portrayed in the mass media. Families are starting to pick their heads up from the grind that has become their reality, and ask “What are we doing?” and more importantly, “Why?”
The problem is that we can’t quite see how to get off the treadmill. With two children in elementary school, every day I am bombarded with requests.
I’ve come up with my own solution:
I say NO. A lot. I say no to my kids, on behalf of my kids, to activities involving my kids. I am the boundary police. I have to say no to things I don’t want to do in order to make room for the things I want to do. This is my survival strategy.
Knowing that our time as a family unit under one roof is finite, we’ve started being more mindful of how we spend the time we have. Because even though sometimes it doesn’t feel like it, we do have choices when it comes to how we spend our time. We don’t have to do things. Especially if they bring us stress or tax our resources. We can choose things that fill us up, that bring us joy.
What brings my family joy might not be the same as what brings your family joy. But I challenge you to start thinking about what you let into your life, what you bring into your life, and why.
About a year ago I was introduced to the philosophy of minimalism. Minimalism is the idea that by eliminating the excess clutter (which can be defined as things, obligations, toxic relationships, or habits) we can shift from a life filled with empty consumption to a life of value. And while it sounded great on paper, I was skeptical that it could really apply to modern family life.
I was up for the challenge and so for the past year I’ve been slowly introducing minimalism to our life. This has been an undercover operation. I’m not going around advertising our approach. But if you’re a parent, I think you might find relief and maybe even permission to stop doing things out of habit and start doing them because they bring value to your life.
If you are a parent that suffers from guilt, Super Mom syndrome, or have a hard time saying no, I’m spilling it all here so that it gives you permission. Permission to walk away from the stuff that you don’t want to do. Permission to say,
No thank you.
I am coming clean. I have not only lost the cape, I have cut it up into strips to make a rope to escape out the window.
Here are 29 of the ways we are simplifying our family life. Most of them involve NO.
1. I often decline birthday party invitations that are not for close friends or held at nearby locations.
2. We keep our own birthday celebrations simple. Think cake and play in the yard or at the park. With few planned activities.
3. We give experiences as gifts. We go places and do things like concerts, trips, and sporting events instead of buy things.
4. I don’t save school work or art work that our kids produce. I have never once in my adult life longed to see my elementary school art projects.
5. I am extremely selective about the school events we attend including classroom parties, and we rarely attend events on nights or weekends.
6. I don’t check my kids’ homework. We sign off because it’s required by their school, but we don’t check to see if it’s done correctly.
7. I don’t volunteer to do things or bring things unless asked personally. When the sign up forms go out, I always wait and see if my help is needed.
8. I don’t do fundraisers especially those that require sponsorships. No exceptions. I broke this rule once last year, and regretted it for weeks. Instead, we do family community service and make donations to organizations annually.
9. I don’t take pictures except a few on our phones which synch automatically to our computer.
10. I don’t buy multiples of things. My kids have one water bottle each. Two sweatshirts. They’ve learned to keep track (mostly).
11. I don’t give food choices. We have a breakfast menu set by day. I break dinner into palate friendly components. I don’t care if they don’t eat.
12. I’m relentless about decluttering. I get rid of things we haven’t used in the past three to six months – even if it was a gift.
13. I don’t buy stuff to organize our stuff. Instead of spending time and resources buying baskets, bins, and organizational systems, I get rid of more things.
14. I encourage the use of everyday objects as toys. My kids played for 45 minutes with a Ziploc bag of water. No joke.
15. I don’t buy play equipment for our yard. We play in the street or at the park. (I do buy a lot of balls.)
16. I don’t save clothes. Once we’re done with it, I give it away.
17. I don’t care what our kids wear with the only exception being church. I’ve stopped arguing about what’s weather appropriate. This has made a tremendous amount of room in our lives.
18. I avoid Target and any other place where it’s easy to feel like you need things.
19. I have things we do need delivered (Amazon Prime!). This keeps me out of the store and saves me time.
20. We don’t have pets.
21. We all do chores. From laundry to the recycling, we all have chores that make the house run smoother and make me feel less like a live-in maid.
22. We clean up piles at the end of every day and try very hard not to leave dishes in the sink.
23. When we have down time, we use it wisely and make plans as a family.
24. I rarely schedule play for our kids as in playdates. They have each other, the park, and the neighborhood kids if they’re looking for something to do.
25. We invest in activities that we like to do together. We hike, travel, and ski as a family.
26. We make mindful decisions about activities thinking long and hard about how any one person’s interests impacts our whole family and the time commitment involved.
27. We allow ourselves downtime. Lots of it. To watch movies and sports. To play Super Mario. To sit around and eat ice cream. We’re well practiced loungers.
28. We walk as much as possible to minimize time in the car.
29. We only have one car which makes us more mindful about driving.
Some or none of these might work for you. For us, the result has been less running around, more time together as a family, and more spontaneous freedom to do things we want to do.
It was a huge revelation for me that I could kindly opt out of the things that brought me anxiety to give us more space and time to do the things that bring us joy.
I would like to challenge you to pick one thing that you can walk away from, and see what you can replace it with. You really don’t have to do it all. You only have to do what works for you.
#tenyearsaparent is a weekly blog series about what I’ve learned in my first ten years as a parent. Whether you’re a parent nodding in agreement or shaking your head with disgust or a non-parent using these posts as birth control (the surgeon general wants me to tell you that reading blog posts about parenting is not an effective form of birth control), I’ll be spilling the beans on what parenting is really all about.
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Want to learn about Lose the Cape? Check out their web site and blog.
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