Intentionalism

Chris and I have been listening to a lot of The Minimalists – Podcasts this month.  We watched their documentary last January and spent a lot of time talking about how we could be more ‘minimalistic’.  The speakers are good to explain that Minimalism looks differently to all people… it’s the act of removing the access to leave what is most important.  It could be talking about clutter in a home – but they also talk about minimalism in reference to Heath, Relationships, Education, Technology, Debt… and really Chris and I have decided that a more applicable term is INTENTIONALISM.  It happens to be a word we already love and use a lot. 

Last January we had a family council with the kids and talked about how we could do better spending our money more intentionally.  Removing unneeded expenses.  The truth is, I think we’re pretty good at this already.   But we could always do better. Less things. More experiences.   I though it was beneficial to the have the kids there so they would be aware of the money spent on their behalf and might understand certain ‘budget cuts’ in order to use our money for more specific things.  We talked about how much we loved to travel and how expensive it was.  Katie really wanted to have a motto for our new intentionalism and as we talked she pulled one right from the conversation.  “I’d Rather go to Europe”  She wrote it on a piece of paper and added our other family goals as well…  “Communicate, Connect and Feel the Spirit” also taken from our heartfelt family discussion.  Katie added our impromptu motto paper to the fridge and there is sat for months.   Along the way we added new papers with additional mottos.  Anything I repeated several times became a motto: None of your shirts can go in the dryer’ and ‘The more you read the SMARTER you are’.  It became kind of a family joke – but in reality most of these we felt passionately about.

So here we are – another January later, spending our time listening to and discussing ‘Minimalism’ and how it relates to a variety of different subjects.  I love it.  Let’s clean out some cupboards, repurpose some items, use what we have, focus on relationships, put down our iPhones, exercise and eat healthy so that we feel good,  and be intentional in all things.  Here’s to a great year.