Live Encore: Simple Shifts to Make Your Space More Peaceful

1. Introduction: Day by day, little by little, if cleaning out your medicine cabinet makes you feel good on a certain day, great. If it's the last thing in the world you'd want to do, then definitely don't do it. But yeah, patience and do it how you feel. I'm Erin Boyle, I am a writer, blogger. My blog is called Reading My Tea Leaves. A few years ago I wrote a book called Simple Matters, and I read about simplicity and sustainability. I live in a small New York City apartment with my three kids and my husband and write about what happens here. In this class, I'd love for people to make the connection between their space and their feelings. Then to identify those feelings and what is it looking them in their particular space, and then to identify a fix, like a simple change that they can make to feel better. When I was thinking about it, I was kind of calling it feelings and fixes. One, identifying how you're feeling in the space, and then what you can do to create those, tweak it. It just in the hopes of tilting the scale of it so that your space is making you feel as good as possible. A lot of this class is going be about just getting ideas onto paper and getting feelings onto paper so that you can go back and look at it later. If you have a notebook and a pen, grab that and you can either do this in real time with me or look at it at another time. Thank you for watching my Skillshare live class, recorded with participation from the Skillshare community. Let's get started. 2. Feeling in Your Space: Welcome. I'm O'Briana. I'm a producer on the Skillshare classes and content team, and we're so excited to be connecting live today with Erin Boyle. Erin, welcome. Hi. I would love for you to just share with everyone who you are and what you do, and how you came to minimalism. Sure. I am a blogger. I write a blog called Reading My Tea Leaves. I started about a little more than 10 years ago. When I started, I was exploring making an apartment for the first time. I was living with my then boyfriend, now husband for the first time. Yeah, just exploring what it is to make a home and to decide what you want to have in that home. Then in the meantime, I went to graduate school and we moved from city to city and we finally ended up here in Brooklyn in a very tiny apartment just down the street from this one. I just really started thinking about what I'd already been, how I could make living in that space feel sustainable for me, and I started writing about it. People started talking about minimalism, so then I realized that's what people were calling me and yeah, went from there. Awesome. Yeah, I think your take on minimalism is really interesting. It's not what people necessarily think like three pairs arranged perfectly on a table. Could you tell us more about, to you, what that really means, especially when it comes to building a space it feels like? Yeah. I think that for me, what we're going to talk about in this class a bit is that I'm sensitive to my surroundings. So the environment that I'm in tends to really impact how I'm feeling. So for me, minimalism, having things be simplified and easy to access and minimal, for me, leads to me feeling good in my space. So for me it's really that's local, how do I feel as good as possible in the space that I'm in? As peaceful as possible, as productive as possible, as happy as possible. So yeah, that's were I lead from. Totally, and we are all spending so much time in the space that we are in right now. Much time, yeah. But yeah, so I'm curious if you would just lay out a little bit of what we'll be talking about as we get into the exercise and why you really chose to highlight that today? Yeah, sure. So we are all, as you said, at home. Spending so much more time than probably most of us ever imagined we would be in these spaces that we call home. So I know in my own space I never imagined that I would be in this one bedroom apartment with three small children and my husband, all of us. My husband and I both working, my children all going to school here at the same time, a new infant that we also have. So it was just like nothing was set up for this. So of course, there are all sorts of feelings that we have right now especially, but also in general. So for this exercise, I really wanted people to have an opportunity to think about how their spaces are making them feel. So yeah, for me it's helpful to actually write down what I'm feeling. So from whatever vantage point you're in I was thinking we could sit, and this is something that you can do on a macro or micro level. So it can be thinking about your space as a whole. I, of course, have the advantage of being in a space where I can see most of my living space from the kitchen table, so I can really think about it holistically. But whether you're thinking about your whole space or just one tiny part of it, I'm encouraging folks in this exercise to think about how that space is making them feel. 3. Taking Stock: So to start, I developed a super simple exercise for getting feelings onto paper. Divide your paper into two. So on the top of one side, put a smiley face and on the top of the other side put a frowny face. Understanding this is a simplified way to think about our feelings and not everything is all good and all bad. I think it's helpful to think about what in my space is working, what's making me feel good, and what's not making me feel good. So for the sake of example, I thought about my kitchen. The kitchen in our apartment is like your very typical New York City rental apartment, it's very tiny. It was not designed by me or anyone really, any kind of design expertise probably, and so it's not the most functional space, and it can be frustrating. Especially now in the middle of this pandemic, we have all been safe and healthy, but we had to really change some of our basic lifestyle habits. So one thing that we're doing a lot more of is grocery shopping ahead of time, so getting groceries delivered which is not something that we're used to doing. In New York, there is a farmers market, three days a week, two blocks away, so we go there three times a week, we go to the grocery store daily. So it's been a big shift for us to think about how can we have enough food in the house at once. There's very limited space in our kitchen, so that's even more trying. One thing that I think is interesting when we have an opportunity to sit in a space and think about how it's making us feel, we'll realize that we might have a lot of contradictory feelings. So there might be elements of the physical space that make us feel really good and other elements that make us feel not so good, and identifying those things is interesting. So when I think about my kitchen, one thing I think of is it makes me feel content. In a lot of instances, I feel great in my kitchen. It also makes me feel crowded and frustrated. So the idea here is really just to think about what the space is making us feel. It also makes me feel resourceful. There's just good and bad. Oh my gosh, I can't spell. So I went through thinking about my kitchen, and I just wrote down all of the different things that it made me feel. This is the key, then I draw a line. So in real-time, if you're doing this, you might have a lot of different feelings. The more the merrier. Then I drew a line, and I started to think about the second half of this grid is really about what are the physical things that are making me feel that way? Whether it's, in one hand, my nice storage makes me feel so great, it works perfectly. It's on the side of the refrigerator, and its functional, and it's pretty, and I like it, so that's a great thing. On the other side, the layout makes me feel bonkers, doesn't make sense. So that's something that's frustrating. But, like I mentioned, the pantry items right now is something I definitely feel crowded and frustrated. I'm like, oh my God, why are there so many bags of flour? Got to bake bread. That's the only way. Exactly. I mean, I can't complain too much. Then over here, my kids' cups are stored in a place where they can get them, and they can get their own water, and that all feels very functional and good. So the idea of doing this is really just to say, okay, there are physical things in our spaces that contribute to the way that we feel of them. For me, this just lays it out. I actually think it's a really useful and an interesting exercise to actually write it down. So I think sometimes we have this general feeling like something's wrong here, I don't like this, I'm not feeling great in this space right now. But trying to spend some time with yourself, writing things down, thinking about it, trying to determine what it is that's happening is helpful. How long would you take with this? Would you even go room by room, or just start one way, one place to get in the [inaudible]? Totally. When I first started it, I was going to do the whole apartment. Then I was like, oh gosh, so many things in the kitchen that are annoying me, why don't I start there? I think that quickly, if you're doing it, you'll start to narrow it down naturally. Then even from this list, the next thing that I think is interesting is how you immediately start to even narrow this list. So I think on the positive side, it's helpful to write this stuff down, to know that there are things in my control that I was able to do that made this space more functional or made me feel better in it. So just patting yourself on the back you wrote that is a nice thing to do. Then on the other side, I think one thing that's useful is just crossing things out that you can't do anything about. So for me, it's like the size of my kitchen is not going to be changed, the fact that there are no windows in it is not going to be changed, the layout can't move. All of the stuff that you don't have control over, just tuck it, put it away, cross it off the list because you can't do anything about it. Then start thinking more about what you can do. So for me, when I started writing this, I was writing the pantry items, the size, our kitchen utensils, they previously had been stored in such a way that totally worked for us because we never had more than one bag of pasta in the cabinet. So we weren't wrestling with any of that. Then starting early March, when we started really trying to stockpile things more like a week of food in the house, we realized this is not really that functional anymore. We're competing all the time for space in the cabinet. So I need to start to think about what I could do to change that. I think part of the point of this exercise also, and I'll walk you through what I did to make that situation feel better, but I think part of the point of all of this is that often the thing that's making us not feel great can be improved with such a subtle change. We're not talking about a kitchen demo. We're not talking about taking off, I don't know, I would like to take a sledgehammer to the counter. I could, but we're not talking about huge changes but little tiny things that we can do to really improve the spaces that we're in. Can end up really having a ripple effect. I think that that's part of what this list can show us is that you start to, in a longer list, you can start to be like this thing is connected to this thing. The kitchen utensils taking up too much space in the cabinet is why the pantry items are stressing me out so much because there's not a place for me to put them. So just drawing connections. I don't know, I even think of the way that I used to, in college, think about like writing an essay. You've got all of your notes and then you need to organize them. I was never an index card person. I really should be that age right now. I wasn't an index card person, but I know some people are. But this is the same idea, so maybe if you use index cards, you can do it. But the idea that basically once you start writing things down, you can really draw connections and find things that you can change and feel better about. That's really interesting because, at least for me, I never really think about how the space around me affects me. It's more like what am I doing? What can I actively do to feel good or cheer up? But the impact of your actual environment is really [inaudible]. For me, part of it is personality, not everyone is so influenced by their physical surroundings. But for me, I really am, and I think that it's just little things. It's like that moment of frustration when you're going to get something out of a cabinet, or you have two kids whining at you for something, and they can get their own water, things like that. They accumulate over the course of a day, and I think they do, for a lot of people, impact how you feel. Totally. I know you're all about working with what you have to and just finding very, very simple shifts. Especially now, it's hard to go out and buy the perfect silverware, drawer, organizer, or something. Totally. If anything, this is like go back to the kitchen goes there. Things that make me feel resourceful. I think that we all have to be so resourceful right now anyway. I think that so often it's less about having the perfect thing. Having the perfect thing is nice. One thing I'm going to show you is the size of my container where I was keeping my utensils was too big. So changing that did make an improvement for sure. So often it's less about finding the perfect thing and more about taking the time to investigate what it is that could be changed or made better. 4. Taking Action: Now that we have our list, we can switch to thinking about how we can make a simple change. I think that one of the things that this shows you, it's taking it really step-by-step, like breaking things down until like they're little tiny parts is really useful. So for me, I also show you, this is my large unruly kitchen utensil jar. It was like not a jar that was made for that at all. I can relate to that jar. Yeah. Everything was just shoved in. I should say, this also is one thing to remember is this is all like everything involved. Like for me at least, my strategy is never like one and done, like I did this and now like forevermore, there shall be no more utensil woes. Maybe there will be. So I had already gone through a past, probably like a year ago, and gotten rid of some things that you'd accumulated over the years or whatever that we weren't really using. I had one of those, what do we call it? A spider? They'll like little thing you use for frying squash blossoms which is why I had it. I was like, "Okay, I've used that the one time and never again." So I gifted it to someone else. So I think obviously, a first step is definitely to go through what you have to make sure it's things that you like want to even bother trying to find a space for or you want to think about having. So the first step then, what I did here, and I won't clang through all of this for you now, but I took everything out. I think that it is really key to do. To really look at each individual thing, be like, "Is this working for me? Do I use it? Is it worth finding a spot for?" So I did that. In doing that, I realized, first of all, I started using a much smaller container. So this circumference is way smaller, it's a tiny bit taller so it also keeps things a bit more contained in the cabinet. I'm one of those guys, poor people, I don't like to have a lot of things on my kitchen counters. Even though I know these beautiful things that a lot of people store in their counter, that's not something I want to do so it goes in the cabinet. So I needed to just stick a plus room in the cabinet. Does that make sense? I realize I didn't [inaudible] that. That useful here. Right. [inaudible] who's based in New York is [inaudible] It's just like no [inaudible] if you're moving like every two seconds, every time you wanted to put a tray of cookies out or whatever, as I want to. So first, I actually started by putting all of my wooden utensils back in because I knew that those were things we reach for all the time, they're very necessary for us so I started there. Then after I did that, I realized that a lot of this larger utensils, they have a handy-dandy hook in them or a hole. This is compromise, there is a discussion in my household about whether you needed these two things and we did, according to some people, so we kept them. But yeah, these are things that could be hung up. So I did something which, in general, I am not a command, I probably shouldn't use the brand name. But I'm not a command hook person, I like to just use like a hammer and nails, but when you rent an apartment and you're trying to be mindful of not just destroying your landlord's property, it can be very useful. So I did get some little stick on, it's like a little clear thing with like a metal hook to put on the cabinet doors. It's made a huge friends being able to have some of these things not sticking up out of this, especially, sorry for that clang, like a whisk, it's impossible in here. It was like everyone was getting caught in it all the time. Especially, I have a three-year-old who thinks that these two utensils are the oars for his boat. So he's getting them out of the cabinet an awful lot. So even like that, I think these are all things that we don't think about. We don't necessarily think about the very particular ways that we use our houses, the very particular needs that we have, like going through something and even touch like my new way like this particular problem of how to solve, how to store my kitchen utensils in a way that makes room for the current conditions of both pandemic shopping and also a three-year-old who likes to get utensils out of the cabinet himself. I think that that's really useful to do, to really go through and like, it doesn't matter what anyone else says. For instance, even other people keep their beautiful wooden spoons displayed on the counter. But like, that doesn't work for me so I put it in the cabinet. Just I think really embracing the idea of this is your space and it should function in a way that works for you. There's a motorcycle outside. But yeah, that's the most important thing. It doesn't really matter what anyone else does or things that's really what works best for you. Does it sometimes take you a couple of tries to really figure out what works? Like would you think, "Oh, this is the solution," and then not necessarily. Yeah, totally. But for me, I actually enjoy that. I think that that process is actually really helpful. It doesn't bother me to have like an evolution. I think that that's actually why this exercise is interesting because then, you have this list of like, "Okay, what are the feelings that I like to have? I think most people would be like, "Interesting. I don't like to be frustrated." So look at your feelings and think, "Okay, this stuff makes me feel good and these are things that I accomplished," or even if it isn't something you accomplish but some kind of priority or some kind of a layout idea or something like when something is neat and clean, like this one counter-top that is always looking the way I want it to, that's something that makes me feel good and I can return to. Then being able to identify like, "Oh, this other thing is something that pisses me off every time I see it." What are the attributes of that thing? Can you tell I've been working on animal reports of my kindergartner. I do think that's an interesting thing to think about. What are the attributes of this particular spot that make me feel one way or another? How can I either change it or replicate it. I think that that's why it's so important to do the positives and the negatives because then you're really seeing like, "Well, yeah, there are some things in my space that make me feel great." So how do I get there to be more of those things and less of things that are causing stress or [inaudible] Totally. I can see even moving the utensil storage over to that positive column and it's like you get to thrill in a positive feeling too. Exactly, you can just make a little arrow right over your positive column. I mean, I think that's definitely helpful. So then after you have completed the one project, now you could return to the list and you can check it off or move it over into your happy column or whatever it is that you want to do, but I think keeping this list by your side and being able to return to it will be really helpful. 5. Q&A on Minimalism: Now we're going to open it up to some of the great questions we've received from students in the chat. When you are going through this process and you identify it like, "Oh, I'm not using this squash blossom fryer ever." Especially during this time as we're at home, I think there's this natural urge to sort at what you have and clear it out. But a lot of places, understandably aren't accepting donations and it's hard to know what to do with those things. Do you have any way you've been approaching that? To be honest. I haven't gotten rid of very much in the past. A little bit. I talked about this with my class a bit and pretty much ever any opportunity I have that I'm part of the neighborhood Buy Nothing Project, which is just such an awesome project. Giving things away that are not useful to you, but that might be useful to someone else. We live in New York City and so we're not getting rid of stuffed animals or whatever. That's shifted over to be much more COVID related. But I think it's an interesting exercise because it's interesting to see how much do I accumulate in that bag of stuff to give away in my closet, while I can't give it away. Then certainly I would imagine that for most people like shopping or I don't know. But for me I should say, I'm definitely not accumulating very many new things right now. Shopping is really not doing very much at all. I think that's probably the case for other folks too. I think it's actually like a really convenient opportunity to think about our things and our belongings and what we accumulate. Yeah, totally. Something that we've talked about before that I think is interesting too. Your focus on rather than necessarily donating things because I mean, that's great, but sometimes they're just overwhelmed with donations and you don't necessarily know it's going to find a good home, but also finding somebody to give that directly to whether that. Definitely. I mean, that's why I love the buy nothing project so much. Because you know someone literally is either voicing a need that they have. They're saying, hey, I'm looking for this thing and you can say I have it, here it is, or you're saying I have this thing. Does anyone have a need? They say yes, I do. That's being really positive. Of course, when organizations are asking for donations, I think we should give generously. But so often organizations do get overwhelmed. In the US, especially when it comes to clothing and all that kinds of thing, we have an over-consumption. Just like there are too many t-shirts. There are some things that there are simply too many of. Yeah. Courtney has a really good question that I'm sure you are in the thick of right now with the new [inaudible] but especially with kids, the feeling you need to get new toys all the time and the feeling that you need new things, how do you balance the need to feel like you need to keep refreshing as they grow? Yeah, I think the one thing that I talk about in sculpture class, and then is my work frame always for this question. It's be willing to be a little bit weird. Be willing to be the person who does not have a ton of toys for your kids or the person who decides I don't need all of these different baby gadgets or whatever it is. I think it clicked for me going my own way with that has been really helpful. Saying, yeah, I don't need it and I don't want it and I'm not going to get it. Regardless of I don't know. I mean just tiny things like we don't have a baby bath. We don't use one. So it's something you don't have to store or think about or trying to find out what the best one is. We just don't have one. I don't know. That's my most basic answer, but I do think it's actually really important. It gets down to the fundamentals of it, which is that this is about you and finding your own way. The more we're confident in our own choices, the more we're able to issue some of the consumerism that is otherwise. So relevant. Yeah, I mean, I love being weird is always good advice. I think I do. I think that's often the answer. That seems too like it would apply to gifts, too. Even now, I know a lot of people sending care packages, and that's wonderful. But birthdays, holidays, if you are trying to streamline and really make sure that the things you have are things you love. How do you navigate those big occasions where it's like a knee-jerk reaction to give a gift? Yeah, totally. I mean its super hard. Obviously, you need to start from a place that's a gratitude and obviously, the idea of having too much, more than we need is such a lucky problem to have. So I think obviously, it's going to start there. Then I think really just being very clear, having as many phone conversations as you can with the people who love you the most about your hopes and wishes and then ultimately, it's going to be choosing. You're going to have some things in your home and in your life that are not your most preferred, most loved item. You're going to have some things that have been given to you with a lot of love that you decide to pass on to someone else. I think it's kind of the way of it. But I do think, in terms of the kids' stuff, we really have been quite vocal about this is really a project for us. We care deeply about not being overrun by stuff in our life in our small apartment and by our kids not having a chaotic. Environment. So we've just let other people know. Again, there are definitely people who are like, "Yeah, we are deaf. " I think it's interesting in the exercise that you've just walked us through that connect stuff to how you feel, good and bad. It's just a helpful temperature check to really get clear on like, why maybe you are saying, "No, thank you" or "Thank you. But how about this other thing?" to really feel secure in your reasoning. Yeah, totally. Yeah. A couple more questions. You used the word compromised a lot as you're talking through the exercise. [inaudible] no. Especially during this time, there is a feeling that you need to be like, optimizing and making your space this perfect sanctuary that you need to be in, and even that can then add to the feeling to the sad face column. Right? So how do you sort of compromise those two urges and balance that? Yeah. It is interesting and I think there are definitely be moments. I think at random we even talked about this at some point in our conversations. Again, I can't emphasize enough that we are in truly unprecedented times, obviously. We're a family of five in a one-bedroom apartment in the middle of a city. So we've no outdoor space or five flights up, just like this is a capital C, challenge. It's hard. Like right now, my husband and my kids are out of that apartment, socially distancing [inaudible]. It's not raining on them. Exactly. Thank God. Oh, postpone, rain check. But I think these are really unprecedented times and I think it's normal to feel crappy. Like I had a day probably in my mid-March and the schools had just been closed and we are all here and I had a newborn and I was in my kitchen unpacking the dishwasher. I was just like, oh my God, I'm actually claustrophobic. Like, I'm actually feeling truly like I can't breath in here. I'd been inside for like two weeks or something. We all had like some little symptoms. So we we were really self-isolating totally, and it was so intense. So I think that there going to be like an intensity of feelings for sure, right now that are hard to put into the context of regular life before. I've gone off on a tangent and I kind of forget that. Yeah, I think just balancing that feeling like you need to perfect your space, but also needing to like protect your energy and your sanity. Yeah, totally. I think that that is the kind of thing that, again, is about getting back to your own personal gut check. For me, I am appalled and astounded by the amount of dust in our apartment. Every day, there are new dust bunnies rolling or underneath the kitchen table and I don't get it. For me, I feel it's really good to sweep that up every day. That makes me feel like re-centered and okay, and as long as we're not floating around in dusts, everything will be fine. Obviously for someone else, that might be like the absolute last priority for them right now. If that's your last priority, that's your last priority. No one else's idea about what you should be focusing on, matters. So all of these, obviously, it's like teak with 25 grains of salt. You have to do what you most want to do. For me, having a calm, centered, clean, organized, physical space, makes me in turn feel calm and organized and centered. So that's a priority for me. I think the only way to get through this is to think on a very personal level. It doesn't matter what anyone else is doing or how anyone else is coping. Whatever works for you is what you need to do. That's great, yeah. I think the exercise you walked this through is a really good tool to just start forcing yourself to sit and think within and think better. How would you suggest people move forward with exercise? Is that something you could revisit or even level passes like going rounds on your list? Totally, I think going in rounds is a really good idea. I think also, just doing it for different spaces and even like really getting down to filtering down to smaller and smaller areas as like what I did with the utensils. I started with the whole kitchen and then realized like, wow, this one utensil jar is actually causing a lot of problems in the cabinet and I'm going to fix it. I think that that's important. There's a tutorial in my bathroom, a year or two ago that I made like a little night light for our bathroom, because we only have one light in there and it's so bright. So when their, waking up in the middle of the night, it was like, oh my God, too much brightness. So I just got like a little night light from the hardware store and just made my own shade for it essentially, so that it looks nicer looking. It got crumpled over time. So just yesterday, I put in a printed family photo, like a little square. That was a family photo of us from pre-colder, but four of us from last summer. I put it in the bathroom on the night light and it's made me feel so great. Every time I've gone to the bathroom the past 24 hours, it's been like, oh, our happy family outside altogether. The things like that. Those are the kinds of things to acknowledge and realize that little tiny shifts can make you feel good. Maybe it's a picture of your family and maybe it's a reorganized jar, maybe it's none of those things. Whatever it is that you're feeling. So yeah, I think for sure, revisiting these lists, writing them down again, starting over, crossing things out, shifting the columns, I just think it's nice to have an opportunity to sit and get your feelings out. 6. Final Thoughts: Thank you all for being here. I hope you all check out my Skillshare class, which more ideas for how to make your spaces skill peaceful. I think just keep in mind that the project here is to be gentle with yourself, ultimately so that you can feel better wherever you are. There are definitely moments where hard in the phrase, but I'm just like this is such a massive shock, [inaudible] believe this is happening. I think that's okay. I think that is bound to happen right now especially. So like day by day, little by little, it's like cleaning out your medicine cabinet. Makes you feel good on a certain day. Great. If it's like the last thing in the world you'd want to do, then definitely don't do it. But yeah, pay attention to it, how you feel. That's what I'm trying to do the most. What are the things that are making me feel best? What are things that are making me like actively not feel so good and try to get out of those ruts? For me, often that's tied to like playing for space. But if you've been following along and doing your exercise, or if you want to take some time and go back into your exercise later, you can upload it into the project galleries so that we can all follow along, and maybe even people will have advice for you. Thank you for watching my Skillshare live class.