decluttering

Zen bathing ‘lush-iousness’

| Ester

The mountain has been moved!! Cause we have!
Now living in a wonderful spacious home, I get so inspired to live my new uncluttered, simple, happy and grateful life.
I know material things don’t make me happy, but it’s the seeming absence of them that makes me so.
The next weeks I will take you through the ‘zenifying‘ process (if I may use or abuse that term respectfully) of my home sweet home.

The first tip I want to share with you is how I went from being an exhausted house-mover, box-unpacker, mess-organiser to a content, mindful, rested and reasonably sane individual.
Here are the 2 key ingredients:

#1
After hitting my toe against a box, being grumpy to my dear hubbie and being crazy with exhaustion, I ran a tub full of water, stepped in, popped a Lush Bath Ballistic in it and bathed (what a luxury to even have a tub at all!!)
I even did some breathing meditation…
But!… It was no ordinary bath ball! It was the Big Blue:
Read with me and shiver with pleasure and ‘zen-ness’.

Lemon, lavender and seaweed for clear thoughts. Have you ever hankered for a minimalist space with plain walls, wooden floors, no mess, no clutter and no distractions? Escape into a world of pure, uncluttered thought by dropping a Big Blue into the bath. Lemon and lavender oils help to clear your mind, complete with skin-softening seaweed and sea salt to help you float away in your own warm, blue ocean of inspiration. (Lush)

Aaaahhh, only reading these promises beforehand made my sorry mind calmer already.

#2
Sleep

Do try this at home and tell me what you think of it!
Do you have any more ‘zen’ bathing tips?

Drop me a line in the comment section or tweet me.

Declutter your input!

| Ester
http://www.puur-puravida.nl

All year I have been carrying my ubiquitous capturing tool: my paper notepad everywhere, becoming a ‘Capture‘-ing blackbelt. But something kept nagging at me….

Eventually I noticed my Weekly Review consisted of a lot of Someday Maybe’s related to consumerist wants on the one hand and quotes for blogging on the other, which I was dutifully entering into Evernote and Nozbe. At some point I started losing sight of the bigger picture and didn’t have time to actually complete my Review.

My friends Tara Rodden Robinson and Augusto Pinaud suggested in my fun interview with them on @Context (episode 16) that I could buy an Iphone to make data entering easier. We even joked I would blame them if I eventually couldn’t resist buying one 🙂

…….Bigger – faster – harder – stronger!!!!!!!! was ringing in my ears….my head was spinning..it had to stop!…….

“She said run, but I’m not running no I’m not running.
Let ’em come, let ’em come but I’m not running, no, I ain’t running no more.
No more!” Children 18:3 (@Youtube)……..

It turned out I didn’t need a more sophisticated capturing tool but an other view on what was actually worth capturing at all.
These were Fr. Roderick’s epiphanic words from the Health and Holiness Bootcamp-podcast episode 33 for me:

“What is decluttering your life? Getting rid of anything you have in abundance, living a life detached from stuff. Because that can be hampering to living a happier and holier life. I mean, getting to inbox zero is amazing but I wouldn’t trade it in for more important things like family, workout, prayer(…)
Decluttering is also letting go of the desire to be always up to date with everything that happens, constantly mastering the stream of communication, keeping tabs on all that I have.”

I listened to his words, sitting on the side of a canal in Amsterdam, dangling my feet and smelling the Summer air, my eyes unfocusing on the water.
Then and there I decided to slow down and change my ubiquitous capturing to not writing down every detail, every shop I want to visit, every restaurant to remember, every thing I want to have and buy buy buy, but instead go for the quotes and ideas that come up in my creative mind and not to obsess over collecting everything like a teenager keeping pictures of her favorite boyband.

So there it is! Now I am very relieved! But it’s only the first step. I want to set my mind on:

“whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—anything excellent or praiseworthy” (Phillipians 4:8-10)

“Let ’em come, let ’em come but I’m not running, no, I ain’t running no more.”

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
Please leave a comment below or tweet me @E5ter