Since I’m roughly half done with my Simple Year project, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about what I want the second half of my year to look like. I’m giving an interview to Laura and Mark at EnjoyLifeSlowly.com and it’s made me think a lot about simplicity and minimalism and how I want to define those ideas for myself and my family.

When I was a teacher and had to plan units, I always found it best to begin with the end in mind. What did I want my students to know and be able to do by the time we were finished? What steps did we have to take to get to our desired end? Having that picture in my head always made it easier to plan because the final product provided structure and definition. And yet when I first thought about my Simple Year project, and mapped out my objectives, I didn’t really think about the end products- what exactly I wanted my house to look like, how I wanted to feel when living my day to day life.

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So far, I see progress. I can walk through the garage without worrying about impaling myself on a rake. I can open a closet door and nothing falls on my head. I can close dresser drawers without cramming and jamming them shut. And those things matter.

But I need to decide how far I’m going to ultimately go, what I want my house and life to look like. We were driving out of the neighborhood recently and I happened to see some of my neighbors had their garage doors open…with WAY more stuff than we have. I’m not looking to gloat, because I know how that overstuffed garage feels. But I also found myself wondering if I can say I’m done even though there’s more to do. Peter Walsh wrote about two purges, a quick one and then a more detailed one, and even though I hadn’t read his book when I started this project, I saw that I’d been working that way too. The initial purge is done even though it was done in a haphazard and inelegant way. In hindsight, it wasn’t hard to donate things. I struggled with some things, like décor items, but in this moment I don’t even remember what I gave away. This week I found it hard again to find things to donate. I still walk or look into spaces and then go elsewhere without doing anything.

I don’t know if true minimalism is something I can realistically achieve because I like stuff. I like my house with its décor and art and throw pillows. It’s occurred to me that minimalism happens in the house but simplicity happens in the head. And if I have to choose between getting every single extraneous item out of my house in the next six months, I’m going to fail. I don’t want to cop out, but I also want to be realistic. But paring down activities and commitments, streamlining errands and chores to open up time and doing a better job of defining needs vs. wants, are attainable. When I think about how I want my life to look, I see myself spending less time cleaning and decluttering, and more time on hobbies and family time. My brother once described our house as “happy messy.” At every turn you’d see books, newspapers, sports gear, sneakers, Nintendo games. It looked like busy people lived there. And while I definitely aspire to be less busy, I’ll be content with a little happy messiness.