Creating Space For Simplicity

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with creating space for simplicity and allowing myself to enjoy the things that, well, I enjoy the most. Plus, I’ve realized this is where the magic of life happens and I’ve been missing out big time.

How To Create White Space For Simplicity

When it comes to simplifying ways to do all the mom life “things” like routines, schedules, meal planning, cleaning, and organizing, truth be told I’m pretty good at it.

I’ve gotten so good at it that friends usually ask me how I keep the house clean with such a busy schedule or how I cook every night when it seems I have no extra time. My secret is planning, following my routines, and keeping it simple. But something was still missing.

As a mom, I’ve been living a very busy season of life. I felt as if life was happening to me, rather than me happening to life. It’s like I got on a train that never stopped anywhere. It just kept going and going with nowhere to pull over. Although, Hogwarts would have been a great destination, just saying.

Then COVID happened, and all of a sudden, someone pulled the emergency handle on the train. Still no Hogwarts, but it was giving me no choice but to sit with my thoughts and a yearning to want to slow down and simplify even further.

You could say I had an aha moment where something just clicked or it might have just been that I woke up cranky yet another day of quarantine letting life just happen. It’s not that I lived a life without simplicity, it was just that I wasn’t allowing the white space to happen to live more intentionally.

Which, is why four months later, I’m on a mission to creating space for simplicity in my home, in my motherhood, and my life—hoping to inspire other moms to do the same. I mean, come on, I even rebranded the blog a few years ago to create this mission, and somewhere along the way, I lost track of it, once again.

This is why I’m becoming more intentional with what I share within my brand and the message I want to get out to moms about living the life they want—starting with the message of creating space for themselves.

What Does Creating Space Look Like?

Creating space within your life will look very different for all of us. I want to make sure to say this first because, as moms, we are the worse in believing in ourselves and really good at comparing our lives with other moms.

If we are to create intentional white space in our life to live the best life we can, then it has to be the space that YOU need as a mom and space your family needs from you.

When we’re talking about creating space, it’s about stopping to smell the roses. I know that is such a cliche, but it’s a simple cliche that expresses exactly what we all need to start doing.

Creating space is about intentionally choosing what goes into your calendar, the activities your family signs up for, or the to-do list you create daily.

It’s also about what you are saying yes to during your week because if you say yes to something, you are saying no to something else. So make sure that when you’re saying yes, that you’re okay with saying no to something else.

What Does White Space For Simplicity Entail?

When you’re simplifying, you need to create white space in your head, in your life, in your schedule, and your day to day life.

For me, the white space is that open time where you carve out to be intentional in what you are doing. Whether you’re finally reading that book you’ve been dying to read or your reading with your kids on the couch.

It’s about shutting out all the noise, all the social media, all the negativity, all the fear, and all the negative affirmations you are telling yourself (this is where mindfulness comes in) so that you can enjoy life doing more of what you love to do.

Here are a few things to think about when starting to think of the white space you need to simplify your life:

Be honest about what you want.
Think about where you are in life at this moment and be honest about it.
Understand that changes need to be made and commit.
Prepare yourself for success.
Be oh so grateful in those moments you find yourself amid the white space or intentional moments.

How Do You Create Space For Simplicity?

Creating space for a simplified life is actually pretty easy; in fact, the hard part is doing it day in and day out. The hard part is committing.

We like to create these expectations of ourselves and are not honest with where we are within our journey. We want to go from zero to one hundred overnight, and that’s when we fail.

Being honest about what we want out of motherhood, our life, and our home is the first step.

The white space in between will be where those intentional moments live and will follow us through the rest of our life. Those are the moments we will remember.

Here are just a few ways I create the white space in my life to allow for a more simplified mom life.

Ideas For Creating Space

Morning routine, which includes journaling, reading inspirational books, and meditating. I do this every single morning.
Going for walks outdoors with my family and no electronics allowed.
Self-care routine where I choose one thing every day to do for myself on my own. For me, it’s 30 minutes of reading, watching one of my favorite television shows, trying out a new recipe, or just writing when I feel inspired.
Family dinners with conversations. We have a conversation card set that we use every night during dinner. Our girls love it.
Weekly family meetings to check in with everyone. Especially during social distancing.

I can’t express with you enough how valuable the white space throughout your day truly is. Moms, it’s time that we were living a full life filled with joy and happiness, rather than overwhelm and chaos.

When we create the space in our everyday life, we leave room to become the mom we always dreamed of, the loving wife our partners married, and, most, importantly the women we were meant to be. This is where the magic happens.

How you can create the space that you need today to become the best version of yourself?