Designing Your Room for Better Sleep & Relaxation

Our personal spaces are sacred. It provides an environment that can really set a tone and effect our energy and mood. When our spaces are clustered and messy, it can leave us feeling frazzled, overwhelmed, and unclear. When our spaces are clean and organized, it can generate a sense of calm, rejuvenation, and ease.

Most of us appreciate places like the spa or an upscale hotel because these places take the time to prioritize the experience a person feels in the space. Likewise, our bedroom is one of our most intimate places that should provide a supportive place for relaxation, restoration, and rest. It is the place you come to for space, solace, and comfort. It is the place you begin and end your day.

Personalizing or designing your bedroom in a way that promotes and enhances these effects is one of the best ways to trigger better sleep and relaxation, which in turn promotes more energy throughout each day. The beautiful thing is that it is easy and fun to do!

The first step to creating more peace in your bedroom is to designate the space for only restful, calming activities. Bringing work, problems, finances, and creative projects into your bedroom can activate your mind to start thinking and working when you walk in. So it’s important to be deliberate about the activities in your room.

Step two, think about self-care activities that you enjoy doing and make space for that in your bedroom. If it’s yoga and meditation, make sure you have intentional space for your yoga mat or meditation pillow. If you like doing face care or a foot spa, you might have a designated area for a vanity or comfortable seat. Regardless what you prefer, the space should be functional and intentionally designed to promote doing these activities with ease.

Next, take the time to heighten your senses and think about what elements encourage you to relax and feel more calm. Sometimes it helps to recreate a space you’re familiar with being relaxed in, like the spa; Use water features, candles and essential oils, lots of plants, soft music, and maybe even some decorations that enhance the authenticity of the experience. Try to trigger all five of your senses with sights, sounds, textures, smells, and even flavors, like bringing in a nice cup of tea.

The fourth step is to consider lighting. If your lights are bright and fluorescent, it’s hard for your mind to settle down in that space. Take note of light pollution as well, excess light that can creep in through door cracks or unshaded windows, or even lights that emit from LED screens or charging points. The ability to control the warmth, brightness, and amount of light in your room can set the mood when you’re ready to relax or fall asleep, and it can also help you stay asleep to remove any excess light.

The next thing you want to do is to be extremely intentional about the quality and comfort of your furniture. The design of the room is focused not only on making it look visually appealing, it should be a comforting and relaxing experience as well. Intentionally include items in your room that help support that and keep in mind spacing, prioritizing the most important furniture first and omitting what doesn’t fit well.

Another important thing to include is a side table or accessible unit that can store self care and relaxation tools. It’s convenient and helpful to be able to reach these items from the comfort of your bed, whether it be an eye mask, diffuser, or book. Keep them close to maintain your night time routine and help you get more relaxing sleep, or help soothe you to sleep.

Lastly, along with relaxation tools, keep beside you important necessities like a water bottle, a night light, some ear plugs, or nasal spray. Whatever you find yourself consistently addressing in the middle of the night, with the exception of using the restroom, find ways to keep yourself from having to get up out of bed.

Taking all these steps will help cultivate a more peaceful, energy-promoting environment along with boosting your quality of sleep. But another essential step to go along with designing your room is to make sure you establish a good sleep routine. Utilize the space to help train your mind and body to restore.. the benefits are life changing!

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5 Steps to Minimalism During Quarantine

During this time of forced isolation, we have plenty of time and space to reconsider what we put our time and energy into. This is the perfect time to slow down and identify what truly adds value to you. In essence, this is the root of the philosophy of minimalism.

If you have ever considered or been interested in giving minimalism a try here are five easy steps that you can take during this quarantine to experience the benefits of minimalist living.

STEP #1 - Declutter Your Home

The easiest and most rewarding step when beginning minimalism is to declutter the spaces in your home. Beginning with the space of most inspiration, or maybe something simple like your junk drawer, you can feel the liberation and clarity instantly when you choose to identify what truly adds value and remove all that doesn't.

My tip to you would be to begin by first replacing the items that you use on a regular, daily basis. Then begin to look for inspiration of how you would like your space to look and feel. This might include extras that you truly cherish, like family photos or sentimental items, in addition to some value adding decor. In my case I love decorating with books and live house plants.

STEP #2 - Let it Go

For the items you have removed, create different piles to trash, donate, or sell. Simply put, let them go remove them from your space and your life. The extra space will give you time and clarity to truly focus and pursue the things that are left over, and the things that add value to your life.

STEP #3 - Declutter Your Spending

Hulu and Netflix might be something you consider valuable right now… But often we get caught up spending on subscriptions that we typically don't use. Sometimes we even forget that we are still paying for them! Take the time to make a list of the things you are spending on, deleting, and swapping for things that add greater value. An example of this might be swapping Netflix for that online fitness program you’ve been wanting to try.

STEP #4 - Face the Digital Clutter

So much of our lives are now digital. How many apps, notifications, and media are we inundated by every single day? I like to unsubscribe from marketing emails that distract my time, delete apps that are no longer in use, turn off notifications on everything except for the most important, and create a system to save my personal media.

If you are using a cloud to store your media, my tip would be to review the cloud each week to delete and sort through. This makes reviewing your memories and finding your important files super streamlined! I also recommend converting your paper files to digital.

STEP #5 - EVP

EVP stands for the Everyday Vacation process:

Use this process throughout each of the steps. Take the time to evaluate the elements that add value, vacate what doesn’t, and then prepare a plan that will help you progress towards living life on your terms.

Ultimately you don't have to be a Pinterest perfect minimalist in order to benefit from the practice of minimalism. By applying the Everyday Vacation Process in each area of your life you will utilize your space, time, energy, and money on things that create a more value, meaning, and fulfilling life.

Hope to give it a try!
~MJ

Starting Minimalism with The Minimalists

I always imagined minimalism being this self-depriving lifestyle of trying to live with as little as possible. Boy was I wrong.

If there is any person, or in this case two people, I could give credit to deepening my journey in minimalism it would be Joshua and Ryan of The Minimalists. Seven years ago they helped me define minimalism for myself before I ever considered myself a minimalist.

I never knew this way of thinking and living would change my life for the better - in so many ways.

If you’re a person who’s looking for more fulfillment, direction, and meaning in life, but feel overwhelmed with what seems to be “everyday life”, minimalism could be just the thing that helps you find that clarity and balance.

Recently, I had the pleasure of going to L.A. to collab with these gentlemen on their podcast and talk about starting minimalism and I’m excited to share the experience with you. ❤️ Enjoy!

You can also check out some fun extras I did with Joshua and Ryan:

• “The Difference Between Minimalism and the Marie Kondo Method”

• Full length “Maximal” episode of The Minimalists Private Podcast exclusively at The Minimalists Pateon

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I personally recommend following The Minimalists:
Blog: http://minimalists.com
Podcast: http://minimalists.com/podcast
Twitter: http://twitter.com/theminimalists
Instagram: http://instagram.com/theminimalists
Facebook: http://facebook.com/theminimalists

Decluttering Your Closet with Purpose

I don’t know about you, but I have a tendency to struggle with letting go of items that seem perfectly useful or hold potential value. I’m also in a line of work that puts a lot of free items in my possession. This can make it difficult and conflicting when deciding what to let go of, especially when I know I’m in a position of excess or surplus.

Something that’s helped me get clear when it comes to decluttering is knowing my purpose. But that statement itself can be more overwhelming. What is our purpose and what does having purpose even mean? Isn’t the whole point of this process to discover, create and refine our purpose?

Here’s the cool thing, when we break the process down into smaller bits, like decluttering… we start to widen our peripheral. Here’s an example of going through this process with my own closet…

#1 The first step is to identify the elements of my lifestyle and day, because this is going to largely effect the types of clothes I want to wear. I also want to identify why these elements are important to me.

Example:

• Active = I want to be comfortable in my clothes, no matter what I’m doing.

• Diverse Schedule / Travel = Clothes need to be suitable for multi-activity use. I don’t want to have to wear 3 different outfits per day.

• Temperate Weather, Extremely hot summers & cool winters - Weather Flexible, efficient fabrics and layers that are compatible with the seasons and travel.

• Business / Social = Aesthetics that are important to me are to look clean, well put together, no distracting colors or prints. I basically want to pick my top and bottom blindfolded and have them fall into all these categories! 😜

It’s important to do the identification process first. This will be the measuring stick that guides your choices not only when it comes to decluttering, but also acquiring.

#2 Simplify / Reduce everything that doesn’t fit into the elements you’ve identified. For myself, it’s important that most of my pieces fit into all 4 elements I’ve listed above. I definitely make exceptions, but I only have a few pieces that I do that for.

Everything else goes! Because the truth is, no matter how cute or how much I intend on wearing those uniquely colored pants, it’s probably never going to happen given my lifestyle and daily circumstances!

#3 The last step is to focus on the elements that are most important to you. For me that’s comfort, diversity, and clean aesthetics.

As I move forward, I find when I’m in need of certain items I’m emotionally detached from the flashy things at the stores. I won’t settle for anything less than what fits all the elements that are important to me and that has spared me conflict, time and energy, wasted money, and wasted space on things that are just so-so because my purpose wasn’t clear during my initial purchase.

I hope this process helps you just as much!

In love and gratitude,
~MJ

Fear of Letting Go

I want it…
I could use it…
I spent money on it…
I lost time for it…
I probably need it…
I’ll just keep it.

And so the mental conflict continues when it comes to decluttering our stuff… but what if there was a different way? What if it didn’t have to be so damn exhausting and difficult?

For the sake of entertaining the thought, let’s think about what it actually costs you:

• Guilt / Anguish - every time you’re reminded of the fact that you acquired it without good reason and it just sits there collecting dust.

• Space - aside from the emotional conflict, it’s occupying space that could be put to better use or produce better feelings if it weren’t there.

• Time - organizing, cleaning, revisiting the conflict over and over… and over… and over… again.

Just let it go.

The amount of time, money and energy you spent bringing it into your life is minimal compared to the exponential resources you use justifying keeping it in your life.

Give, sell, share it with someone who will use and appreciate it more than you.

Now that feels doubly good :)

DECLUTTERING SENTIMENTAL ITEMS

When it comes to items we value only for their sentimental attachment, many of us struggle. These things can become huge energy saps: we invest our time, space, and money into them. We store them, haul them, clean them - often only out of guilt or simply not knowing what to do with them. 
To help you improve your space – physically and energetically – here are FIVE TIPS for handling sentimental belongings:

1. REMOVE THE STORY- The story/feeling associated with the item actually exists in your mind – not in the item. Preserving the story in your memory rather than within the item helps you keep the good vibes and let go of the physical things.

2. RE-ANCHOR-Try using the memory to journal or create art, poetry, or digital video/photo albums that reflect the feelings attached with the item. Creating a new anchor saves the story and frees you to part with the item.

3. GIVE MEANINGFULLY- Gift your item to someone who can give it new life. Passing on a sentimental item can give both you and the recipient a shared sense of love and purpose for it.

4. KEEP IT- Seems counter-intuitive, right! Rather than purging everything, try using a designated bin or keepsake chest to store items you just can’t part with. This keeps them organized and safe, plus you can easily locate them when you want to share or reminisce.

5. REPURPOSE- Sometimes reimagining the way the things function in your life can give you a fresh way to love and appreciate them. Renewing the utility of your item can add even more love and make it more unique and valuable to your life. 

It’s not about getting rid of everything; it’s about keeping what amplifies ease in your life, reducing decision fatigue, and taking your energy to the next level!

-MJ

For more information on this topic check out my YouTube video here.