About

About: Cindy Ash

In 2010 I started coming to from the haze of a major home renovation, a cross-country move, and three babies in five years, only to realize that I was so mired in stuff that I couldn't make many of the choices I wanted to make.  The tyranny of the urgent was preventing me from connecting with the things that were really important.  So I started collecting organization books and trying to regain control of my life.

For a while William Morris's dictum, “If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful,” was my guiding principle, but it only got me so far.  After you get rid of anything outdated, you're left with a whole lot of stuff that could be useful, or was reasonably beautiful when it wasn't dusty or surrounded by a lot of other stuff.  And then there was the time required to rework the house and life into a work of beauty and use.  How does one achieve beauty and usefulness when you have to stop what you're doing to pick up and drop off kids, change diapers, feed people, and volunteer at church or school?  How do you get there?

Well, it's been a long, slow effort to reshape our family life and home the way we want it, and we're not there yet.  But we've learned a few things along the way, and some things we're still working out.  This is the journal of my efforts to find space for the important so that the urgent occurs less frequently.

The Goals:

• To live less wastefully so that our family resources (and by extension, community resources) will stretch further and harm fewer people
• To live smaller so we spend better quality time together during the few years of our kids' childhood
• To share creative projects like cooking and creating things so that our children can enjoy the satisfaction of knowing how to do things for themselves
• To explore my personal desire to write and connect with others so that our experience has value beyond our own four walls
• To help our children explore their natural abilities and interests so that they, as adults, can make choices that will enrich their lives and the world around them without having to take the time to go through the reinvention process