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When I first heard the term “slow living”, the image that came to mind was of living on a farm in the the country, raising animals, baking pies and taking long walks through the woods. Don’t get me wrong…I would actually love for that to be in my future, but it’s certainly not the only way to embrace slow living. In many aspects, I don’t lead a slow life. In fact, it could be argued that I lead a hectic one, but what I’m learning is that slow living is a journey full of steps. Those steps are full of intentions (I’ve heard slow living is also referred to as intentional living). It’s a conscious decision about what to prioritize and how to go about it in order to maximize time for the things that matter most. Since having Ronan, my husband and I have often discussed what life will look like for us as a family. We want Ronan to value the simple things in life, the ordinary things, the things that make up the beauty of the everyday. And we want to begin to take steps toward teaching him that by changing how we approach certain aspects of our life now. It’s a journey that will take time, but I want to take you on the journey with us and share our learnings with you as we go starting with our first few steps. 

The first step, or motivator, in our lives right now that is driving us to live more slowly is finding time to be with one another. My husband and I both work in fast-paced industries, and we have found that we often struggle to turn our internal “speed” down when we are home. We’re always thinking of the next project or the next trip, the next “anything”. This is tough for me because I love to plan and be thinking about future events, but in always planning for the next “thing”, it becomes difficult to pay attention to the joy of the present – to truly love everything about the moment I am in right now. This has become more apparent since Ronan came along because he is blissfully unaware of the next moment. He enjoys the present to its fullest capacity. When he’s happy, he is joyously happy. When he’s angry, he is oh so angry, but he doesn’t have the worry about the next moment clouding his ability to enjoy the now.

So how do we do that as an adult? How do I train myself to not always be working on the next thing when I’m with my family? While it’s not a complete solution, I’ve begun to eliminate or at least shorten the tasks that are taking away my focus. As simple as it seems, this has begun with laundry. Between work clothes, Ronan’s clothes, towels and everything else in between, it feels like I’m constantly trying to keep up with it. The only way to reduce it is to have less items to wash. Both Michael and I have purged our closets a couple times over the past few months, and we have eliminated more than half the clothing we own. What’s even more astonishing is we never even wore some of the items. It’s such a freeing feeling. My next goal is to create a capsule wardrobe for myself to take it one step further. In the same vein, this extends to other tasks like cleaning. Less clutter equals less maintenance equals more time. We certainly have a long way to go, but a few small steps in this direction have given us more time and have us wanting to continue.

The second step driving us to live more slowly is wanting to embrace less technology. This seems counterintuitive. I know and interact with the majority of you through blogging and Instagram. However, even with this, I’m trying to handle my time more wisely. Now that I’m back to work, I take my pictures in bulk on my day off to have content for the week. I also strategically plan it around when Ronan naps so that I don’t take time away from him. I enjoy “blogstagramming” as I call it, but I never want it to come between treasured time with my family. This extends to simply being on my phone and watching television. There are certainly things that arise at work and with family that require immediate attention, but I’m working to train myself not to constantly “check” my phone just in case. As Ronan gets older, we want him to be content playing with simple toys and being outside. That’s not to say that we won’t occasionally let him play with technological toys, but if we can teach him to love and play with more simple toys, we hope he won’t need the entertainment of technology in order to not be “bored”.

Thirdly, our last step as we seek to simplify our lives is to create meaningful experiences. I think everyone wants this for their family, but we want to create special moments that we do that are unique to us. One way we are trying to do this is through creating our own food. Michael is the cook of the family, and I the baker, but we want Ronan to love making meals with us! Just recently, we found out we have a sugar maple in our front yard so we’ve decided to tap it for sap to make maple syrup, and we also have an apple cider press to make our own cider this fall. We’ll also continue gardening this year, and we hope that our next home will have acreage so that we can keep bees! Regardless of the hobby or venture, we love and appreciate cozy moments that make up our memories, and we want to create them for our family. Whether it be a long drive listening to our favorite album (Mumford & Sons is always are go-to!) or sitting by a bonfire, it’s the simple moments that I remember most, and what I most look forward to today.

Those three intentions are what we are allowing to drive us as we make decisions throughout this year and raise our son. At the heart of this is what I truly believe to be slow living  – doing whatever you do to spend quality time with the ones you love and create meaningful moments. It might look very different than what I’m choosing to do, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t seeking to live more intentionally any less. I’ve still a long way to go to quieting my mind and allowing myself to be in the present, but I hope that as I continue to work towards these intentions that that will gradually come with it. I will continue to share my slow living journey with you throughout this year and would love to hear if you’re trying to do the same. Here’s to living and loving!