MIND: 2016 - My Year of No Goals

With 2015 drawing to a close, it seems that most of us are taking inventory of the past twelve months and judging ourselves based on how many of the goals we set were actually met during the year.

It also seems that most of us feel pretty low when we aren't able to check off every accomplishment we'd hoped to achieve. I'm not talking about day-to-day items on your to-do list, I'm talking about Big Goals. You know, the often unreasonable self-crafted measures for success?

TRAVEL: Becoming a Nomadic Minimalist

Like many people the minimalist lifestyle attracts, I yearn to live simply and to travel light. In fact, the idea of cutting my roots and moving anywhere at any time was one of the key motivators to parting with the bulk of my material things.

When culling my possessions even now I stop and ask myself, "If I packed up tonight to move across the country, would I take this with me?"

There are a few things that make the cut, but most things that have served their purpose in my life and no longer add beauty or benefit are donated to charities.

Living anywhere you want at anytime requires self-discipline when it comes to both working independently and curating your material goods. If it's something that truly appeals to you, then the learning curve can be a very short one.

FINANCE: Five Things We No Longer Spend Money On

My husband and I have always tried to use our money wisely and have never felt that we needed to buy things just to keep up appearances. These two traits were especially helpful when decided to really clean up our sloppy spending and use the savings to build our emergency fund.

I won't sugarcoat things--it was uncomfortable looking at our finances under a microscope. I can now safely say that a spending analysis is right up there will small children and leggings on the List of Things That Never Lie.

We had a tendency to use our debit cards for nearly all of our purchasing, which turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. With a card instead of cash, it was too easy to spend without actually feeling like we were spending (the curse), but when it came time to take a close look at our spending habits, we discovered that our bank had an online tool to automatically categorize where our money went each month (the blessing).

What we learned was that we had black holes in our budget that were sucking away our income at a startling rate.

The biggest culprits? These five things that we no longer spend money on:

MIND: My Social Media Detox

It's been almost two years exactly since my last social media hiatus. I'm not proud to say that since then I've fallen back into old habits and have allowed distractions of all kinds to creep back in and derail my efforts of living true to myself and following my passions.

I've decided to take action and not let the constant onslaught of news feeds steer me away from my path any longer.

Similar to Dr. Tall's Social Media Diet, I'm currently putting myself through a social media detox. Consider it an information rehab, if you will. I'm leaving old habits behind.

(If you're reading this from a Facebook or Twitter link, thank the magic of RSS feeds.)

Just like rehab, I'm sticking it out for ten weeks--seventy whole days--without looking for likes, comments, or new followers. This is my cold-turkey attempt to deepen my thinking, expand my creativity, deprogram myself of the app habit, and (most importantly) to spend more time on the things that matter to me most.

WORK: What To Do When You Can't Control the Chaos

Your home is your space. You may share it with your family, your roommate, or maybe just your cat, but you have a say in how much or how little your home contains and how those contents are organized.

You feel peaceful and relaxed at home because you've worked to keep it clutter-free and efficient to live in and maintain. It's your sanctuary.

What about your job? If you work in a large office or for a big company, you may not have much pull when it comes to office clutter and organization. If you're like me, it can sometimes feel like you're sharing a workspace with dozens of roommates who don't understand the ripple effect their chaos has on their coworkers or the overall feel of the office.

HOME: How Hoarding Led Me To Minimalism

I grew up in a home with stuff packed into every nook and cranny.

The attic was full. The closets were full. Every horizontal surface in the house was a shrine to one kind of collection or another. Weekly cleaning took all weekend, and if you had the misfortune of being tasked with the duty of dusting, let's just say you knew you probably shouldn't make any other plans.

My mother was the daughter of two lower-middle class Americans who married and subsequently struggled to start a home and family during the Great Depression. Fear of scarcity was deeply set in my grandparents' DNA once the economy began to recover. Their way of thinking and reacting to material goods had been forever changed.