#7. it was hectic work month and my calendar was so full . love my job tho. alhamdulillah

[apricotluvr]

Dec 2022

[goodlucktai]

past the places where we might have turned

persona 5 pairing: pegoryu word count: 6876 title borrowed from everything you want by vertical horizon summary: Ryuji bumps shoulders with him and says, “Their loss, man. You just keep doing you, and screw ‘em if they don’t like it.” It doesn’t feel like enough. “You deserve to be happy,” he adds, and that feels a little better. Akira’s smile stretches into a shit-eating grin. “Is that a confession?” “I take it back. You’re the worst person I know.” So they end up trying to push each other into traffic, but it still feels good. read on ao3

x

They tear through the peaceful countryside like it’s their mission to make a mark, gunning the engine and kicking up gravel with every hard turn. They lean out the windows so Akira can hear them coming from whole blocks away, shouting and waving, because it’s the kind of hello he deserves.

His neighbors stare, his parents don’t look pleased, but Akira’s on the sidewalk in front of his house with a bag at his feet and his cat in his arms and a grin on his face about three miles wide.

It’s a grin he used to only wear behind Joker’s mask, one that does something kind of wonky to Ryuji’s heart.

“You’re late,” Akira calls out. His voice is so fond. The phone calls didn’t do it justice. Ryuji missed him so goddamn much. “You didn’t forget about me, did you?”

“As fuckin’ if, ” Ryuji manages in the second before they crash into each other, bodies colliding in an embrace whole months in the making.

Morgana yowls in protest, Ann and Futaba complain about Ryuji getting there first, Akira’s parents watch with cold eyes from the front door--

But Akira is laughing. His hair is soft against Ryuji’s cheek, and his hands are hot against his back, and it feels like they haven’t missed a single minute. It feels like a homecoming, even though it’s literally the opposite of that.

Some jangling, dislocated thing inside Ryuji settles, and he holds on to his best friend as though the world would end around them for a second time if he ever let go.

  The last time Akira visited, he stayed at Ryuji’s little apartment for a snatched weekend between school days. There wasn’t enough time in that limited window for him to visit the staggering number of friends he’d made in the city, but obviously he’d make time to see the coffee shop he called home for a year.

Sojiro was surprised that day, when Akira pushed open the door with Ryuji, Ann and Morgana. Ryuji remembers him saying something like, “I thought I’d take you brats out to lunch somewhere,” and Akira quipping back, “In that case, we’re in the mood for coffee and curry. Know a place?”

Sojiro blustered and postured a lot, but it was obvious that he was touched. And it would take armies considerably bigger than the ones they were used to dealing with to strong-arm the former Thief out of his favorite place in the world.

This time, Sojiro knows what to expect. In the middle of a sunny Thursday afternoon, they push past the closed sign on Leblanc’s front door, and Sojiro’s waiting with a full spread of food. Akira breathes in the rich smell of ground coffee beans, the hot cinnamon-ginger of curry on the stove, and lets it all go with a sigh so content it makes Ryuji’s heart hurt.

“You’re sure you don’t mind keeping me for spring break?” Akira asks, setting his cat bag down. Morgana leaps up from it to sit on a stool instead. “I could find somewhere else to stay.”

He could, too. He’s got a lot of crazy adult friends who would happily house him for the next three months without batting an eye. Ryuji thinks of Akira living with that terrifying gun dealer or the flirtatious reporter or the medical practitioner who conducted experiments on him and blurts, “Don’t be stupid, Akira. You stay with Boss or you stay with me.”

“Stupid’s right,” Sojiro snaps, “I said you’re welcome and I meant it. And you’re not staying in the damn attic this time, either, Futaba would have my head. We’ve got a guest futon and a living room with your name on it.”

Futaba cheers “Damn right!” from somewhere in the room, and Makoto scolds him, “You were probably thinking of going to that arms dealer, weren’t you? Honestly, Akira, my sister is a lawyer and we have a guest bedroom and the first person you thought of was the arms dealer.”

“You don’t know that’s what I was thinking,” Akira says with a charming smile that doesn’t fool a single person in the room. Obviously that’s what he was thinking.

“You should come home more often,” Yusuke tells him firmly. “You always get these strange ideas in your head about not being welcome when you stay away for too long.”

And their leader’s face goes soft. “I’d visit every day if I could,” he says, and just like before, they all know what he’s thinking; if he had a choice, he’d never leave.

The first month is a bit hectic, because Akira really does have like a thousand friends to see. His time is always spoken for, though he’s happy to have some of his former Thieves along no matter where he’s going. Ryuji tags along every chance he gets, because it’s a little bit amazing.

Somehow, between being the top student in his class and working a handful of part-time jobs and training to exhaustion in Mementos, Akira had time to make all these connections with people. And he says things like “Hifumi taught me how to play shogi,” or “Shinya’s amazing at first-person shooters,” and it’s enough for someone who knows him well. Ryuji looks at Ann or Yusuke or Haru or whoever he’s with and sees them thinking the same thing.

Everything he ever did was for the Phantom Thieves. He poured his free time and all his energy into learning whatever he needed to be a better leader, earning money to keep their armor up to date, letting an intimidating back-alley doctor drug him just so they’d always have access to curatives.

When he made new friends, he learned things from them, too. Not a single meeting was meaningless. Not a single day was wasted. He seized every opportunity he could in both hands and dragged his team up with him every hard-earned step.

God, Ryuji thinks. He’s so amazing.

“God,” Ryuji says, “you’re such a loser.”

Akira moans at him, burying his face in a pillow to shield his eyes from the mid-morning sun. Ryuji beat him awake by like two hours. That has to be a world record or something. He already texted Ann about it, because it’s kind of a momentous occasion and all that.

“So this is what happens when there’s no Morgana around to make sure you go to bed on time,” he goes on, crouching by the bed. “I can’t believe that cat is the only reason you’re a functioning member of society.”

“Ichiko kept me out late,” comes the pitiful mumble. “I thought I’d swing by to see her for a couple minutes after dinner with Iwai and Kaoru but she was so drunk. She kept telling people I was her ex-boyfriend.”

All Ryuji can think to say to that is, “What the fuck?”

“It’s, er, an excuse we used once to get her out of trouble with her boss,” Akira explains, pushing himself upright as though it's a Herculean effort. Propped up on his elbows, the tips of his dark curls burning red in the sunlight, borrowed T-shirt too big and crooked on his shoulders, he looks both unreal and stupidly human. “I used to work at that bar, and all the familiars are used to her, so no one thought she was serious.”

“You used to work at a bar? And you didn’t sneak us in for free drinks? Fake friend.”

“You can get beer out of a vending machine three blocks from your apartment for six hundred yen,” Akira replies dryly. Then he smirks. “But good boys don’t drink, do they?”

Ryuji sputters, feeling his cheeks burn, and yanks the blanket over Akira’s head so he won’t have to look at his stupid face when his best friend starts laughing at him.

“See if I ever make you breakfast again, you asshole.”

“Wait, wait, you made me breakfast?”

Akira is struggling clumsily out of the blanket, and his voice sounds rusty and a little tired but he’s still laughing. Ryuji can’t think of a single person he loves more in that second.

Because mom had to work late, their breakfast is little more than the most appetizing prepackaged food the 7-Eleven around the corner had to offer, but it’s still Ryuji’s favorite kind of morning. Akira finally manages to peel himself out of bed and sits close enough to Ryuji that their knees bump and fights him for the best melon bread.

It’s so easy, with him.

Haru takes Akira’s hand in both of hers, so soft and sweet that Ryuji thinks the whole world slows down to hear whatever she's about to say.

“How have you been?” she asks kindly. “You haven’t said a word about it.”

Makoto pauses in the act of turning a page for a split-second, enough of a tell that Ryuji knows she’s listening closely. On her other side, Goro's writing slows down. Morgana’s tail is swishing, jewel eyes bright. Their sudden focus makes Ryuji think he should pay attention to whatever’s coming, too.

He supposes it is kind of odd that Akira hasn’t had anything to say about his parents, or his classmates, or his baseball team-- all those things he lost when that dirtbag Shido ruined his life-- but maybe he was just happy to be back. He's been busy, and he's had a lot to catch up on.

But Akira’s gray eyes are unguarded here, among his friends, and so Ryuji sees it. That split-second sadness before it’s wrapped up and hidden away again. He says, “There’s not much to talk about,” but just that says enough.

Because Makoto and Goro dart a glance at each other that speaks volumes, and Haru’s expression crumbles a bit. Behind the counter, Sojiro sighs like he’s just aged ten years.

Ryuji looks at Akira, the most magnetic guy he knows, the guy who made about nine thousand friends in Tokyo within a calendar year, and wonders how on earth he could have spent the last five months in his hometown and come back without anything to talk about.

He thinks of Akira’s parents watching their son’s reunion with his friends from the front door. He thinks of the weird looks from his neighbors. He thinks, for the first time, how weird it was that Akira was leaving for the whole spring holiday and there was no one there to tell him goodbye.

“Hey,” Ryuji says, when they’re walking back to the train station. “Was it okay?”

Because he’s worried and he doesn’t know if he should be or not. He hates the possibility that he should be.

“It was okay,” Akira replies. Morgana’s in his arms, rather than on his shoulder or in his bag, and maybe that’s clue enough as to how he’s feeling. “It just wasn’t home anymore. I was gone for a year, and there were a lot of rumors. I wasn’t the person my parents thought I would be. I didn’t-- keep my head down. I don’t know. I just don’t belong there like I did.”

Morgana says, “You know where you belong, Joker.” It sounds like an old conversation repeating itself, but it makes Akira smile.

Ryuji bumps shoulders with him and says, “Their loss, man. You just keep doing you, and screw ‘em if they don’t like it.” It doesn’t feel like enough. “You deserve to be happy,” he adds, and that feels a little better.

Akira’s smile stretches into a shit-eating grin. “Is that a confession?”

“I take it back. You’re the worst person I know.”

So they end up trying to push each other into traffic, but it still feels good.

Time crawls until suddenly it starts to sprint, and before Ryuji knows it Akira is standing by the cafe door with a couple bags at his feet.

“I have three times as much stuff as I came here with,” he complains, but Ryuji stayed over at Sojiro’s place last night and watched Akira pack every memento with care and affection. He’s not fooled by this act for a second.

“Shut up and give me another hug,” Ann orders. Akira shuts up and gives her another hug. It breaks whatever fragile barrier was keeping the rest of them back, and they converge upon him in a loving horde.

“You're sure we can’t drive you?” Goro asks quietly.

“I stayed like three days longer than I was supposed to,” Akira replies, somewhat muffled against Yusuke’s shoulder. “If you try to drive me, you’ll all either be late for your first day of school or exhausted. I’ll be okay on the bus.”

Futaba’s eyes have been red all morning and she’s starting to cry again, clutching at Akira’s jacket when he wraps his arms around her for the fourth time.

“Come visit on the weekends,” she insists. “I’ll pay for your tickets.”

“We’ll all chip in,” Makoto replies, and it says a lot that she doesn't tell him to worry about his homework instead.

“Iwai said he’d drive Kaoru out to see me,” Akira says carefully. He sounds hopeful. “I know you all think he’s scary, but he’d probably be happy to take a couple of you, too.”

“None of us think he’s scary,” Ann lies. “Where do you get these dumb ideas?”

“Futaba and I will stop by,” Sojiro promises gruffly. “And I’ll bring along whichever hooligan asks first.”

It’s a goodbye that extends almost to the point of Akira missing his bus. Ryuji offers to walk him to the station, and Akira smiles at him and tells him it’s okay. Morgana is wrapped around his neck when he shoulders his bags, purring loud enough to be heard above the ring of the bell at the front door.

Ryuji wonders if Akira needs the solitude now to get used to the idea of being alone again for the rest of the year. His fists clench and he has to steel himself not to reach out and grab him and somehow make him stay. There's a moment that passes between them-- a long look, one that's just for the two of them in this crowded cafe, one that feels stolen in front of the rest of their friends-- and then it's gone.

Akira says, “See you,” like it doesn’t cost him anything to say it, and then he’s gone, too.

"Akira went home?" Mishima says by way of greeting, their first day back in school. Ryuji, slumped bonelessly over his desk, doesn't bother lifting his head and mumbles something affirmative. Mishima leans against his neighbor's desk with a sigh. "It's not the same without him around here. I miss that stupid thing he does with his pencil."

Ryuji smiles against his sleeve. "The spinny thing? He does it with his phone, too. He's such a nerd."

"If he's a nerd, I don't even want to think about what that makes me," Mishima says cheerfully. He's mostly outgrown the self-deprecation that used to follow him around like a gloomy cloud, and it makes him a much more likable guy. "It's hard to believe a person like that spent a whole year single."

"It ain't that hard to believe," Ryuji says defensively. "We were busy as hell last year, case you forgot."

"Oh, for sure," their self-proclaimed publicist is quick to concede. "But I mean-- Ann told me she and Shiho are finally dating. So they must have found time."

The annoying detective tendencies are back in force, Ryuji thinks but manages not to say. Something about this conversation is making his prickly temper sit up and take notice. He props himself up an elbow and mutters, "Where you goin' with this?"

"Nowhere, I guess?" Mishima scratches the back of his head. "Just-- you guys were all really close, y'know? I think if Akira was going to have feelings for anyone, it'd be one of you."

"He'd have told me," Ryuji dismisses it easily. "He tells me everything."

Mishima excepts this with a nod, and heads back to his own class when the lunch break ends. Halfway through English, Ryuji props up his workbook and pulls out his phone.

His chat with Akira is still open from earlier that morning, and the last text Akira sent was an extreme close-up of Morgana mid-yowl, captioned "alarm clock." It made Ryuji smile when he woke up to it, and it makes him smile now. He taps out a reply, keeping one eye on his teacher.  

skull 💀 at 1:42pm You know you can tell me anything right?

Almost immediately, a little bubble pops up that indicates Akira is typing, even though he's in the middle of class, too.  

✨JOKER✨ at 1:42pm I tell you everything

Ryuji grins. He thought so. If Akira had a crush or a secret girlfriend, Ryuji would know. He'd be the first to know.

He says as much to Ann when they're walking to the hangout spot after school, and she rolls her eyes so hard he's distantly surprised she doesn't sprain something.

"You are so dumb," she says, but she throws an arm around him as she says it. "I'm praying for you."

Nearly a month goes by, and late on a Tuesday night Ryuji is startled awake by the raucous ring of his phone. He rolls over and gropes for it, nearly falling out of bed in the process, and swipes to answer as quick as he can so it doesn't wake up his mom in the next room.

"Whazzit," he mumbles, rubbing his eyes.

"You talk to this idiot!" Morgana's voice yowls at him from the receiver. It's enough of a shock to wake Ryuji straight the hell up.

"Mona? Did you call me? How did-- you don't have hands."

There's a scuffle and a distant, hushed disagreement, and then Akira is there. "Sorry, Ryuji. Go back to sleep."

"Hey, no." Ryuji sits up, forcing his mind to focus. "How many times did I call you in the middle of the night last year? It's cool, man, what's up?"

There's a pause long enough that he starts to think he won't get an answer, and then Akira mutters, "Had a fight with my parents."

Something in the pit of Ryuji's chest goes painfully tight. He violently dashes thoughts of his own father away. "Wanna talk about it?"

Morgana insists yes you do! from somewhere on the other end of the phone call, which means Akira is definitely thinking about deflecting. Considering the entire phone call was coerced, Ryuji shouldn't be surprised. But it does kind of make him feel sad.

"It's stupid," Akira finally says. There's wind on his side of the call, creating a soft crackle of white noise against the speaker. He must be outside somewhere. "They don't think I should move back to Tokyo when I graduate. They're trying to get me into the university dad went to. It's-- if I went there I'd never see you. I'd have to fly out, or spend two days on a train, and I can't-- I don't want-- "

His words are beginning to run together, the way Futaba's does when she's panicking. Ryuji's heart is beating a frantic tattoo against his chest, because it's close to three AM and he's not equipped to deal with this, he never knows what to say.

The last time Akira sounded this bad was the night they brought down Shido's palace. The girls were getting in Ryuji's face, terrified at how close they thought they'd come to losing him, and Akira snapped at them to stand down. His voice was almost unfamiliar and his gray eyes were so big and hurt and scared, and he didn't say anything else, as though for all his charm and wit he couldn't say anything else. Ryuji had simply leaned in the rest of the way and hugged him, and Akira hugged him back just as hard, and they never really brought it up again.

Ryuji isn't there to pull him into an embrace this time, and he can't bear the thought of leaving Akira alone even for as long as it would take to call Haru or Goro, so he reaches for the right words.

"You don't have to do anything you don't wanna do," he says slowly. "I know they're your parents, but they're not your only family. Frankly, you got a scary number of people in your corner. They started a riot for you last year, dude. You're not-- you're never in this alone. Not ever. Even if it was just you and me, we'd make it. It's okay to freak out and be scared, but I swear to god, you're gonna be fine."

Akira's breath is shaky, and he doesn't answer for a long moment. Somewhere behind him is the muted ambiance of night-time traffic, and his footsteps crunching through gravel. Ryuji sits in his warm bedroom and wishes he could pull Akira through the phone and wrap him up in the blanket he always steals when he sleeps over and make him watch stupid videos on Ryuji's phone until the last sharp edge of this bad night is smoothed away into peaceful sleep.

But he can't do that. They don't have magic anymore. All he can do is sit here on the phone like an idiot while his best friend is hurting miles and miles away.

"You and me," Akira says suddenly, like he's found a way out of the pit and he's grasping at the first rung of the ladder.

"You and me," Ryuji reaffirms without a second of doubt. "Hell, Akira. Look at it this way. Even if you move to the other side of the world, you're just gonna have to find an apartment big enough to fit everybody who's gonna move with you."

That draws out a muffled laugh, and it sounds a little watery, but his voice is so much warmer than it was. "I'll keep that in mind."

"You better." Ryuji can feel his heart start to settle, can hear Morgana purring from Akira's end of the call, and thinks, somehow, he didn't fuck this up. "Go home, you loser. You're not a Phantom Thief anymore and you have class in the morning."

"Ouch," Akira says, but he's smiling as he says it. "I'm going. Goodnight, Ryu."

Ryuji says goodbye and hangs up the phone, and gets a text before he has a chance to minimize the call log.

✨JOKER✨ at 3:13am thank you

He scoffs, mostly to ignore how damn pleased he feels, and starts looking up train schedules. There's a two-day weekend coming up, and he's got a great idea. Yusuke would call it inspired.

The noise Akira makes when he sees Ryuji in front of his school is worth changing lines twice and standing for the first half of the entire trip. He runs down the rest of the steps, nimbly weaving through the crowd of his fellow students, and slams into Ryuji at a hundred miles an hour. Ryuji laughs and catches him in both arms, squeezing hard enough to bruise and using the momentum to swing around in a few giddy circles.

"What are you doing here?" Akira demands. He looks so ruffled, his glasses slipping down his nose and his curls all tossed around, that Ryuji can't bring himself to let go right away.

"Well, gee, I dunno." Ryuji rolls his eyes. "It's not like I have any best friends in the area I wanted to visit or anything."

They're attracting a lot of attention, Ryuji realizes. He looks around and meets a few stares dead-on, daring them to say a word. Whether it's his bleached hair or the piercings in his ear or the rumors that supposedly followed Akira around since he came home, no one steps up to Ryuji's silent challenge. Everyone just averts their eyes and moves on, talking in whispers.

"Jesus, do they think you're in the mob or something?" Ryuji mutters as they turn to leave. "A guy like you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Akira's voice is mock-indignant, Joker's cultured leer. "I'll have you know I used to run a very successful organized crime ring."

They get a few more wide-eyed looks at that, three schoolgirls who look alarmed to have overheard them, and Ryuji's mouth is working as he desperately tries not to give in to a grin. "Keep your voice down, man. One of these punks is gonna rat you out, and I'll have to bring the whole gang out here to rough 'em up."

That clears the sidewalk fast. Akira's shoulders are shaking, a hand shoved against his mouth to keep the laughter in. Morgana says, "You guys are the worst. This isn't gonna help Akira's reputation at all."

"Who cares?" Ryuji says, draping a shameless arm around Akira's shoulders, just so everyone who sees them gets the right idea. "He's not gonna be here much longer. Once he graduates he's comin' back home, and everyone there already knows he's a danger to society. He won't have a reputation to worry about."

Akira grins, sideways and silly in a way that digs right through Ryuji's heart like it's got an express pass. He's warm against Ryuji's side, lined up against him like they're two pieces of a matching set, and it's just like every single summer day they had to leave behind.

"Snacks," Akira says, pointing out the conbini on the street corner.

"Lemme check into my room at the inn first," Ryuji says, waving the bag at his side for emphasis. "Then you can show me all your favorite places to sneak off to at three AM."

Something sort of strange happens to Akira's expression. Ryuji would almost call it disappointment. "You're staying at an inn?"

"It's a surprise visit, dude. That means you didn't have time to convince your parents to let one of your hooligan friends stay over." He rolls his eyes and gives Akira a nudge that almost trips him off the curb. "I'm not going to tell all our friends you're a bad host because I didn't get to sleep at your house."

Akira sulks for a moment, because he's a big baby, and then says, "Is the inn cat-friendly?"

"You think Haru's gonna book me a room my best friend can't bring his cat chaperone into? Please. Obviously you're staying there with me, idiot, she reserved it for two."

"Like a staycation!" says Morgana, who picks up the strangest things from all the conversations he listens in on. In a rare show of affection, he jumps from Akira's shoulder to Ryuji's, tail swishing in anticipation. "This'll be fun!"

It is fun, but it has nothing to do with the town.

Akira's hangout spots are quiet little nooks and forgotten rooftop corners, places where he obviously goes to be alone. There's a batting cage that's a lot bigger than the one in Yongenjaya, but Akira walks right by it, waving his hands as he tells a story about a grizzled old shopkeeper he made friends with recently.

"Her name's Miss Ito. She made a grown man cry yesterday because she didn't like how he was talking to his kids," Akira says gleefully. "She's kind of my hero."

"Let me guess, you're gonna convince her to give you a job," Ryuji says dryly. His friend shoots him a flashbang smile that's answer enough.

Akira is balancing on the hand rail as they walk, lining up each neat step without wobbling. Morgana is threading through his feet to try to trip him up, and Akira seems to enjoy the additional challenge.

"If you fall on your ass, I'm taking a picture and sending it to the group chat," Ryuji tells him firmly. "I won't try to catch you at all."

"You'll catch me," Akira says with total confidence, pretending to list giddily to one side. "You're a gentleman."

Ryuji kind of wants to push him off now, actually. He does reach up to take one of Akira's hands, giving him a tug back down to earth. Akira doesn't jump down, but he also doesn't let go, and Ryuji maybe doesn't try his absolute hardest to yank his hand away. There's a group of kids their age at the end of the street, casually leaned against a low wall. They don't make a move or say anything smart, they just stop talking to watch Akira and Ryuji go by.

A small, cowardly part of Ryuji wants to drop Akira's hand and go pick a fight like he's got something to prove. The bigger part of him really ismore concerned with Akira slipping and busting a tooth out on the rail, and so he holds on and keeps pace with Akira's steady progress.

"You're gonna get a ticket or something," Ryuji tries next. "Small town cops are the worst."

"I find it hard to believe you know anything about small town cops," comes the cheerful rejoinder. "City boy."

"Definitely not catching you," Ryuji grumbles, but they both know it for a lie.

That night, the rest of their friends realize where Ryuji is, and there's a storm of messages in the group chat that mostly boil down to "how DARE you leave us out, we're gonna kick your ass Skull." Somehow Haru, co-conspirator, is left blameless. Akira, the traitor, giggles and screenshots his favorite texts to save in the photo album on his phone labeled "RECEIPTS." Because he's actually literally the worst person in the world.

Morgana is out exploring the rest of the inn, and probably begging scraps off other patrons with his big blue eyes, so Ryuji and Akira have the room to themselves. They have a mountain of junk food between them, and a pile of DVDs from the rental store, but two movies in and they're both starting to flag. Ryuji can blame his long commute; Akira's just lazy. How people like Mishima think he has his act together is a mystery.

"Which closet are the futons in?" he yawns, wandering along behind Ryuji as they search for bedding. "Oh, here they-- are."

There it is, anyway. Ryuji pulls out the single futon and they both stand there and look at it for a moment. Haru did this, Ryuji thinks at once. Then guilt creeps along. No, she wouldn't. Not Haru.

"Let's just go down to the front and ask for another bed," Ryuji says, rubbing the back of his head.

Akira glances at the clock, and Ryuji reluctantly follows suit. It's late, and the inn is a privately-owned place, run by a mom and her daughter. Ryuji doesn't want to wake them up over a few blankets any more than Akira does.

"It's okay," Akira says, "I'll just come back in the morning."

"What? No." Ryuji spreads out his arms, as though to block Akira's exit. "That's stupid. We share a bed every time you sleep over at my apartment. We can share one here."

For a brief, fleeting moment, something very fragile darts across Akira's expression. He hesitates, his fingers curled into loose fists, uncharacteristically vulnerable for the space of about two seconds.

And then he relaxes with a smile that's as familiar to Ryuji as his own name, and everything goes right back to normal.

"Just don't hog all the blankets."

"Oh, that's rich, coming from you."

They leave the window open for Morgana, and turn out the overhead light, and leave the TV on with the volume turned down low as they crawl under the duvet. The screen throws flickering shadows across the room, the darkness in the corners stretching and shrinking with every new scene, and somehow it makes the room feel smaller, makes everything feel closer and more intimate and oddly comfortable.

Ryuji finds himself watching the colors as they wash over Akira's face. His glasses are folded by the pillow, and his eyes are impossibly dark. There's a curl of hair hanging over one of his eyes, and Ryuji moves before he realizes he's doing it, brushing careful fingers across Akira's forehead to tuck the stray curl out of the way.

Akira shivers beneath the touch, but he doesn't pull his eyes away from the movie.

"'Night," Ryuji murmurs, halfway asleep already.

"Yeah," Akira whispers. His voice is strangely thick. "’Night."

The rest of the weekend vanishes in what feels like the blink of an eye. The innkeeper was so embarrassed about forgetting the second futon that first night that she tries to give them a discount for their whole stay, but Akira talks her out of it.

"No harm done," he said with that winning smile. "It was just one night."

Ryuji groans as he hauls his bag down onto a bench at the station. "I can't believe you're sending me home with all the extra food."

"You're actually complaining about that?" Akira says incredulously. "You won't be when you actually have snacks in your house for the next two days."

"Shut up," Ryuji says intelligently, and then opens his arms for a hug. "Your turn to visit next."

Akira smiles and slips into his arms like he belongs there. They linger together for a long minute, until the platform starts getting a little too crowded, and then Akira reluctantly pulls away.

"Thanks for coming," he says softly. "I know you only did it because I worried you. It means a lot."

Ryuji is not going to let Akira make him cry after the awesome weekend they just had. He shoves his hands in his pockets and says, "You keep saying thanks, but you got nothin' to thank me for. I'd do more than this for you, easy. A thousand times more. And I want to. You don't have to say thanks, not when I want to."

Akira hitches Morgana's bag up a little higher on his shoulder, and hitches up a lopsided smile sort of unlike the one he was wearing a few seconds ago. "Text me," he says, drawing away. "See you."

Morgana mutters something that sounds like "You're both idiots," and Akira doesn't answer him. Ryuji watches him go until he can't see them anymore, and then he sits down by his bag to wait for the train. His heart feels like it's somewhere near his feet, as heavy as concrete.

His phone chimes, and he pulls it out, happy for the distraction.

👽 at 5:46pm soooo how'd it go???

skull 💀 at 5:47pm anytime you show interest in what i'm doing i feel real fear

👽 at 5:47pm that's very wise.

👽 at 5:47pm but seriously, how'd it go

skull 💀 at 5:48pm it was cool. he showed me around town and stuff. and the inn was great, i gotta thank haru again

👽 at 5:48pm the inn was great?? how great??? DETAILS

But Ryuji's not paying much attention to his phone anymore. He's thinking of the inn, now that Futaba brought it up in her roundabout way, and their first night there. It was easy to dismiss at the time, but he's thinking about it, now-- the way Akira looked at him, and the unguarded gray of his eyes, and the two seconds they stood there with a distance between them that Ryuji had never noticed before.

The way he looked in the half-light, his face inches away from Ryuji's, soft lips pressed together, eyes trained safely on the television screen. The way he trembled under Ryuji's hand, and how close he was, close enough to--

Oh.

Abruptly, Ryuji's on his feet. His phone is chiming again but he ignores it, cramming it into his pocket and snatching his bag off the bench. He makes tracks through the station, up the street, and stops dead at the second crossroad, not sure which direction to run in.

"Fuck," Ryuji mutters. His heart is racing, and he's afraid to stop moving, because reason might catch up to him and make him turn around. There's-- something just ahead of him. Something important. He just has to reach out and grab it, but he's two seconds from understanding, two seconds too slow.

"S'cuse me," a soft voice says behind him. He turns to find a girl about his age, with short dark hair and a baseball jacket. She's got a catcher's mitt in her hand and a pleasant smile on her face. "You're Sakamoto, aren't you?"

He blinks, taken aback. "Uh, yeah. How'd you-- "

"Kurusu talks about you all the time," she says. Her voice is a little brighter. "I'm glad I finally got to meet you. I knew I’d see you around eventually.”

Somehow, it's like the final piece he's been missing. Somehow, it explains all the curious looks they've been getting, walking through town hand-in-hand. Somehow, he's missed it every single goddamn step of the way here.

"I think I've been an idiot," he confesses to this person he doesn't know. She laughs. She's got the wrong idea, but also kind of the right one.

"Luckily, I think you'd have to do a whole lot worse than that for him to wanna break up. He's kind of stupidly in love with you, y'know."

She's happy to give him directions. Akira's house isn't far, and the black and white cat sitting on the low wall just ahead is a dead giveaway.

"Mona!" Ryuji shouts, causing a few neighbors to look over and the cat to give a wild start. "Tell Akira to get his ass out here!"

Morgana disappears up to the front of the house immediately, and a second later the door swings open and Akira tumbles out. His eyes are lined with red, and Ryuji is not going to think about that, because it's his own stupid fault why.

He throws his bag down at the gate and stomps the last few feet between them.

"You tell me everything?" he says scathingly.

"Mostly everything," Akira replies. He looks stunned, like he can't believe this conversation is happening. Like he's daring to hope it means what he wants it to mean, but there's no way. Because Ryuji has been so clueless for so long it's a miracle Akira still has any hope left. "Almost everything."

"How long were you gonna let me hurt you?" Ryuji demands. There's something white-hot in his throat, in his heart, in the spaces behind his eyes. He can't stand that he hurt Akira, that he was hurting him without even knowing that's what he was doing.

He thinks of all those afternoons lamenting about a girlfriend, dragging Akira along when he and Mishima tried to score dates, giving him a Valentine's Day chocolate he didn't even mean. Akira, quiet and commiserating and supportive, while his crush complained about being unlucky in love from the seat right next to his.

"You never hurt me," Akira says firmly. "Don't be stupid. You can't change how you feel."

Ryuji grabs him by the shoulders and gives him one solid shake. He's stupid, but Akira's stupid, too, because it's obvious. "You're my best friend, Akira. I've loved you this whole goddamn time. I dunno if it's love like yours, but it's fucking there. You don't see me crawling into bed with Yusuke, do you?"

Akira laughs, but it's a choked little gasp of a noise. His hands come up to Ryuji's wrists, holding him where he's holding Akira. He says, "Well, there was that one time right after Yusuke's birthday-- "

"Oh my god, shut up," Ryuji blusters, and drags him in for a kiss. It's the most effective way anyone has ever made Akira stop talking. He's still and shocked for a moment, and then he melts right there under Ryuji's hands, and then he tilts his head and kisses back, and oh.

This is why people get all stupid over this stuff.

This is why they make movies about it.

This is what they could have been doing for months.

Akira makes an appreciative noise when Ryuji's grip tightens around his waist. His hands are curled in the front of Ryuji's shirt, and he's shivering again, like he just can't get warm. So Ryuji pulls him a little closer, holds him a little tighter, and thinks he'll have to thank Futaba for that brief conversation on that platform--

And then a sudden realization slams him out of his honeyed thoughts: "I missed my train."

Akira leans against him and laughs like it's going out of style.

"Joker, this is serious!"

"Miss Ito will give you a ride," his best friend says, eyes shining. "I may have, uh, mentioned you to her. She's gonna give you the best shovel talk you've ever heard. You'll probably cry."

"Well, I'm glad I have that to look forward to."

Akira's mother is glaring from the doorway, and a few passing teens are hooting good-naturedly at their display, and apparently a terrifying old woman is going to threaten Ryuji with bodily harm if he even looks at Akira wrong for the entirety of the very long ride back home....

But Akira's gray eyes are dancing and his smile is brilliant and he's altogether the most beautiful thing Ryuji's ever been able to call his, so it's a pretty fair trade.

Ryuji kind of hates that it took him this long to catch up, but he's here now. And they've got the rest of their lives together to figure it out.

[re-cut-off]

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[theholytudor]

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Many dependable companies only hire licensed technicians, so of which you may be certain your residence is getting the deepest clean feasible. The home, the young children and adults would just about all be untarnished!

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When you eep your own personal home well, you will find those people that will learn anybody searching for from and therefore they will will love visiting anyone. At times you can definitely find that you have so quite a lot of things with your home, the majority of which often you have a tendency even demand. It is very crucial in order to keep home neat and completely free of viruses. You may be shocked how delightful cleaning the home may get. A well kept household may present you that experience particularly if it is the particular sole real estate you very own Low self esteem can be extremely traumatizing. Empty houses in addition to buildings aren't really clear whatsoever, we lack the true eye-sight to find out and about what's going on presently there!

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Several companies bring in various portions of folks for each job. The cleaning organization is amongst the most lucrative companies around. So, let us discuss ten factors you ought for you to think about when you're seeking to employ a washing service company. When anyone provide clean-up services, discover more than one strategy to establish fees. No matter if you would like in order to employ a cleaning in order to assist you with a new one-off attempt, a new annually spring clean up, or maybe some thing on a more standard basis, there are several things a person have to inquire regarding in advance of making a alternative. There are numerous different techniques to charge regarding house cleaning services since there are methods to clear. Most cleaning firms employ a level rate for regular customers. If if you're around the watch for some sort of Portland maidservant service next you've visit the excellent spot!

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Just make sure to clear out the pads routinely as dirty exercise mats give money to the mess. Perfectly, it's also advisable to help dust them twice every week. Use popular water within the event the material permits. Frequently, there are helpings of the house which have been rarely used and may well call for deep washing. Oh yeah, and even when you do live throughout a greater metropolitan area together with pay a compact extra regarding your cleaning solutions, just remember that , it is always polite to idea your washing lady if you're pleased with the services offered. In case you know how big is typically the home, the degree associated with clutter as well as number regarding rooms there are to scrub, you understand approximately how many several hours that may take you to attain the business enterprise done, and that means you can properly find out how very much to fee. Cleaning house windows can receive the greatest of us because it is incredibly tricky in order to receive them streak-free. Infestation can come in your home from any moment, whether your house can be immaculately clean or definitely not, the bug does not really have any personal preference, so that that's the reason this is forced to take added measures. They can show up in anyone's property, clear or definitely not, though the greatest way of monitoring infestations in a clean location. Be sure to speak with your insurance agent to learn if or even not you will find virtually any particular requirements within your homeowner's or renter's insurance policies policy that you want for you to abide by, specifically if occur to be thinking of choosing a independent builder.

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[tsgnorthwestarkansas]

A Day in the Life with Molly Rawn of Experience Fayetteville

Molly Rawn is involved in a little bit of everything that happens in Fayetteville. That’s because she is Executive Director of Experience Fayetteville, the organization behind the convention and visitors bureau of the city, along with Fayetteville Town Center and the historic Clinton House Museum. Molly has been our go-to Fayetteville events guru for many years, and we always wondered how she knew so much about the city and region. Her secret? A packed schedule full of meetings with just about everybody, and an amazing team to support her. Scroll down to read the play-by-play of a day in the life of Molly Rawn.

6:30am || Like everyone else, my mornings are hectic. My day begins with making lunches for my three kids, and hopefully making myself look presentable. Plus, we have a dog, a cat and a pet rabbit to feed before we head out the door in a hurry for morning drop off! I drop my oldest son, Collier, at the Junior High school and my husband, Jeremy, usually takes Miller and Opal to the elementary school. This school year, we are dropping off at three different schools, so I’m sure things will get even more hectic.

8:00am || Today I don’t have meetings until mid morning, so I get to indulge in my favorite morning ritual. I head over to Arsaga’s Church & Center. I love their toast so much and I call it “Toastagas.” I also tell the people who work there if you don’t see me for two weeks, then someone needs to call the police. I order a black coffee and a vegan toast, which has roasted peppers and chickpeas, so it’s packed with protein. (I will say that while my mind orders the vegan toast—and I do love it—my soul orders the heavenly OMG Ashley, which has almond butter, bananas and caramelized sugar.) I love to take some time before heading to the office to read through my long list of emails, respond to the ones that came in over night and send new ones out with my toast and my coffee.

8:30am || Today I get into the office a little later, because I had my time at Arsaga’s to catch up on emails. I’m so glad, because I won’t have time to sit and look at my inbox again for a while. What I love about my job is that it’s different every day. I spend a lot of my time out in the community having meetings. I come into the office, say hi to my team, look at my calendar for the day, and then head right out the door again.

9:00am || I head across the street for my monthly meeting with the mayor. City Hall is right across the street from our office, which is convenient. During our meeting, we talk about all we are doing with advertising and promotion, and ways that we can help the city we all love.

10:00am || I head back to the office for a meeting about bringing Cyclocross events to Fayetteville. We will be hosting a 2020 international cyclocross event, followed by the Cyclocross World Championships in 2022. The 2022 event is projected to draw crowds of 15,000 people which presents a huge opportunity for Fayetteville hotels and tourism in general. But, we have a lot of work to do to prepare.

12:00pm || As much as I would love to go out to lunch on The Square, today I eat right at my desk while I work. It’s a bad habit. I really encourage my team to walk away from their desks for an hour, get some lunch or some exercise, and come back feeling refreshed. Last week, I had such a special treat at lunch. My husband and I met up at one of our favorites, the Indian restaurant Khana Grill. It was so nice to be together without the kids, and it reminded me that we should make the effort to put a regular lunch date on our calendars.

2:00pm || In the afternoon, our team meets. Today, I meet with Angie, who runs The Clinton House Museum. This is a historic home on the University of Arkansas campus that we operate. The home has a lot of history, and it was also the home of President Bill Clinton and Secretary Hillary Clinton, and they were even married there! Angie and I talked about History Happy Hour, a program she  runs where we partner with a local brewery and host a happy hour with beer and good conversation about local history.

3:30pm || I hop on the phone with The Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism to share with them what Fayetteville has in store in the months ahead. We have so many amazing happenings and events in store!

5:00pm || After work is when I get really busy. Like most parents, I spend the late afternoon hours juggling kid activities. Most days, I am at some sort of event for my kids, either gymnastics, piano, basketball or boy scouts. Sometimes there will be multiple events in one day, so we will do a lot of logistical maneuvering to be where we all need to be!

7:00pm || It’s Wednesday, my favorite day of the week for dinner, because I don’t cook or clean. We try to do a dinner out as a family every Wednesday night. Tonight we were at Woodstone Pizza in uptown Fayetteville, one of our favorites. I love it because if I’m not in the mood for pizza they have an amazing roasted cauliflower dish. We all leave happy!

Experience Fayetteville mural by artist Olivia Trimble; Enjoy Local mural by artist Jason Jones

[golittlesleepwalker-blog1]

A Secret Weapon for How Do Professionals Clean a House

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What the In-Crowd Won't Tell You About How Do Professionals Clean a House

Assign yourself a husband and wife several hours, or perhaps a good day, to scrub what ever section of the house you have resolved to tackle. There's currently a more rapidly way to wash your home, plus if you desire to study all of them, it's far better to find the tips from an individual who knows the proper suggests to clear away a home. With some advice and even tricks, it is possible for you to study how to clean the home like a professional in virtually no time. No one wants to reside in a sloppy property. A good clean and really clear home is extremely critical regarding several factors. On typically the flip side, a fresh house will encourage persons to always wish for you to go to your place. Immediately, you will have some sort of clean home to transfer right into.

The Characteristics of How Do Professionals Clean a House

If you would likely like to carry out anything, through building a property to help building a company, you should work hard. While undertaking the fact that deep clean, include a when to try to make certain your home is safe. Whether you're transferring right into a fresh house in addition to be able to cleaning someone else's dust or easily cleansing your own personal home in addition in order to your own personal dust, you would likely surely prefer to use this best products and tools it's feasible to discover.

Choosing How Do Professionals Clean a House

Numerous trustworthy companies only seek the services of accredited technicians, so that you may be reassured your residence is receiving the deepest clean possible. The home, the youngsters plus adults would most be squeaky clean!

How to Choose How Do Professionals Clean a House

In the event you eep your current home well, one can find those who else will learn a couple of things from and therefore that they will love visiting you. At times you can definitely find of which you have so quite a lot of things with your property or home, the majority of which in turn you no longer even call for. It is very essential to keep your home neat and totally free of microbes. You may be surprised how delightful cleaning your house may get. A well kept house may present you that experience especially if it is this sole house you unique Low self esteem can be extremely traumatizing. Empty houses together with buildings aren't really empty whatsoever, we lack the true eye-sight to find out what's going on right now there!

New Questions About How Do Professionals Clean a House

Giving up cigarettes cleaning your house, you will still probably find themselves desire to get things accomplished rapidly. Give the sage a number of mins to set right up a good smoke just before you start out cleaning your new house. Begin your checklist my making a really simple bunch of things a person would love to obtain within your residence. A good house is often a location where a person belong. Picture you're finding the home from the space you're developing a room in which you would like to call home.

How Do Professionals Clean a House - Is it a Scam?

Nearly all of corporations comprehend the value of keeping up a social networking presence, nevertheless definitely not everybody can afford to bring in the full-time social networking administrator. Often businesses are material to work with remote control freelance writers, which means that you can most likely work from any spot in the globe! Home-Based Businesses for Off-line Activity When there are unrestricted techniques to begin a web business from home, there usually are lots of ideas to get a household organization you will be able to begin offline too.

How Do Professionals Clean a House Can Be Fun for Everyone

When you have a business to complete the particular maid services throughout Mis Angeles, you can easily settle back and relax. This companies also offer teaching to their workers on the subject of the best way to wash various things getting modern day equipment. A clean-up service provider may seem like a good luxury. You are able to be able to call for a expert cleansing company that can take care of the work of cleaning for your own benefit. Evaluate your per year cleaning price range to typically the price of professional products, and you may possibly be surprised to uncover that a cleaning service organization will be surprisingly reasonably priced.

Choosing How Do Professionals Clean a House

At this point, acquiring hired the cleaning solutions, a person can be sure anyone have the absolute best. Employing a professional clean-up assistance may well look like the lavish expense. Employing a good business cleaning service frees up your time thus it's simple to acquire your life back. It's definitely possible that the services decide to take things in their own palms to guard their land from Russian influence. Your home cleaning services are just the very best and have the lot to offer an individual.

What You Should Do About How Do Professionals Clean a House Beginning in the Next 20 Minutes

With hectic schedules and individual obligations, cleaning is often the very last thing you will like to do from the final outcome of the incredibly long minute. Have a new peek at one of a kind web-sites, read reviews, check costs and pick the ideal one according to your own cleansing requirements. As a consequence, you obtain often the ideal cleaning options. The best way to tackle annual washing and organizing chores is always to choose a particular calendar month through the year for each one endeavor. The very first step inside fixing house cleaning ought to be to earn a home cleansing checklist. Cleaning done with a normal basis in typically the house can continue to keep the items and surface types maintained.  

What Should a Cleaning Lady Clean - Overview

The very last thing that you might want to do is employ a good cleaning lady of which doesn't appear honest. Throughout summary, you'll find a good maidservant may by simply basically going through your neighborhood grouped ads. Possessing the cleanup lady doesn't need to be like the previous nights where they come and get any time they will make sure you, interrupting you as you may function at home or maybe any time you're trying to relax. Bear in mind that the lady is not really a maid, so you might easily have to put out quite a few extra income if anyone are expecting her to achieve the laundry and cooking performed. The very first action to do when contemplating choosing a cleaning lady is usually to request references generated coming from friends and family, co-workers and family. Cleaning ladies are in fact around high demand due to help the busy plans almost all of us keep. Last but not least, the particular cleaning lady possesses to be somebody the fact that you truly feel secure dealing with.

The Benefits of What Should a Cleaning Lady Clean

Different firms bring in various quantities of individuals for each job. Often the cleaning business enterprise is among the most profitable companies around. So, listed here are eight issues you ought in order to think about when you're seeking out to employ a cleanup service company. When a person provide clean-up services, there is more than just one approach to establish fees. No matter if you would like to be able to employ a cleaning service to assist you with a good one-off attempt, a good on the market spring wash, or perhaps a little something on a more regular basis, there are numerous things anyone have to inquire regarding prior to making a choices. There are several assorted techniques to charge with regard to house cleaning services due to the fact there are ways to fresh. Most cleaning corporations use a level rate with regard to regular customers. If you're within the watch for some sort of Portland maidservant service then you've visit the great spot!

The Ultimate What Should a Cleaning Lady Clean Trick

If you're home right now and your residence will be filthy and nobody is coming to clean that in one hour, in that case you need to deal. In the event that you would like to be able to not currently have somebody in your house for time at one time, an individual might want to assume about acquiring multiple people come each and every visit which often leads me for the affirmative aspects of having numerous cleansing agents with the very same time. Then you will be set in that place regarding no less in comparison with a couple of months! You need to carry out the fact that in 1 living room at the second. Be particular to read up in this techniques that a person may be cleansing your own personal bathroom wrong, too. You may think that your toilet is usually the dirtiest thing inside your residence. When some sort of home cleaner offers certainly not serviced your home in advance of, there might be the extra fee. Any heavy cleaning will have to be held off right until 7 to help ten nights have handed. There are several factors that ought to become considered together with cleaning following the pest handle therapies.

What Should a Cleaning Lady Clean Secrets That No One Else Knows About

Just simply make sure to clear out the mats frequently as dirty doormats give to the mess. Ultimately, it's also advisable to help dust them twice once a week. Use very hot water in the affair the material allows. Frequently, there are parts of the house which are rarely used and may call for deep washing. Wow, and even any time you do live within a bigger metropolitan spot plus pay a little extra regarding your cleaning solutions, don't forget that it is always respectful to suggestion your clean-up lady if you're happy with the services offered. When you know the length of the particular home, the degree associated with clutter as well as the number connected with rooms there are to completely clean, you understand roughly exactly how many hours it will take you to acquire the organization done, and the fact that means you can sufficiently find out how much to cost. Cleaning glass windows can receive the ideal of us because that is really tricky for you to receive them streak-free. Bug can come in your own home on any minute, whether your house can be immaculately clean or definitely not, the particular infestation does not really have any desire, so that that's the reason the idea is required to take included measures. They might show upwards in anyone's residence, clear or certainly not, even so the finest way of monitoring infestations in a clean region. Be sure to speak with your own personal insurance agent to find out if as well as not you can find almost any particular requirements within your homeowner's or renter's insurance plan that you want to follow, specially if you're thinking of selecting an independent builder.

The Appeal of What Should a Cleaning Lady Clean

If you may have a new checklist given by your business, an individual can use our own in order to discover how thorough your present cleaning company is. Which can be the reason we produced this particular super handy guidelines that will help you keep on major of how often you need to bust out and about your cleaners and acquire to operate but there happen to be some exceptions to stay in mind. Also, answerability is out the home window when there is more than 1 person. So you've made the decision to employ a property cleanser. Level of experience of typically the cleaning lady In case you seek the services of a new professional which has some sort of decade of knowledge and is aware of the particulars of clean-up homes, you should expect to pay somewhat more than in case you have someone clean your current home who will be just starting. She (my super) named again together with said anyone don't need to pay out the full sum you could cover the four weeks instead in addition to I'll permit her clean your entrance. Know what is going to be able to take place if the employment they informed you'd get 5 hours actually will take 15.

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Big Family Minimalism

This is a guest post from my friend Jillian. It dawned on me, recently, that I don’t think I’ve ever had a guest post about family. Jillian is changing that in a BIG and meaningful way.

I never searched out minimalism. Rather, I stumbled upon it first as a type of survival tool. Our story is a bit of a winding and twisting journey. But our minimalism story starts 3.5 years ago, while I was sitting in a job interview and honestly killing it. The interviewers were over the moon happy to hire me on the spot, but I was distracted. I was trying to hold focus on the interview, but my phone was exploding with text messages and missed calls.

See, while I was interviewing my heart out, a 5-year-old boy with big hazel eyes had just been dropped off at our house by a social worker. He had been in foster care for a while and had disrupted from the last 5 homes. (This happens when foster parents or the birth family aren’t able to meet the child’s needs and a new family has to be found.) The social worker was rather confident we couldn’t handle him either. I have soft eyes and a sweet smile that hides the depth of my love, tenacity, and gumption. She mentioned, almost offhandedly, he also had two little sisters. No other family had been able to keep them together and the “state” didn’t want to attempt to place them together again. I just smiled my sweet smile and said, “Well, we aren’t every other family. When you are ready, we are ready for anything.”

It was lie. No one is ever fully ready. His little sisters moved in a few months later. I quit my job. I lived at the end of my rope for the next year.

Having four little kids at home is a lot (6, 5, 2 and 1). Just that alone. But it wasn’t just that. There were 12 appointments a week of various meetings, therapies, and with professionals. There were difficult visits with birth parents. There were court dates and a rotating door of overworked social workers. There were lawyers, judges, and court-appointed advocates. There was the uncertainty of not knowing what the future held for these kids I loved so much.

Plus, there were these sweet kids. They had seen so much trauma and neglect in their short lives that every behaviour was broken. I had the skill, knowledge, tools, and love that was needed. But I was exhausted. Like lay on the floor at night after I tucked them in and cry silent, hot tears exhausted. Until their nightmares started. Every one-to-two hours during the night for 3 years.

It’s all too much. A life at the end of our rope.

We were all at the ends of our rope. While it was challenging to be the ringleader of this circus, it wasn’t any easier for my kids. The two-year-old had lived with 5 different families before us. She called me and her birth mom, mama. They had to be dragged to appointments and meeting after meeting. They had their own trauma and no skills or words to express what they were feeling.

Just getting them ready for the twice-weekly visits with birth parents would nearly break us. They were excited, terrified, overwhelmed, full of dread, happy, conflicted: all at the same time. So they hit each other, melted down, took off their clothes, bit each other, screamed, hid and lost their coats. It was like dressing a whole litter of pissed off kittens into costumes and taking their picture. I would arrive to drop the kids off at the visit only to be criticized, belittled or ignored by the birth family. I would smile my sweet smile then go cry alone in my mini-van.

The foster care process isn’t easy or fun for anyone—not foster parents, not kids and not birth families. They lived in a constant state of anxiety not knowing if they would be with us for the next birthday, or at Christmas, or when school starts. No one knew.

So minimalism found us.

I imagine most people start with minimalism with their stuff. Decluttering and all. Maybe they read an awesome blog, or hear a podcast, and think “I SHOULD get rid of some of this stuff!”

I needed it in every area of my life, all at once. I dubbed 2015 the year of “Easier, not harder”. That was my only litmus test. Is this easier or harder?

I stopped wearing color because I didn’t have the time or skill to coordinate outfits.

I said no, and opted out of most of my commitments that were, in fact, optional.

I pulled my kids from sports.

I ate the same breakfast every single day.

I told all my kids teachers we weren’t doing any homework. ANY. No signing reading charts, no math worksheets, no flashcards. We aren’t doing it. I’m not signing it. Honestly, I’m not even going to look at it. I was so thankful for what the teachers were doing at school, but I couldn’t add “teacher” to my list of things to squeeze into our evenings.

I had to set boundaries with professionals. “No, I can’t change our appointment time every single week. Either keep our set time, or we skip it.” With 12 appointments on the calendar, having them all shift by 30 minutes or 2 hours IS a big deal.

I had to learn minimalism in my relationships. Most people were incredibly supportive, encouraging, and really understood the importance of what we were doing. And some people . . . didn’t. I didn’t have any leftover emotional energy to hear, “Why are you doing this? Why don’t you just give them back? The system is so broken, you shouldn’t have to put up with this. It’s fine if you want those kids in your family, but even if you adopt them, it doesn’t mean they are part of our family.”

I started owning the fact that I live in a real human body that needs food, water, exercise, and sleep. I started to accommodate those seemingly unreasonable demands of my non-robot body.

Bit by bit, we were doing better. Not just surviving with our nose barely above the waves, but almost flourishing.

Then in the same week in June 2015: We were officially asked to adopt our kids, and we found out we were pregnant.

Enter minimalism, level ninja.

I’ll admit, I had a bit of a mommy meltdown when I found out we were pregnant. Sure, we had spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on fertility treatments over the years. Sure, we had tried for 7 years. But now? Adding a baby definitely didn’t fall into my “easier, not harder” motto.

We had been shopping for a bigger house. We were a family of 6 in 1,650 cozy square feet. A bigger house seemed to make sense. Every single person who came to our house echoed the words, “So when are you moving to a bigger place?” like it was the chorus line in a Disney movie.

But the saying “a baby changes everything” is true.

Turns out, we didn’t want more and bigger. Our entire life already felt “more and bigger”. We wanted less. Actually, we all needed less.

Less clutter. Less cleaning. Less overwhelm. Less hectic.  Less appointments.

We needed margin for the right kind of more. More engagement. More quiet. More stories and cuddles. More adventure. More travel. More time in the garden. More focused time. More creativity.

More stuff and more space weren’t going to give us any of that.

We donated 50% of the kid’s toys, and decided to only keep 3 out at a time to play with. And I saw the kids settle in. Instead of the anxiety, overwhelm, fighting, and frustration they felt when confronted with a massive heap of toys, they just played. Slowly, carefully, thoughtfully with one toy. There was no cleaning up, correcting, and prompting at the end of the night. Each child set one toy on a shelf and it was over. That one simple change freed up a mountain of emotional and relational energy.

I made it a mission to touch every item in our house. I would ask a few questions. Is this a “hard-working” item, or is it “lazy”? Because we didn’t have space for lazy items. Our home couldn’t be a storage unit for barely used items. I would ask, “If I didn’t already own this and saw it at a yard sale for $5 would I buy it instantly, and with joy?” Because if it doesn’t add $5 of value, it doesn’t deserve a place in our home.

Minimalism is an act of faith at first. We paired our life down—appointments, relationships, classes, sports, commitments, stuff—with no guarantee of a better outcome. There was no promise in writing that what we would gain would be better than what we were letting go of.

You pull your kid from a sport and just hope. Hope that the extra two hours a week somehow adds as much value as the sport was adding. It takes a bit a faith to hold space. To create margin and not rush to fill it up again.

We got rid of “perfectly good” toys. (Ok, and a crap ton of McDonald’s happy meal toys.) It’s an act of faith to say, “We are going to donate all these ‘perfectly good’ toys that at one point we actually spent money on,” and just hope that “less is more”.

To the parents.

I kind of just want to give you a hug, at this point. I’ve raised six kids (my oldest passed away). I have to say that motherhood, in the thick of it, is the hardest and most beautiful part of my life. It has been my defining work.

So, if you feel like your kids will kick, scream, and cry themselves into a puddle, if there were less toys, less classes, less sports, less commitments. Remember this: If you are maxed out, they are maxed out.

My very normal kids hate picking up toys. Actually, I think they hated it even more than I did. They hated being corralled into the van. They hated the rush and my grumpy “Where in the world are your shoes!? Why are they in the bathtub? Can anyone answer me this!?! WAIT!?! Why are you covered in purple paint? OMG, I don’t even care. Come on. We are SO late. Please, please, please just put your shoes on.”

Despite what it seems, minimalism is a perfect fit for families. Here is how we started this journey with the toys. (Because no one likes living in a house that looks like a daycare crossed paths with a tornado!) I had this conversation with my four kids who at the time were 3-8:

“I think I haven’t been doing a good job. I think maybe I’ve made it too hard for you guys to pick up your room. The job is simply too hard. And that’s my fault. So here’s what we will do. You pick up as many toys as you can handle. Then I will come clean up the rest. I’ll put them away on this special toy shelf. Anything you can take care of, just pick up and you can keep that in your room. The only rule is, only keep as much as you can handle. If it gets to be too much for you to take care of on your own, I’ll come put it away.”

They managed to clean/organize about 5 toys. All the rest I took out of their room and put on a “toy shelf” that they could swap toys (if their room was clean).

It also made it simple to see what toys we could sneak away in the dark of night. If they hadn’t picked the toy off toy shelf in a few months, obviously it wasn’t a high-value toy. (If your 4-year-old willingly parts with toys, I salute you, dear Jedi Master! We are SO not there yet!)

For parents who are terrified to start, this is about an easy of a sell as you can get. And my kids loved it. No shame, no blame. Just me making their life easier. No more cleaning, no more tears over not being able to organize their room.

Big family minimalism.

When you walk into our home, “minimalism” might not be your first thought. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is white (even stuff that was white when we bought it!). There is a pile of shoes and coats and winter boots by the door. It’s loud with laughing, playing, and often someone is crying. I’m probably making chocolate chips pancakes. I’ll make you a cup of tea, but a toddler will interrupt our conversation every 90 seconds.

But if you look closely, you’ll see a family flourishing with less. Happy, healthy and whole. Our days are full of reading, writing, folding laundry, hiking, gardening, and travel. We eat real food, at a table. We have adventures on the weekend and a game night each Friday. We get enough sleep and have real conversations.

Sometimes I let myself wonder what our alternate life would look like. What path our three adopted kids might have taken if they didn’t end up together with us? But I don’t stay there long. Because my 90 seconds is up and a 4-year-old is peppering me with questions again (that I have already answered 12 times today).

Jillian drinks tea daily and writes about intentional lifestyle design, mini-retirements and creating financial freedom over at Montana Money Adventures. She lives in Montana, right by Glacier National Park, with her husband, 5 kids, and dog: cheesy taco. 

Big Family Minimalism posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ

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Why Not . . . Gradually Prep for La Rentrée?

La Rentrée, meaning “at the return”, however understood in France to mean the return to school and work as we knew it before the summer holiday.

In 2012, I shared 12 ways to celebrate La Rentrée, and today I’d like to share with you 11 tasks to do now to gradually ease you into the shift of our schedules that is now only a few weeks away. After all, for some, the structure that fall provides is missed, and for others it is well . . . not missed at all.  Either way, September is coming and when it does arrive, why not make it as extraordinary as you can?

1. Ask yourself this question, “What has made my life more enjoyable these past 2-3 months?” or “What routines/habits have made my life easier, healthier and brought more contentment these past 2-3 months?”

Over this past summer, one of the new habits I have incorporated into my life is assessing each Sunday the goals I am working towards. I have set aside a Moleskine journal solely for this task, and each Sunday I share what took place with regards to each goal, my thoughts and feelings about it, make suggestions for corrections or applaud my progress. It keeps me on track even when I may have gone off in the wrong direction, and it offers an opportunity for a quick correction.

Often when our schedule changes with the summer months, we unconsciously change our ways of living, ways that we love (or not so much as it will depend upon the individual). However, I have a feeling, you have a few habits that you will miss when the fall season begins. Ask yourself, and be honest, is there any way you can bring them into your year-round routine? Can or should you shift your priorities if it indeed is bringing so much joy and satisfaction into your life?  Remember, simply because we used to do something one way or do something at all, doesn’t mean we cannot stop and incorporate something more fulfilling. In fact, we should.

2. Make appointments now

Just as our schedules change, so do the schedules of our doctors, dentists, aestheticians and other professionals we wish to make appointments with. While their schedules may have been more limited, but as well, with more availability during the summer months, often that changes in the fall. So why not be proactive, and design your schedule with what works best for you by making those appointments early?

3. Assess your wardrobe

On September 1st TSLL Fall Seasonal Shopping Guide will be posted here on the blog (no longer do you need to subscribe to receive it!). Full of splurge and save items when it comes to the new trends as well as many items I have hand-picked for your fall capsule wardrobe, knowing exactly what you need makes the shopping easier and brings fewer regrets. (Have a look at the 2017 Spring Shopping Guide here.)

~Shop TSLL Capsule Wardrobe Boutique here to view the essentials for each season.

4. Plan/Schedule a getaway for fall or winter to look forward to

It may sound odd to be planning your next getaway when you have just returned from your summer holiday, but doing so will most likely save you money, but it will also give you something to look forward to. Even if you do enjoy your job and the schedule you are reentering, a getaway is a special treat to dream about. After all, looking forward to something is half the fun.

5. Order or Check-Out/Put on Hold Reading Material to Enjoy

As I mentioned yesterday, one of the books I am looking forward to reading this fall is a book about Julia Child, another is Judith Jones’ memoir, and with a handful of anticipated releases this fall (here, here and here), I can’t wait for the time to snuggle in when it’s raining out or I’ve wrapped up my to-do list, and dive in. A true simple luxury. And since now I have the time to peruse and put them on my wish list, I can rest-assured I will always have reading material to enjoy.

6. Assess your budget

A simple question to ask yourself, how is your budget working? Based on your answer, look how to improve, enhance or stay on track. Have a look at these posts from TSLL archives on Money to find small tips and tweaks to strengthen your financial foundation. One specific money habit I tend to each fall is to increase the amount I deduct for my tax sheltered annuity (TSA) from my monthly paycheck. It’s a simple step before I see the increase in my take-home due to the salary bump that happens each year as a teacher.

7. Assess your beauty and health routines

How is your skin? Do you want to schedule a seasonal facial to restore and nourish your visage? Are you running low on any of the necessary products you use in your routines? How is your work-out clothing looking? Does everything fit well (shoes, bras, leggings, etc.?) Paying attention to the glue that keeps us thriving in our everydays is vital, and simply by being preventative, we can ensure a seamless transition into the busier schedule that awaits us.

8. Spruce up outdoor spaces

Over the past weekend, I refreshed my pots and weeded my yard, adding a few new plants to replace those that didn’t make it through the severe heat we had recently. As well, I was reminded that now is a wonderful time to visit your local nursery. While the selection is limited, if you can find what you are looking for (especially perennials), you are likely to pay a fraction of the regular price. I was tickled to find two beautiful deep green hostas (normally about $16-20 dollars for a 1/2 gallon pot; I paid $5!). Needless to say I was doing a happy dance.

As well as the plants, sweep the porch and plump or wash the outdoor furniture as we still have nearly two months (here in Oregon) of outdoor leisure time to savor, and why not make your outdoor space as inviting as possible?

9. Clean the refrigerator/that closet (you know the one)/carpets/etc.

One of the simplest luxuries for me when it comes to food and daily routines is peering into a clean refrigerator. Oh my goodness, I cannot help but smile immediately. However, when our schedules become hectic or less flexible, we often forget about that tupperware container in the back corner. Why not clear out anything that is no longer edible, any jars that are nearly empty and combine, and do a quick wash down of the appliance that we all look most closely at each and every day?

As well, if you have carpets or seasonal cleaning that needs to be done, now is a wonderful time to complete these tasks. Stepping into a deeply cleaned home is a wonderful feeling as it invites you to relax and rest when you cross the threshold after a productive, but perhaps busy day.

10. Automate and Sync what you can

One app (well, it’s not actually an app for the phones yet, but on my desktop) is Calendly. I love the ability to sync all of my tech devices that hold my calendar of events so that when I schedule with potential podcast guests or another blog event, my Calendly knows when I am and am not available based on what I have entered into my iCalendar. This is just one example of simplifying in such a way to avoid unnecessary stress or a need to rebook because we’ve forgotten about a task we have to attend to.

11. Stock your Épicerie

As I was taking my lunch break today, I was reminded that I needed to restock my favorite balsamic vinegar which reminded me that having our épicerie stocked and ready for whatever meal we’d prefer to cook is a simple thing to do now to enhance the seamless flow of a day that has little time to wiggle. Here is a post to remind you of the necessities to have on hand.

As well, automate any payments, appointments, recordings of your favorite television shows, etc. so that all you have to do is live your life and make it all that much easier to be present exactly where you are at any given moment.

It was the luxurious rainfall that occurred this past Sunday and temperatures in the 70s on Monday that brought to my attention, fall is quite near. And I must admit, I became a little bit excited. But I became all the more excited when I began to realize that most of what I needed in the fall was gradually falling into place: carpet cleaned (check); necessary beauty products reordered (check);  dogs’ grooming appointments made (check).

Planning is a powerful tool to welcome the ability to be present and to fully engage with the life you have created for yourself and those you love. Why not, do what you can now and then enjoy how it all unfolds?

~SIMILAR POSTS FROM THE ARCHIVES YOU MIGHT ENJOY:

~September Back-to-School/Work Checklist

~Why Not . . . Savor the Sunset of Summer?

~10 Things I Love About Fall

Why Not . . . Gradually Prep for La Rentrée? published first on http://ift.tt/2pewpEF

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Big Family Minimalism

This is a guest post from my friend Jillian. It dawned on me, recently, that I don’t think I’ve ever had a guest post about family. Jillian is changing that in a BIG and meaningful way.

I never searched out minimalism. Rather, I stumbled upon it first as a type of survival tool. Our story is a bit of a winding and twisting journey. But our minimalism story starts 3.5 years ago, while I was sitting in a job interview and honestly killing it. The interviewers were over the moon happy to hire me on the spot, but I was distracted. I was trying to hold focus on the interview, but my phone was exploding with text messages and missed calls.

See, while I was interviewing my heart out, a 5-year-old boy with big hazel eyes had just been dropped off at our house by a social worker. He had been in foster care for a while and had disrupted from the last 5 homes. (This happens when foster parents or the birth family aren’t able to meet the child’s needs and a new family has to be found.) The social worker was rather confident we couldn’t handle him either. I have soft eyes and a sweet smile that hides the depth of my love, tenacity, and gumption. She mentioned, almost offhandedly, he also had two little sisters. No other family had been able to keep them together and the “state” didn’t want to attempt to place them together again. I just smiled my sweet smile and said, “Well, we aren’t every other family. When you are ready, we are ready for anything.”

It was lie. No one is ever fully ready. His little sisters moved in a few months later. I quit my job. I lived at the end of my rope for the next year.

Having four little kids at home is a lot (6, 5, 2 and 1). Just that alone. But it wasn’t just that. There were 12 appointments a week of various meetings, therapies, and with professionals. There were difficult visits with birth parents. There were court dates and a rotating door of overworked social workers. There were lawyers, judges, and court-appointed advocates. There was the uncertainty of not knowing what the future held for these kids I loved so much.

Plus, there were these sweet kids. They had seen so much trauma and neglect in their short lives that every behaviour was broken. I had the skill, knowledge, tools, and love that was needed. But I was exhausted. Like lay on the floor at night after I tucked them in and cry silent, hot tears exhausted. Until their nightmares started. Every one-to-two hours during the night for 3 years.

It’s all too much. A life at the end of our rope.

We were all at the ends of our rope. While it was challenging to be the ringleader of this circus, it wasn’t any easier for my kids. The two-year-old had lived with 5 different families before us. She called me and her birth mom, mama. They had to be dragged to appointments and meeting after meeting. They had their own trauma and no skills or words to express what they were feeling.

Just getting them ready for the twice-weekly visits with birth parents would nearly break us. They were excited, terrified, overwhelmed, full of dread, happy, conflicted: all at the same time. So they hit each other, melted down, took off their clothes, bit each other, screamed, hid and lost their coats. It was like dressing a whole litter of pissed off kittens into costumes and taking their picture. I would arrive to drop the kids off at the visit only to be criticized, belittled or ignored by the birth family. I would smile my sweet smile then go cry alone in my mini-van.

The foster care process isn’t easy or fun for anyone—not foster parents, not kids and not birth families. They lived in a constant state of anxiety not knowing if they would be with us for the next birthday, or at Christmas, or when school starts. No one knew.

So minimalism found us.

I imagine most people start with minimalism with their stuff. Decluttering and all. Maybe they need an awesome blog, or hear a podcast, and think “I SHOULD get rid of some of this stuff!”

I needed it in every area of my life, all at once. I dubbed 2015 the year of “Easier, not harder”. That was my only litmus test. Is this easier or harder?

I stopped wearing color because I didn’t have the time or skill to coordinate outfits.

I said no, and opted out of most of my commitments that were, in fact, optional.

I pulled my kids from sports.

I ate the same breakfast every single day.

I told all my kids teachers we weren’t doing any homework. ANY. No signing reading charts, no math worksheets, no flashcards. We aren’t doing it. I’m not signing it. Honestly, I’m not even going to look at it. I was so thankful for what the teachers were doing at school, but I couldn’t add “teacher” to my list of things to squeeze into our evenings.

I had to set boundaries with professionals. “No, I can’t change our appointment time every single week. Either keep our set time, or we skip it.” With 12 appointments on the calendar, having them all shift by 30 minutes or 2 hours IS a big deal.

I had to learn minimalism in my relationships. Most people were incredibly supportive, encouraging, and really understood the importance of what we were doing. And some people . . . didn’t. I didn’t have any leftover emotional energy to hear, “Why are you doing this? Why don’t you just give them back? The system is so broken, you shouldn’t have to put up with this. It’s fine if you want those kids in your family, but even if you adopt them, it doesn’t mean they are part of our family.”

I started owning the fact that I live in a real human body that needs food, water, exercise, and sleep. I started to accommodate those seemingly unreasonable demands of my non-robot body.

Bit by bit, we were doing better. Not just surviving with our nose barely above the waves, but almost flourishing.

Then in the same week in June 2015: We were officially asked to adopt our kids, and we found out we were pregnant.

Enter minimalism, level ninja.

I’ll admit, I had a bit of a mommy meltdown when I found out we were pregnant. Sure, we had spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on fertility treatments over the years. Sure, we had tried for 7 years. But now? Adding a baby definitely didn’t fall into my “easier, not harder” motto.

We had been shopping for a bigger house. We were a family of 6 in 1,650 cozy square feet. A bigger house seemed to make sense. Every single person who came to our house echoed the words, “So when are you moving to a bigger place?” like it was the chorus line in a Disney movie.

But the saying “a baby changes everything” is true.

Turns out, we didn’t want more and bigger. Our entire life already felt “more and bigger”. We wanted less. Actually, we all needed less.

Less clutter. Less cleaning. Less overwhelm. Less hectic.  Less appointments.

We needed margin for the right kind of more. More engagement. More quiet. More stories and cuddles. More adventure. More travel. More time in the garden. More focused time. More creativity.

More stuff and more space weren’t going to give us any of that.

We donated 50% of the kid’s toys, and decided to only keep 3 out at a time to play with. And I saw the kids settle in. Instead of the anxiety, overwhelm, fighting, and frustration they felt when confronted with a massive heap of toys, they just played. Slowly, carefully, thoughtfully with one toy. There was no cleaning up, correcting, and promoting at the end of the night. Each child set one toy on a shelf and it was over. That one simple change freed up a mountain of emotional and relational energy.

I made it a mission to touch every item in our house. I would ask a few questions. Is this a “hard-working” item, or is it “lazy”? Because we didn’t have space for lazy items. Our home couldn’t be a storage unit for barely used items. I would ask, “If I didn’t already own this and saw it at a yard sale for $5 would I buy it instantly, and with joy?” Because if it doesn’t add $5 of value, it doesn’t deserve a place in our home.

Minimalism is an act of faith at first. We paired our life down—appointments, relationships, classes, sports, commitments, stuff—with no guarantee of a better outcome. There was no promise in writing that what we would gain would be better than what we were letting go of.

You pull your kid from a sport and just hope. Hope that the extra two hours a week somehow adds as much value as the sport was adding. It takes a bit a faith to hold space. To create margin and not rush to fill it up again.

We got rid of “perfectly good” toys. (Ok, and a crap ton of McDonald’s happy meal toys.) It’s an act of faith to say, “We are going to donate all these ‘perfectly good’ toys that at one point we actually spent money on,” and just hope that “less is more”.

To the parents.

I kind of just want to give you a hug, at this point. I’ve raised six kids (my oldest passed away). I have to say that motherhood, in the thick of it, is the hardest and most beautiful part of my life. It has been my defining work.

So, if you feel like your kids will kick, scream, and cry themselves into a puddle, if there were less toys, less classes, less sports, less commitments. Remember this: If you are maxed out, they are maxed out.

My very normal kids hate picking up toys. Actually, I think they hated it even more than I did. They hated being corralled into the van. They hated the rush and my grumpy “Where in the world are your shoes!? Why are they in the bathtub? Can anyone answer me this!?! WAIT!?! Why are you covered in purple paint? OMG, I don’t even care. Come on. We are SO late. Please, please, please just put your shoes on.”

Despite what it seems, minimalism is a perfect fit for families. Here is how we started this journey with the toys. (Because no one likes living in a house that looks like a daycare crossed paths with a tornado!) I had this conversation with my four kids who at the time were 3-8:

“I think I haven’t been doing a good job. I think maybe I’ve made it too hard for you guys to pick up your room. The job is simply too hard. And that’s my fault. So here’s what we will do. You pick up as many toys as you can handle. Then I will come clean up the rest. I’ll put them away on this special toy shelf. Anything you can take care of, just pick up and you can keep that in your room. The only rule is, only keep as much as you can handle. If it gets to be too much for you to take care of on your own, I’ll come put it away.”

They managed to clean/organize about 5 toys. All the rest I took out of their room and put on a “toy shelf” that they could swap toys (if their room was clean).

It also made it simple to see what toys we could sneak away in the dark of night. If they hadn’t picked the toy off toy shelf in a few months, obviously it wasn’t a high-value toy. (If your 4-year-old willingly parts with toys, I salute you, dear Jedi Master! We are SO not there yet!)

For parents who are terrified to start, this is about an easy of a sell as you can get. And my kids loved it. No shame, no blame. Just me making their life easier. No more cleaning, no more tears over not being able to organize their room.

Big family minimalism.

When you walk into our home, “minimalism” might not be your first thought. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is white (even stuff that was white when we bought it!). There is a pile of shoes and coats and winter boots by the door. It’s loud with laughing, playing, and often someone is crying. I’m probably making chocolate chips pancakes. I’ll make you a cup of tea, but a toddler will interrupt our conversation every 90 seconds.

But if you look closely, you’ll see a family flourishing with less. Happy, healthy and whole. Our days are full of reading, writing, folding laundry, hiking, gardening, and travel. We eat real food, at a table. We have adventures on the weekend and a game night each Friday. We get enough sleep and have real conversations.

Sometimes I let myself wonder what our alternate life would look like. What path our three adopted kids might have taken if they didn’t end up together with us? But I don’t stay there long. Because my 90 seconds is up and a 4-year-old is peppering me with questions again (that I have already answered 12 times today).

Jillian drinks tea daily and writes about intentional lifestyle design, mini-retirements and creating financial freedom over at Montana Money Adventures. She lives in Montana, right by Glacier National Park, with her husband, 5 kids, and dog: cheesy taco. 

Big Family Minimalism posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ

[fesahaawit]

Big Family Minimalism

This is a guest post from my friend Jillian. It dawned on me, recently, that I don’t think I’ve ever had a guest post about family. Jillian is changing that in a BIG and meaningful way.

I never searched out minimalism. Rather, I stumbled upon it first as a type of survival tool. Our story is a bit of a winding and twisting journey. But our minimalism story starts 3.5 years ago, while I was sitting in a job interview and honestly killing it. The interviewers were over the moon happy to hire me on the spot, but I was distracted. I was trying to hold focus on the interview, but my phone was exploding with text messages and missed calls.

See, while I was interviewing my heart out, a 5-year-old boy with big hazel eyes had just been dropped off at our house by a social worker. He had been in foster care for a while and had disrupted from the last 5 homes. (This happens when foster parents or the birth family aren’t able to meet the child’s needs and a new family has to be found.) The social worker was rather confident we couldn’t handle him either. I have soft eyes and a sweet smile that hides the depth of my love, tenacity, and gumption. She mentioned, almost offhandedly, he also had two little sisters. No other family had been able to keep them together and the “state” didn’t want to attempt to place them together again. I just smiled my sweet smile and said, “Well, we aren’t every other family. When you are ready, we are ready for anything.”

It was lie. No one is ever fully ready. His little sisters moved in a few months later. I quit my job. I lived at the end of my rope for the next year.

Having four little kids at home is a lot (6, 5, 2 and 1). Just that alone. But it wasn’t just that. There were 12 appointments a week of various meetings, therapies, and with professionals. There were difficult visits with birth parents. There were court dates and a rotating door of overworked social workers. There were lawyers, judges, and court-appointed advocates. There was the uncertainty of not knowing what the future held for these kids I loved so much.

Plus, there were these sweet kids. They had seen so much trauma and neglect in their short lives that every behaviour was broken. I had the skill, knowledge, tools, and love that was needed. But I was exhausted. Like lay on the floor at night after I tucked them in and cry silent, hot tears exhausted. Until their nightmares started. Every one-to-two hours during the night for 3 years.

It’s all too much. A life at the end of our rope.

We were all at the ends of our rope. While it was challenging to be the ringleader of this circus, it wasn’t any easier for my kids. The two-year-old had lived with 5 different families before us. She called me and her birth mom, mama. They had to be dragged to appointments and meeting after meeting. They had their own trauma and no skills or words to express what they were feeling.

Just getting them ready for the twice-weekly visits with birth parents would nearly break us. They were excited, terrified, overwhelmed, full of dread, happy, conflicted: all at the same time. So they hit each other, melted down, took off their clothes, bit each other, screamed, hid and lost their coats. It was like dressing a whole litter of pissed off kittens into costumes and taking their picture. I would arrive to drop the kids off at the visit only to be criticized, belittled or ignored by the birth family. I would smile my sweet smile then go cry alone in my mini-van.

The foster care process isn’t easy or fun for anyone—not foster parents, not kids and not birth families. They lived in a constant state of anxiety not knowing if they would be with us for the next birthday, or at Christmas, or when school starts. No one knew.

So minimalism found us.

I imagine most people start with minimalism with their stuff. Decluttering and all. Maybe they need an awesome blog, or hear a podcast, and think “I SHOULD get rid of some of this stuff!”

I needed it in every area of my life, all at once. I dubbed 2015 the year of “Easier, not harder”. That was my only litmus test. Is this easier or harder?

I stopped wearing color because I didn’t have the time or skill to coordinate outfits.

I said no, and opted out of most of my commitments that were, in fact, optional.

I pulled my kids from sports.

I ate the same breakfast every single day.

I told all my kids teachers we weren’t doing any homework. ANY. No signing reading charts, no math worksheets, no flashcards. We aren’t doing it. I’m not signing it. Honestly, I’m not even going to look at it. I was so thankful for what the teachers were doing at school, but I couldn’t add “teacher” to my list of things to squeeze into our evenings.

I had to set boundaries with professionals. “No, I can’t change our appointment time every single week. Either keep our set time, or we skip it.” With 12 appointments on the calendar, having them all shift by 30 minutes or 2 hours IS a big deal.

I had to learn minimalism in my relationships. Most people were incredibly supportive, encouraging, and really understood the importance of what we were doing. And some people . . . didn’t. I didn’t have any leftover emotional energy to hear, “Why are you doing this? Why don’t you just give them back? The system is so broken, you shouldn’t have to put up with this. It’s fine if you want those kids in your family, but even if you adopt them, it doesn’t mean they are part of our family.”

I started owning the fact that I live in a real human body that needs food, water, exercise, and sleep. I started to accommodate those seemingly unreasonable demands of my non-robot body.

Bit by bit, we were doing better. Not just surviving with our nose barely above the waves, but almost flourishing.

Then in the same week in June 2015: We were officially asked to adopt our kids, and we found out we were pregnant.

Enter minimalism, level ninja.

I’ll admit, I had a bit of a mommy meltdown when I found out we were pregnant. Sure, we had spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on fertility treatments over the years. Sure, we had tried for 7 years. But now? Adding a baby definitely didn’t fall into my “easier, not harder” motto.

We had been shopping for a bigger house. We were a family of 6 in 1,650 cozy square feet. A bigger house seemed to make sense. Every single person who came to our house echoed the words, “So when are you moving to a bigger place?” like it was the chorus line in a Disney movie.

But the saying “a baby changes everything” is true.

Turns out, we didn’t want more and bigger. Our entire life already felt “more and bigger”. We wanted less. Actually, we all needed less.

Less clutter. Less cleaning. Less overwhelm. Less hectic.  Less appointments.

We needed margin for the right kind of more. More engagement. More quiet. More stories and cuddles. More adventure. More travel. More time in the garden. More focused time. More creativity.

More stuff and more space weren’t going to give us any of that.

We donated 50% of the kid’s toys, and decided to only keep 3 out at a time to play with. And I saw the kids settle in. Instead of the anxiety, overwhelm, fighting, and frustration they felt when confronted with a massive heap of toys, they just played. Slowly, carefully, thoughtfully with one toy. There was no cleaning up, correcting, and promoting at the end of the night. Each child set one toy on a shelf and it was over. That one simple change freed up a mountain of emotional and relational energy.

I made it a mission to touch every item in our house. I would ask a few questions. Is this a “hard-working” item, or is it “lazy”? Because we didn’t have space for lazy items. Our home couldn’t be a storage unit for barely used items. I would ask, “If I didn’t already own this and saw it at a yard sale for $5 would I buy it instantly, and with joy?” Because if it doesn’t add $5 of value, it doesn’t deserve a place in our home.

Minimalism is an act of faith at first. We paired our life down—appointments, relationships, classes, sports, commitments, stuff—with no guarantee of a better outcome. There was no promise in writing that what we would gain would be better than what we were letting go of.

You pull your kid from a sport and just hope. Hope that the extra two hours a week somehow adds as much value as the sport was adding. It takes a bit a faith to hold space. To create margin and not rush to fill it up again.

We got rid of “perfectly good” toys. (Ok, and a crap ton of McDonald’s happy meal toys.) It’s an act of faith to say, “We are going to donate all these ‘perfectly good’ toys that at one point we actually spent money on,” and just hope that “less is more”.

To the parents.

I kind of just want to give you a hug, at this point. I’ve raised six kids (my oldest passed away). I have to say that motherhood, in the thick of it, is the hardest and most beautiful part of my life. It has been my defining work.

So, if you feel like your kids will kick, scream, and cry themselves into a puddle, if there were less toys, less classes, less sports, less commitments. Remember this: If you are maxed out, they are maxed out.

My very normal kids hate picking up toys. Actually, I think they hated it even more than I did. They hated being corralled into the van. They hated the rush and my grumpy “Where in the world are your shoes!? Why are they in the bathtub? Can anyone answer me this!?! WAIT!?! Why are you covered in purple paint? OMG, I don’t even care. Come on. We are SO late. Please, please, please just put your shoes on.”

Despite what it seems, minimalism is a perfect fit for families. Here is how we started this journey with the toys. (Because no one likes living in a house that looks like a daycare crossed paths with a tornado!) I had this conversation with my four kids who at the time were 3-8:

“I think I haven’t been doing a good job. I think maybe I’ve made it too hard for you guys to pick up your room. The job is simply too hard. And that’s my fault. So here’s what we will do. You pick up as many toys as you can handle. Then I will come clean up the rest. I’ll put them away on this special toy shelf. Anything you can take care of, just pick up and you can keep that in your room. The only rule is, only keep as much as you can handle. If it gets to be too much for you to take care of on your own, I’ll come put it away.”

They managed to clean/organize about 5 toys. All the rest I took out of their room and put on a “toy shelf” that they could swap toys (if their room was clean).

It also made it simple to see what toys we could sneak away in the dark of night. If they hadn’t picked the toy off toy shelf in a few months, obviously it wasn’t a high-value toy. (If your 4-year-old willingly parts with toys, I salute you, dear Jedi Master! We are SO not there yet!)

For parents who are terrified to start, this is about an easy of a sell as you can get. And my kids loved it. No shame, no blame. Just me making their life easier. No more cleaning, no more tears over not being able to organize their room.

Big family minimalism.

When you walk into our home, “minimalism” might not be your first thought. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is white (even stuff that was white when we bought it!). There is a pile of shoes and coats and winter boots by the door. It’s loud with laughing, playing, and often someone is crying. I’m probably making chocolate chips pancakes. I’ll make you a cup of tea, but a toddler will interrupt our conversation every 90 seconds.

But if you look closely, you’ll see a family flourishing with less. Happy, healthy and whole. Our days are full of reading, writing, folding laundry, hiking, gardening, and travel. We eat real food, at a table. We have adventures on the weekend and a game night each Friday. We get enough sleep and have real conversations.

Sometimes I let myself wonder what our alternate life would look like. What path our three adopted kids might have taken if they didn’t end up together with us? But I don’t stay there long. Because my 90 seconds is up and a 4-year-old is peppering me with questions again (that I have already answered 12 times today).

Jillian drinks tea daily and writes about intentional lifestyle design, mini-retirements and creating financial freedom over at Montana Money Adventures. She lives in Montana, right by Glacier National Park, with her husband, 5 kids, and dog: cheesy taco. 

Big Family Minimalism posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ

[fesahaawit]

Big Family Minimalism

This is a guest post from my friend Jillian. It dawned on me, recently, that I don’t think I’ve ever had a guest post about family. Jillian is changing that in a BIG and meaningful way.

I never searched out minimalism. Rather, I stumbled upon it first as a type of survival tool. Our story is a bit of a winding and twisting journey. But our minimalism story starts 3.5 years ago, while I was sitting in a job interview and honestly killing it. The interviewers were over the moon happy to hire me on the spot, but I was distracted. I was trying to hold focus on the interview, but my phone was exploding with text messages and missed calls.

See, while I was interviewing my heart out, a 5-year-old boy with big hazel eyes had just been dropped off at our house by a social worker. He had been in foster care for a while and had disrupted from the last 5 homes. (This happens when foster parents or the birth family aren’t able to meet the child’s needs and a new family has to be found.) The social worker was rather confident we couldn’t handle him either. I have soft eyes and a sweet smile that hides the depth of my love, tenacity, and gumption. She mentioned, almost offhandedly, he also had two little sisters. No other family had been able to keep them together and the “state” didn’t want to attempt to place them together again. I just smiled my sweet smile and said, “Well, we aren’t every other family. When you are ready, we are ready for anything.”

It was lie. No one is ever fully ready. His little sisters moved in a few months later. I quit my job. I lived at the end of my rope for the next year.

Having four little kids at home is a lot (6, 5, 2 and 1). Just that alone. But it wasn’t just that. There were 12 appointments a week of various meetings, therapies, and with professionals. There were difficult visits with birth parents. There were court dates and a rotating door of overworked social workers. There were lawyers, judges, and court-appointed advocates. There was the uncertainty of not knowing what the future held for these kids I loved so much.

Plus, there were these sweet kids. They had seen so much trauma and neglect in their short lives that every behaviour was broken. I had the skill, knowledge, tools, and love that was needed. But I was exhausted. Like lay on the floor at night after I tucked them in and cry silent, hot tears exhausted. Until their nightmares started. Every one-to-two hours during the night for 3 years.

It’s all too much. A life at the end of our rope.

We were all at the ends of our rope. While it was challenging to be the ringleader of this circus, it wasn’t any easier for my kids. The two-year-old had lived with 5 different families before us. She called me and her birth mom, mama. They had to be dragged to appointments and meeting after meeting. They had their own trauma and no skills or words to express what they were feeling.

Just getting them ready for the twice-weekly visits with birth parents would nearly break us. They were excited, terrified, overwhelmed, full of dread, happy, conflicted: all at the same time. So they hit each other, melted down, took off their clothes, bit each other, screamed, hid and lost their coats. It was like dressing a whole litter of pissed off kittens into costumes and taking their picture. I would arrive to drop the kids off at the visit only to be criticized, belittled or ignored by the birth family. I would smile my sweet smile then go cry alone in my mini-van.

The foster care process isn’t easy or fun for anyone—not foster parents, not kids and not birth families. They lived in a constant state of anxiety not knowing if they would be with us for the next birthday, or at Christmas, or when school starts. No one knew.

So minimalism found us.

I imagine most people start with minimalism with their stuff. Decluttering and all. Maybe they need an awesome blog, or hear a podcast, and think “I SHOULD get rid of some of this stuff!”

I needed it in every area of my life, all at once. I dubbed 2015 the year of “Easier, not harder”. That was my only litmus test. Is this easier or harder?

I stopped wearing color because I didn’t have the time or skill to coordinate outfits.

I said no, and opted out of most of my commitments that were, in fact, optional.

I pulled my kids from sports.

I ate the same breakfast every single day.

I told all my kids teachers we weren’t doing any homework. ANY. No signing reading charts, no math worksheets, no flashcards. We aren’t doing it. I’m not signing it. Honestly, I’m not even going to look at it. I was so thankful for what the teachers were doing at school, but I couldn’t add “teacher” to my list of things to squeeze into our evenings.

I had to set boundaries with professionals. “No, I can’t change our appointment time every single week. Either keep our set time, or we skip it.” With 12 appointments on the calendar, having them all shift by 30 minutes or 2 hours IS a big deal.

I had to learn minimalism in my relationships. Most people were incredibly supportive, encouraging, and really understood the importance of what we were doing. And some people . . . didn’t. I didn’t have any leftover emotional energy to hear, “Why are you doing this? Why don’t you just give them back? The system is so broken, you shouldn’t have to put up with this. It’s fine if you want those kids in your family, but even if you adopt them, it doesn’t mean they are part of our family.”

I started owning the fact that I live in a real human body that needs food, water, exercise, and sleep. I started to accommodate those seemingly unreasonable demands of my non-robot body.

Bit by bit, we were doing better. Not just surviving with our nose barely above the waves, but almost flourishing.

Then in the same week in June 2015: We were officially asked to adopt our kids, and we found out we were pregnant.

Enter minimalism, level ninja.

I’ll admit, I had a bit of a mommy meltdown when I found out we were pregnant. Sure, we had spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on fertility treatments over the years. Sure, we had tried for 7 years. But now? Adding a baby definitely didn’t fall into my “easier, not harder” motto.

We had been shopping for a bigger house. We were a family of 6 in 1,650 cozy square feet. A bigger house seemed to make sense. Every single person who came to our house echoed the words, “So when are you moving to a bigger place?” like it was the chorus line in a Disney movie.

But the saying “a baby changes everything” is true.

Turns out, we didn’t want more and bigger. Our entire life already felt “more and bigger”. We wanted less. Actually, we all needed less.

Less clutter. Less cleaning. Less overwhelm. Less hectic.  Less appointments.

We needed margin for the right kind of more. More engagement. More quiet. More stories and cuddles. More adventure. More travel. More time in the garden. More focused time. More creativity.

More stuff and more space weren’t going to give us any of that.

We donated 50% of the kid’s toys, and decided to only keep 3 out at a time to play with. And I saw the kids settle in. Instead of the anxiety, overwhelm, fighting, and frustration they felt when confronted with a massive heap of toys, they just played. Slowly, carefully, thoughtfully with one toy. There was no cleaning up, correcting, and promoting at the end of the night. Each child set one toy on a shelf and it was over. That one simple change freed up a mountain of emotional and relational energy.

I made it a mission to touch every item in our house. I would ask a few questions. Is this a “hard-working” item, or is it “lazy”? Because we didn’t have space for lazy items. Our home couldn’t be a storage unit for barely used items. I would ask, “If I didn’t already own this and saw it at a yard sale for $5 would I buy it instantly, and with joy?” Because if it doesn’t add $5 of value, it doesn’t deserve a place in our home.

Minimalism is an act of faith at first. We paired our life down—appointments, relationships, classes, sports, commitments, stuff—with no guarantee of a better outcome. There was no promise in writing that what we would gain would be better than what we were letting go of.

You pull your kid from a sport and just hope. Hope that the extra two hours a week somehow adds as much value as the sport was adding. It takes a bit a faith to hold space. To create margin and not rush to fill it up again.

We got rid of “perfectly good” toys. (Ok, and a crap ton of McDonald’s happy meal toys.) It’s an act of faith to say, “We are going to donate all these ‘perfectly good’ toys that at one point we actually spent money on,” and just hope that “less is more”.

To the parents.

I kind of just want to give you a hug, at this point. I’ve raised six kids (my oldest passed away). I have to say that motherhood, in the thick of it, is the hardest and most beautiful part of my life. It has been my defining work.

So, if you feel like your kids will kick, scream, and cry themselves into a puddle, if there were less toys, less classes, less sports, less commitments. Remember this: If you are maxed out, they are maxed out.

My very normal kids hate picking up toys. Actually, I think they hated it even more than I did. They hated being corralled into the van. They hated the rush and my grumpy “Where in the world are your shoes!? Why are they in the bathtub? Can anyone answer me this!?! WAIT!?! Why are you covered in purple paint? OMG, I don’t even care. Come on. We are SO late. Please, please, please just put your shoes on.”

Despite what it seems, minimalism is a perfect fit for families. Here is how we started this journey with the toys. (Because no one likes living in a house that looks like a daycare crossed paths with a tornado!) I had this conversation with my four kids who at the time were 3-8:

“I think I haven’t been doing a good job. I think maybe I’ve made it too hard for you guys to pick up your room. The job is simply too hard. And that’s my fault. So here’s what we will do. You pick up as many toys as you can handle. Then I will come clean up the rest. I’ll put them away on this special toy shelf. Anything you can take care of, just pick up and you can keep that in your room. The only rule is, only keep as much as you can handle. If it gets to be too much for you to take care of on your own, I’ll come put it away.”

They managed to clean/organize about 5 toys. All the rest I took out of their room and put on a “toy shelf” that they could swap toys (if their room was clean).

It also made it simple to see what toys we could sneak away in the dark of night. If they hadn’t picked the toy off toy shelf in a few months, obviously it wasn’t a high-value toy. (If your 4-year-old willingly parts with toys, I salute you, dear Jedi Master! We are SO not there yet!)

For parents who are terrified to start, this is about an easy of a sell as you can get. And my kids loved it. No shame, no blame. Just me making their life easier. No more cleaning, no more tears over not being able to organize their room.

Big family minimalism.

When you walk into our home, “minimalism” might not be your first thought. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is white (even stuff that was white when we bought it!). There is a pile of shoes and coats and winter boots by the door. It’s loud with laughing, playing, and often someone is crying. I’m probably making chocolate chips pancakes. I’ll make you a cup of tea, but a toddler will interrupt our conversation every 90 seconds.

But if you look closely, you’ll see a family flourishing with less. Happy, healthy and whole. Our days are full of reading, writing, folding laundry, hiking, gardening, and travel. We eat real food, at a table. We have adventures on the weekend and a game night each Friday. We get enough sleep and have real conversations.

Sometimes I let myself wonder what our alternate life would look like. What path our three adopted kids might have taken if they didn’t end up together with us? But I don’t stay there long. Because my 90 seconds is up and a 4-year-old is peppering me with questions again (that I have already answered 12 times today).

Jillian drinks tea daily and writes about intentional lifestyle design, mini-retirements and creating financial freedom over at Montana Money Adventures. She lives in Montana, right by Glacier National Park, with her husband, 5 kids, and dog: cheesy taco. 

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