Next post, I promise we will pick up where we left off last post. After all, we are staring into a closet with a whole lot of space in it. I don’t know about you, but wearing the same outfits three days in a row or being arrested for public indecency don’t exactly fit into my idea of a Champagne Life on any kind of budget. That being said, based on some emails and feedback I’ve been getting, I feel I need to address something.
I know you’re stressed. I know you’re being pulled in seventeen different ways. We have work and children and spouses and houses and parents and siblings and bills and, and, and…And it’s crazy out there. Three things I want you to remember:
1. These are suggestions. Take the ones you like. Discard the ones you don’t. Create the things I’ve missed but that matter to you. This is your Champagne Life on a Beer Budget. No one else’s. I remember once I was raving about a recipe to a woman I knew at an office. The main ingredients were peanut butter and chocolate. She asked for the recipe and said she would try it over the weekend. Monday, I asked her if she had tried it and if she had liked it. Her response was yes, she had tried it and no, she hadn’t liked it. Then she went on to say “But I really can’t stand chocolate and peanut butter combined.” Hm. Well, no. Given that you don’t like the main combination of ingredients, it makes sense you wouldn’t like the recipe. I didn’t say that, of course, but I certainly thought it. These are like chocolate and peanut butter. If you know you don’t like them, don’t take time out of your crazy, busy schedule to try them. Take time out of your crazy busy schedule to try something you do like, or at least you think you might like. And then write me or leave a comment and tell me what it is. I’m always looking for new things to incorporate into my Champagne Life.
2. You don’t have to find time for everything all at once. You don’t have to give yourself a manicure/pedicure every single Thursday and take a hot bath every night and go through your closet immediately and rid yourself of plastic grocery bags and read a new or favorite author all before the month is out. Again, if you can afford that kind of time and commitment, odds are good the Beer Budget doesn’t really apply anyway (and more power to you!). Start slow. Get one thing absorbed comfortably into your routine before you try to add something else.
3.You have to be willing to carve out the time for yourself. We find the time for the things that really matter to us. Let yourself really matter to you. Maybe it’s one small thing. Maybe it’s several small things (because that’s the whole point of this ~ they are all small things). Whichever it is, you have to make the time, just as you make the time for your other commitments. Remember, one of the very first posts here was the power bath. That mindset can see you through more suggestions than just bathing. When I was in college in Boston, one afternoon, my mother and I went to high tea at the Ritz (talk about a Champagne Life!). We saw a woman there obviously doing business. She had her folders and files and was working. Until the waiter brought her tea service to her. At that point, she stopped working, put everything aside and pulled out a book. She read and had tea and didn’t work. Her tea probably lasted all of twenty minutes. Then she packed everything up and headed back out again, most probably back to the office. But she had found herself those twenty minutes for high tea, just for herself. Make yourself as important as everything else. You’re worth it.
And that more than anything else is a Champagne Life on a Beer Budget.
Enjoy ~
~ Pauline