self care + wellness

There are lots of things you should be doing to get ready for winter (at least if you live in a place where you have an actual winter). These lists are all over the internet. They are full of tips like getting your furnace checked out by a professional, do an energy audit, and check for drafts.

Those things are essential, don’t get me wrong. But they are not on the list of things that I do to prepare myself for winter.

Many of these things are practical, some – not so much. But they are essential fall tasks to prepare me for the long Minnesota winters.

I stock up on tea and hot chocolate.

Specifically, I get the Traditional Medicals Echinacea and Gypsy Cold Care tea and any of the Sleepytime varieties. My hot chocolate of choice is the Swiss Miss in the packets. We spend my childhood drinking these, so the nostalgia factor is huge.

I dig out my boots, hats, and gloves.

I don’t have much as far as clothes go, so I don’t have to swap many things out as the seasons change, but winter gear is another story. I have a tote in the garage where I store our gloves, boots, and hats. I hang my coats on the hooks in the garage and swap out my gardening gloves for mittens.

I get the ice melt and snow shovel out of storage.

When I dig out my gloves and boots, I also dig out the snow shovel and ice melt. It is much easier to get these items before the freezing rain and heavy snows set in.

I get my car checked out.

I have my guy check out my tires and give her an ol’ once over. I also throw an old heavy sweatshirt, and an old pair of boots and some thick socks in my trunk. Just in case.

I stock up on cold and flu meds.

There is nothing worse than waking up feeling like shit and not having anything meds. I am partial to medications of the hippie variety: echinacea, elderberry, zinc, etc. I do keep the medicine cabinet stocked with the standard Night Quil variety too, for when things get bad.

I put plastic on the old windows.

As part of our remodel, we are swapping out all of our old crappy windows with new ones. We finished up the downstairs a couple of years ago, but the upstairs windows are still drafty AF. I keep those handy kits on hand and pull out my hair drier and get started.

You found out what I do to prepare for winter, but now it is your turn. What do you do to get ready for the colder months?

PS – Deliberate Unawareness for Self-Care

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. That means if you click through a link and buy something, I get a small commission and it doesn’t cost you any extra. Awesome, right?!

I was a child of the 80s and 90s, and that means my mom sat my sister and me down at the kitchen table and gave us home perms.

God, I hated perms so much.

To this day, if I am walking by a salon and I can smell the solution, I throw up in my mouth a little and shuffle briskly away.

Once I was old enough to protest the perms, I went through a phase (most of High School) where my hair was long and straight. I chopped it pretty short in college, and there was even a short time where my hair was blue.

As I have gotten older and more concerned with what I am putting on my skin (not to mention the environment at large), I have leaned toward the natural hair care. With just three simple changes, my hair is continuously shiny, soft, and thick.

And they are such simple things!

I use a natural shampoo.

A few years ago, I considered going no-poo, but the greasy transition was very, very oily, so I caved. Not long after, I was reading a blog (I wish I could remember the name of it) and she was talking about Apple Valley Natural Soap and their shampoo bars. I decided to give it a whirl and have been hooked ever since.

You can get anything from CDB Oil to body butter from Apple Valley Natural Soap. They are the best. Use my affiliate link and my coupon code (AVNSCASSIE10) to get 10% off your first order.

I don’t color my hair.

I want to be clear that I am 37 and have gray hair – a lot of it. Most of the gray is at my temples, and when I have my hair down, you can’t see it.

Some people think that I don’t color my hair because I am a hippie, that all that dye is bad for myself and for the environment (there is a reason they don’t want pregnant women to color their hair).

Others think it is because I am taking a feminist stance and am not going to let cultural norms and the patriarchy dictate how I should look and feel about myself.

Those are both great reasons, but I am going to set the record straight:

The reason I don’t color my hair now is out of sheer laziness. Good hair color is expensive, and I would much rather spend that money on, well, anything else.

I let my hair air-dry.

A few years ago a friend spent the night at my house. It was unplanned, a snowstorm rolled through, and the roads were terrible. The next morning, after showering, she asked me for a blow-drier. I handed her an ancient ConAir with a few scary spots where the plastic casing had melted that I dug out the utility room.

I shrugged, wished her luck and said the only time I used it was to shrink-wrap the plastic I put on the windows in the fall.

So, yeah. I don’t use a hair drier.

The dress code at my day job is relatively casual, so letting my hair dry naturally is not an issue. If you work at a fancier job to might not have that luxury, but if you use a microfiber towel to dry your hair, you will have to spend far less time under the drier.

I have this towel from Aquis, and it works great. I wrap my hair up in it after a shower and continue to get ready for the day. I unwrap my hair and brush it out a few minutes before leaving. My hair is usually dry by the time I get to the office.

Going natural in your beauty routines don’t have to be hard. Like most simplifying, it is more about what you don’t do than anything else.

What have you don’t to make your hair care more natural? Share it with me!

A few years ago, I was on the brink of a major burn out. There was one day I was so stressed out at work that I spent my lunch hour sitting catatonically in my car staring into space.

And it was winter. In Wisconsin.

I started taking steps right then to simplify my life.

Somethings are still a struggle. I get overwhelmed with work, and I still have that nasty urge to buy things. But I have made some steps forward. Here is what I did.

I think it is a good starting point if you are overwhelmed by life.

I say no a lot.

This one took me some time, but once I started to exercise my no muscle, it became life changing. Let me tell you something that you have heard before but need to hear again:

‘You don’t have to do things you don’t want to do.’

– me

If your family reunion sounds terrible, don’t go. If that girl’s camping weekend is not your cup of tea, just say no. It is ok. Life (and the party) will go on without you. And if your friends and family are kind and love you, they will be alright with your refusal. If not, well, see the last section.

I pared down my wardrobe.

A fashionista, I am not. I am relatively tall, and for years, it was hard to find jeans that were long enough. With that and being pretty long torso-ed also, I have a hard time finding clothes that fit.

For many years I made up for not being able to find clothes that fit well by purchasing lots of clothes that were ill-fitting. But I have found a few brands that fit me well and are made with quality materials and I stick with them. When a shirt or tank gets stretched out and weird it from the drawer into the rag pile.

I started meal planning.

When I get home from one of my 10 hour work days, my decision-making skills are pretty much down to nothing. It is a relief to look at my list and see it is already planned out for me.

Don’t even get me started on how easy it is to get groceries when you have everything all planned out. It is life changing my friends.

I set Goals and plan my days

As a goal setting junky, I set goals on a yearly and quarterly basis. I know this sounds super nerdy, but it really helps me keep moving forward. Some are work goals, some are health goals, and I always have a few home improvement goals sprinkled in.

I sit down each morning with my planner and choose the three things I need to accomplish for the day. This is pretty easy when I have a goal in mind.

I cut out toxic people and made new friends.

This one may seem a little cold, but hear me out.

We all have at least one friend that is somewhere on the toxic scale. They might complain a lot, only talk about themselves and their problems, and bail last minute on your plans.

They could be so bad they steal stuff from you, but I hope that is not the case.

No matter what kind of crappy friend they are, it is probably time you disengage. They are slowly sucking the life out of you. And you end up turning into the average of the people that you spend the most time with. So the crappy-ness is contagious.

Ditch the crappy friends and go out and find your people. It will make you so much happier.

There are many, many things you can do to simplify your life. The four ideas above are the ones that worked for me. I am curious about what you have done to simplify your life.

No really.  How are you doing this summer?

Are you relaxing on vacation? How about spending time with friends and family? Are you spending long afternoons with Bourbon Lemonades in your hammock with a book?

Or are you running around to picnics, gatherings, and playdates without enjoying any of it?  Aniouxous because we are almost halfway through the summertime and your summer bucket list is full of uncompleted tasks?  Are you feeling like a failure that the garden is dry, weedy and not producing much?

Let’s all take a deep breath.  And look at this ice cream cone.

Whatever you are doing right now is fine.  Whatever you didn’t get done this summer probably didn’t need to be done anyhow.

I just wanted to pop in here and tell you that you are doing a great job.  And you should treat yourself to an ice cream cone.

PS I am going to take next week off from posting.  Don’t be thinking I am heading out from some epic vacation or camping trip over the holiday week.  I just finished a 12-week course for work, and I need a break from computer stuff for a while!  I will be back on your screens on July 9th.  In the meantime, you can follow me on Instagram.