A Chic Paris Lockdown – Day 24 – Feeling Luxurious in Everyday Life
“Live a Life of Luxury” is the title for Day 24 in Fiona Ferris’s book, 30 Chic Days. Fiona writes about how she brainstormed a list of what she considered her dreamiest “luxurious life” features. As she looked at her list, she realized that many of them she could implement right then – she didn’t have to wait for that someday, one day winning lottery ticket! In Fiona’s experiment, she saw that time to devote to her favorite pursuits was one of her most luxurious-feeling treats. Well, we all get 24 hours (1440 minutes) in a day. Nothing more, nothing less. Fiona saw where she could modify a few of her “low-luxe” activity choices and free up more time for her much more enjoyable “high-luxe” favorites. That’s a win-win – no need for more money or any miracles involving genies and lamps! For example, Fiona found that if she turned off the TV, she felt much more happiness as she increased her time spent with her creative hobbies.
When I sat down to brainstorm my personal list of what is the “life of luxe” for me, I found that time was top on my list. Time for leisure. That wonderful sense that all my “daily upkeep” tasks (like, clean up the kitchen after breakfast, throw in a load of laundry, and do all “out of house” running around errands) are completed early in the day and I have a long, dreamy “free period” of time in front of me to do with as I please. This is a gift I can easily give myself on my free days (like right now in lockdown!) I make a prioritized list of tasks for the day with the first item being a chunk of time set aside for my “luxe” project (that’s what I labeled it.) Now I had a start time for the highest priority task and all other lower priority tasks have to fit around it. You’d be amazed at how many little tasks I can get accomplished so quickly when I have my “luxe project” calling me!
Next on the list was “freedom from chronic maintenance” tasks like hair coloring and manicures. I used to love my polished acrylic nails and how beautiful my hands looked. I also loved my very styled hair with its complicated color/highlights regime. Then, one day, it suddenly felt “too much of a muchness”. Too much time, too much money, too much mental real estate keeping track of the scheduled (and rescheduled) appointments (This iss not exactly the magnitude of problem that drives strong men to tears but I was tired of it.) It didn’t feel beautiful or luxurious, it felt like a giant drain on my time and budget. When I totaled how much I spent on my nails for one year – Yikes! My acrylic nails and every 2-3 week manicure touch-ups came out to be almost a round-trip air ticket to Paris! My total hair expenses for the year? Almost THREE round-trip tickets to Paris.) I decided to try downsizing my maintenance “footprint” and see if I was happier with my natural hair color and only the occasional trim. I also decided to quit outsourcing manicure care for a year and see how I felt. Several years later, I feel so much freer without all of it! My hair turned out to be a nice shade of white (my very dark brown hair started going white at age 19) and I feel more youthful with its ease of care. (I also get a lot of compliments on how it looks so that gives me a sense of confidence about the color change, too.) My hands don’t look quite as “photo shoot” worthy as they use to but they still look very nice and I’m much happier with doing my own hand care at whatever time and schedule suit me.
The next luxurious item on my list was beauty. You know how magazine articles of how really rich people live never show photos of dirty dishes in the sink and broken electronics piled in the corner? Well, I certainly had a large junk drawer of obsolete electronics, quite a few pieces of chipped crockery and let’s not get into the number of mismatched socks slinking about in my sock drawer. All those items did not bring to my mind the word “beauty.” I’m embarrassed to say how easy and quick it was to clean out a variety of objects that would never make anyone’s “luxe list.” I didn’t even need to replace anything – I already had plenty of perfectly fine socks, dishes and working electronics. Now, with those hangers-on gone from the house, my space looks and feels so much fresher and more beautiful.
Brainstorming a list of what would be my “millionaire lifestyle” was fun. It turned out to be a useful technique for showing me what I already had that was beautifully luxurious (yea, more gratitude!). It also showed me where I could tweak a few of my own habits to add more of that feeling of luxury to my every day. With the sudden halt of what we call “regular life” this Spring, maybe this can be a reset catalyst for us. We can use this enforced free time to see where our lives can be easily improved to more closely meet our own personal “life of luxury.”