Issue #190: The 'Weeds, Seeds, and Buds' Method for Building a Life (and Home) Filled with the Things You Love

Simple spring cleaning.

🎥 ‘Sacramento,’ in theaters: Rickey (Michael Angarano) convinces his old best friend Glenn (Michael Cera) to go on a road trip, under the guise of scattering his father’s ashes. Similar to the dynamics between the leads in this fall’s ‘A Real Pain,’ Glenn is living as a “grown up,” with a baby on the way, while Rickey is still figuring things out. The trip creates a forced closeness, where they each have the opportunity to learn from the other. A sweet buddy comedy with a great cast!

📚 The Wildelings by Lisa Harding: Apparently, I’ve been very into stories about complicated (and unhealthy) friendships, between

Jo Piazza

’s upcoming book and this dark, academic story of Jessica and Linda, who quickly bond when they arrive at a Trinity College-like university in Dublin. Things take a turn when an older, charismatic philosophy major comes into the picture (…don’t they always?).

📺 “Dying for Sex” on Hulu: A perfect show, given this month’s ‘Plant Studies’ topic, Michelle Williams stars in this true story as Molly, whose Stage 4 cancer diagnosis inspires her to leave her sexless marriage, and explore what she’s actually into, with the freedom of knowing she’s going to die soon. Her best friend (Jenny Slate) is there as the sweet, encouraging best friend dedicated to getting Molly to both her petit mort and final end.

My own mortality has been top-of-mind for me lately, as I’ve been prepping, writing, and researching this month’s Plant Studies topic. As I’ll get into next week (!), this existential headspace is heavy, but also illuminating, and has helped me create a life far more aligned with my values. I’m closing the gap between what I say matters to me, and what I’m actually doing. Over the past few weeks, I’ve devoted much more time to building and fostering friendships, being outside, giving back to my community, and tending to my own energy and needs. Making space for these things requires pruning those that don’t serve me, like draining social plans, unnecessary projects, and even physical objects.

I love spring as an opportunity to clean and renew my environment, so that it can better support the way I want to spend my time and energy.

As we move into spring, I’ve felt a renewed sense of urgency to also prune my physical space; to get rid of the things that no longer serve me and make room for those that support this alignment. For months, I’ve wanted to reorganize my pantry and garage, two spaces that almost paralyzed me with overwhelm, but that I finally committed to tackling this weekend (!). Maybe it was the fact that I took a few breaks to buy and plant berries in the backyard, but I came to think of the organizing projects through the lens of a garden, identifying certain objects as weeds, seeds, and buds. The more I cleaned, the more I realized just how helpful the metaphor was, making the projects far more streamlined. Read on for:

• How to shape your environment to better support the life you want to be living

• Six steps for tending to your home (and life!), like a garden

• A downloadable PDF to help guide your spring cleaning project

• Examples and photos of how I applied ‘Weeds, Seeds, and Buds’ to my pantry