Slow Living

Gratitude Lists: The Benefits and How To Get Started

| Eleanor

Writing gratitude lists can be a great habit to start. It’s a wonderful self care exercise that can help improve your wellbeing and mental health.

Noticing what we’re grateful for each day allows the feeling of gratitude to lead us in a more positive direction. By making just a short gratitude list, we are able to appreciate life so much more.

What is a gratitude list?

A gratitude list is where you write down everything you’re thankful for. Sit down and reflect on the positive moments that you’re grateful for.

There are many different ways to keep a gratitude list including in a notebook, on the notes app on your phone, and you can even tweet a list daily. Personally, I like to share my gratitude lists as it can help others to feel grateful for their lives too.

Gratitude lists can be done as often or as little as you like. You can incorporate them into any other part of your daily routine, or just write one as and when you get the time.

Some prefer to keep a gratitude journal where you can expand on the things you’re thankful for. This can be a great way to into depth about what you have noted on your list. Gratitude journals often come with prompts that can help you think about what to write. The prompts can be used in your gratitude lists too, but I’ll talk more about that later on in this post.

What are the benefits of writing a gratitude list?

Gratitude is strongly linked to happiness. And who doesn’t want to be happy?! Practising gratitude can help you feel more positive emotions, appreciate the little moment in your life, improve your mental health and improve the relationships we have with the people in our lives.

As well as improving our wellbeing, gratitude lists can serve as time for us to put ourselves first. By taking a few minutes out of your day to write a small gratitude list, you’ve prioritised yourself and your wellbeing.

How to get started?

This is the absolute best part; you can get started with pretty much nothing.

Depending on how you wish to keep your gratitude list, there are a few ways you can get started:

  1. On your phone – All you need is a phone and a notes app.
  2. Pen and paper – You can use a notebook or scrap paper.
  3. Social media – Tweet out your list or share it over on Instagram.

You can use this as an excuse to start a new notebook or keep it casual. Make it work for you.

Not sure what to write. Try some prompts.

I previously mentioned that gratitude journals often come with prompts. Since keeping a gratitude list is something that you can do casually, it can be hard to come up with things off the top of your head.

Here are some prompts to get you started:

  • People you’re grateful to know
  • Something you like about yourself
  • A skill you have
  • Memories that make you smile
  • Something you own that brings you joy
  • Yummy food and drink

You can write down anything that makes you feel thankful. It doesn’t have to make sense to other people as long as it does to you.

Is writing a gratitude list something you’d be interested in? Do you practise gratitude?

Do you need to be a minimalist to declutter?

| Eleanor

I’ve been decluttering a lot recently. My home was rapidly becoming a place of clutter which was negatively impacting my mental health.

My home no longer felt like my safe space and began to add to the stress of daily life. Instead of walking through the front door and feeling ready to relax, I felt like I still had so much to do because my home was in chaos.

Enough was enough, I needed to do something about it!

This is when I discovered minimalism and decluttering. I’d watched hundreds (yes hundreds) of YouTube videos all about how owning less can improve your mental health and wellbeing. A repeated theme in as lot of the videos I watched was productivity and slow living. Those are two things that I value in my life too so I figured, why not become a minimalist?

Well, I’ll tell you why; I like stuff. I enjoy collecting things, especially books and plushes. I love having physical copy of photographs to flick through. I want to be surrounded by beautiful things.

So that ruled out being a minimalist for me.

But does that mean that I couldn’t embrace decluttering into my life? Absolutely not!

Continue reading →

6 Things In Your Day-To-Day Life To Romanticise This Winter

| Eleanor

Winter can be a pretty difficult time of year for many people. The days are shorter and the weather is colder. But that doesn’t mean there are not beautiful parts of Winter too.

It can be harder to see the beauty in life during the shorter days, but that’s just even more of a reason to find joy in the small moments. We need to romanticise those little moments in life that we usually rush through. Slow down and take a second to appreciate those little, magical moments that Winter offers us.

So, here are six things that you already do or can incorporate into your daily life this winter to make things a little more lovely.

Continue reading →

A Cosy Winter Reading List

| Eleanor

Reading is one of the best cosy activities. You can curl up under a blanket, light a candle, sip a hot drink and spend hours in a fantasy world. What’s not to love about it?

Since the winter months are on their way and it’s about to be chilly, I thought it would be nice to compile a list of books that are perfect to cosy up with.

No matter what kind of books you enjoy reading, hopefully, this post will have a book that might pique your interest.

Continue reading →

Top Four Books To Read This Halloween

| Eleanor

Halloween is nearly here which can only mean one thing… it’s time to read some spooky books!

Obviously Halloween means other exciting things too like scary movies, lots of sweets and trick or treating, but the best part of it all is books, so let’s focus on that.

I’m an absolute wuss. This doesn’t change when it comes to the books I read either. But when Halloween comes around, I’m always inclined to pick up something that’s a little bit more on the creepy side than my usual book choices.

But that doesn’t mean I’m going to dive head first into the horror section.

This post will only have one true horror book. I could have gone wild and added more, but that’s just not my thing. I like a spooky book that will put me in the Halloween mood, not a book that will give me nightmares for the next year.

So, if you’re into extremely scary books, this probably isn’t the post for you and I’m sure another blogger will have written a great post more suitable for you. But if you’re into mildly creepy books, then read on..

Continue reading →

6 Creative Uses For Label Makers

| Eleanor

Since buying a Dymo Label Maker, I’ve been feeling the need to label absolutely everything. At first I was just enjoying labelling everything with what they are but then I started to wonder if the Dymo label maker (or any label maker really) had more uses.

I love to get creative so when I started to think of uses for my label maker, I wanted to think of some ideas that weren’t just labeling things. Of course, labelling things will always but fun. But sometimes, you’ve just got to get creative and try some new things.

That’s how I came up with some creative uses for a label maker.

So, here’re some ways that you can great creative with a label maker…

Continue reading →

Slow Living 101: A Beginner’s Guide To Living Slowly

| Eleanor

These days, everyone is moving fast. We live in a fast-paced world and it’s easy to get swept up in the rush of it all. This is where slow living can help.

Here’s the thing: in the long run, faster is not always better. Living too fast can lead to burnout and leave you feeling bored of life.

I’m not saying that you need to do everything in slow-motion. We still need to get things done, we just don’t want to damage out physical and mental health in the process.

Continue reading →