Explore LSLuxury, Simplified

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” –William Wordsworth

Last month, I challenged myself to write a handwritten note–with proper stationary–every day to someone that I care about. In the day when text messaging, tweeting, Facebooking, pinning, emailing and, well, blogging have taken over our lives, I’d forgotten what it meant to sit down with a beautiful notecard and a pen and actually write. I wrote thank you’s, I wrote notes offering congratulations, I wrote notes wishing good luck and notes just to say hello. For all of my friends and family who have become used to seeing bills and unwanted literature when they open their mailbox, a handwritten note may have been exactly what they needed. And for me, who sometimes has a hard time expressing what I want to say in words to those that I care about, it was, in a way, cathartic.

Since starting work at Luxury Simplified, I have wondered about the definition of “luxury”. As the Merriam-Webster dictionary would define it, luxury can be a condition of abundance or great ease and comfort: sumptuous environment or something adding to pleasure or comfort but not absolutely necessary or even an indulgence in something that provides pleasure, satisfaction, or ease. In my mind, I was stuck on luxury being large homes and fancy cars, but as I asked what luxury meant to those around me at this office, it often meant more of a feeling than a physical item. It is the time that you spend with family and friends around a dinner table and it’s the words that you say and the way that you treat those around you that make life a little more luxurious.

And what happened when I opened my mailbox last night? I found a handwritten note from a dear friend and it was absolutely luxury, simplified.