We both work full time jobs in other industries, but we come home at night and hustle on Semaine because it feels right. It’s work, but it feels like important work that needs to happen and we want to make happen.

Oh and conservative Alabama representatives curbing women’s rights with your ignorant, misogynistic anti-abortion laws? You just make us work harder.

In two weeks, Matt and I are traveling down to Atlanta to meet up with Cath to Semaine it up! We have a photo shoot and video shoot lined up and we’ll get to meet some of our lovely beta testers. For the past couple of months we’ve asked women to give us feedback on Semaine and we can’t wait to talk to some of them in person.

Cath and I also take our Semaine supplements and have done so for almost a year now every time we have our period. We are the first guinea pigs and always plan to be every time we make any changes to our ingredients. Our biggest wish is that Semaine will reduce pain for others like it does for us AND our second biggest wish that it encourages pharma and medical industries to sit up and listen. Women’s pain should be taken seriously and investigated – not just get shelved by a bunch of men sitting on medical boards or running drug trials.

Our next dreamiest dream is to have Semaine launched by Fall/Winter 2019 — eek that’s soon! But before the dream comes the hustle, so we hustlin’. Let us know if you have any questions as we do the hustle shuffle.

But what has been happening since 2017, you might (or might not) be asking. Life and things:

Cath is still in Atlanta, living in a lovely little rambler with her pups Toby (and her mantel was featured in Design Sponge recently — whhaaaat.). Matt and I are in Seattle in a one-bedroom apartment with roughly 30 plants. Our day jobs are a little more managerial (i.e. eat up more time than they used to): Cath is a director of economic development in local gov and I’m an art director at the University of Washington.

We’re still big Marie Kondo fans (though funnily enough, neither of us finished the Netflix series — we preferred her books) and try to live thoughtfully and minimally. Like the rest of the developed (and privileged) world, we aim to use less plastic these days and eat more green things.

Cath and I have lived in separate cities now for almost eight years and really hate that fact. One day, in the not too distant future, we plan to rectify that. We try to meet up a few times a year and most recently we were in NYC working on our side hustle.

Speaking of our side hustle, it was born from our continued experience of living with endometriosis and realizing that we want, more than anything, to empower other women (and non cis-gendered people with periods) to demand better when we tell our docs we are experiencing pain. Enter, Semaine!

We’re developing an anti-inflammatory supplement with Matt (he’s a biologist at the UW) to help people with painful periods.

AsianCajuns has always been a place for us to write about the things we are feeling passionate about whether that’s food, Atlanta, travel, style, minimalism or health and social justice. And even though blogging is less of a thing now (heyyyy instagram — we too old for the snappy chats), we want to get on here and natter away.

So hello again, interwebs! It’s good to see you again (from this strange, long-format platform that people maybe, kinda still use). Give us a shout if you still here with us!

Love,
Lar

I use this cabinet at least twice a day – getting ready in the morning and getting ready for bed. Every time I opened it (pre cleanout), I would get stressed by the clutter. I was constantly shifting things around and knocking items over.

Finally, after months of unnecessary stress, I finally decided to take 30 minutes out of my day to redo it. Why didn’t I do it sooner?!?! Seriously. It only took 30 minutes.

I pulled everything out, wiped down the shelves, and divided the contents into three piles:

• Trash
• Store elsewhere
• Keep in the cabinet

I had a number of items that I don’t use everyday, so those went into the linen closet. Some items were expired or samples I knew I would never use. Those went in the trash. Everything else went back into the cabinet.

The items I use the most are on the middle shelf at eye level and the items I use a couple times a month are on the top shelf (makeup brush cleaning supplies, contacts, razors replacements, etc.).

Now every morning and every evening, I open the cabinet doors and don’t have that nagging, guilt-ridden feeling that disorganization brings about. It might sound overly dramatic, but I didn’t realize how much the mess was annoying me until I fixed it. Now I’m wondering what other quick cleanouts I can do around the house that have the same huge (emotional, not necessarily physical) payoff. Kitchen junk drawer? Mail pile? Medicine cabinet? The sky’s the limit!

I’m sure some of you find it terrifying. So much white! So limiting! This is true, but I love the idea that someone really dressed like this. And maybe some day I will too.

But today is not that day. Because today, this is what my closet looks like:

It doesn’t have a classic minimalist look. It’s not all white or gray or black. I also have a lot of (black and white) shoes and things are pretty crammed in there. I was initially hesitant to post these photos because they’re not pretty. The lighting in my bedroom and closet is crap and it doesn’t look as neat and tidy because its not monochrome. Nevertheless, here it is in all its imperfect glory.

I only have clothes in here that I wear and I know exactly what I have. It might not be as impressive as Sara Berman’s closet at the Met and it’s not as beautiful as those capsule wardrobe clothing racks you see all over Pinterest, but it’s the real deal. I might have straightened the hangers up a bit and vacuumed the floor, but other than that, this is what my minimalist closet looks like.

Just for fun, I’ll include some detail shots.

The only purses I own hang on a over-the-door purse organizer on the back of the door:

For years I’ve been using a large cork board to hang my necklaces. You can see it here in an old post. It worked for a while, but it also took up precious wall and floor space in my tiny room. So after a few weeks of looking around shops and online for jewelry organizers, I settled on these two peg acrylic necklace wall racks and hung them on the back wall of my closet. Best $20 spent all month!

I find that people think minimalism means owning nothing – or owning exactly 33 items of clothing – but that’s not the case. Minimalism is about only keeping items that you use and love. While my closet isn’t zen and monochromatic, it only contains items that I wear frequently. No random, moth-eaten sweaters or one-time-use dresses hanging out in the back gathering dust. Now that’s what I call a clothing success story (insert high five emoji here)!

So we figured it was a good time to rethink things and figure out how to make this blog work better. We settled on a blog/Instagram hybrid. We’ll post three times a week on Instagram and have a blog post every Sunday going into more detail about what we’ve posted plus a little lagniappe – stuff we’re loving, fun videos, maybe even a contest or two.

If you haven’t seen our AsianCajuns Instagram page, go check it out, follow us, and leave a comment. If you’ve already done that make sure to check back here next week for more blog goodness.

Our Minimalist Goals
While Lar and I are by no means pure minimalists, we still very much believe that having less is better. For the past two years I’ve stuck to a capsule wardrobe, purged my kitchen items, and only occasionally find myself purchasing items that don’t truly spark joy. My minimalist goal for this month is to go back through my paperwork and purge anything that’s built up over the past year. I got rid of the bulk of it and you can read about it here, but I’ve let my study become a kind of catch-all for the past nine months and need to fix that!

Exploring Your Personal Style
This Instagram post was inspired by Grace Bonnie’s post on her own style. Sometimes its hard to ignore the noise of the latest trends or what you think people expect of your style and focus on what really makes you feel comfortable.

For example, I always get more complements when I wear heels and more formfitting outfits. And sometimes I enjoy wearing those clothes, but for the most part, I feel more comfortable in flowy, large tops and leggings or jeans because they feel more like me. I’ve always loved the menswear inspired look – much more Hepburn (Katherine and Audrey) than Marilyn Monroe. My pinterest style board reflects this too. Sometimes I feel guilty for not adding more color to my outfits, but blacks, whites, and neutrals are what I’m drawn too – despite the fact that my skin tone looks great with purples, blues, and deep pinks.

Things We’re Loving This Week

I love when fashion doesn’t take itself too seriously. Check out the trailer for Kenzo’s F/W line featuring Maya Rudolph #girlcrush

My YouTube love does NOT help my attempts to become more minimal. At least it didn’t until I discovered Kimberly Clark’s Anti-Haul videos.

She creates highly entertaining videos about why she isn’t going to buy a certain product. I find them equally as addictive as makeup haul videos, except I don’t leave them feeling like I need to spend every last penny at Sephora.

So, if you’ve never seen Kimberly’s videos, happy Wednesday, my friends:

I don’t usually wear lip color because 1) I end up eating it off right away — not intentionally, I just must bite my lips a lot, or 2) if I remember to not bite my lips, they go dryer than the Sahara and the color clumps up in a really attractive way.

I also think I look really odd in a  lot of lip colors. It doesn’t make sense because I think Cath looks great when she wears lipstick of any hue, but I just can’t pull it off.

Until recently! I’ve finally made an exception to the rule of no-lip-color-wearing because I found two colors that look great together and are fairly moisturizing.

Here’s the trifecta:
• Wild Child by Ila (this is more orange and less magenta than it looks on their site)
• Diabolique by RMS Beauty
• a bit of lip balm on top

I do the Jeanne Damas thing and try to really pat the colors in really well with my fingers — making it a bit messy. It makes it look less like you have a painted lip color sitting on top of your lip.

I’m still not an expert at wearing lip color — my lips still go really dry (how do you effortless lipcolor-wearers do it?), but it does make me feel like a French It-girl and look like one too … well if I squint really hard in the mirror after a few glasses of red.

Because of my wallet success, I thought now is the time to downsize from my tote bag to a real purse-sized purse — you know, the kind that don’t give you back problems and leave you with those purse strap gouges on your shoulder.

I didn’t want to go out and buy a small purse (I don’t own one because in the past I never used ones that I bought — I’ve since KonMaried them), so I used this mini Le Pliage that I found at Salvation Army in Edinburgh for £3 — a steal and environmentally friendly.

The mini Le Pliage is still pretty roomy and not as small as I’d eventually like to carry (this is my dream bag in all its vegan leather glory). But I’m really chuffed that I’ve been able to swing a tiny (in comparison) bag on my arm instead of hefting my tote straps over my coat. I’ve been a successful small-ish purse carrier for nearly three weeks!

Hi, my name is Lar, and I no longer carry my life with me wherever I go! (I seriously feel like I should get a badge for that — no, scratch that. No room for a badge in my now compact-bag lifestyle).

If I can keep this up through the winter, I might allow myself to get that Mat and Nat bag for the spring.

And if you guys are interested, you can see what’s in my bag in the pics below. I keep trying to trim this down, but I use pretty much all of these things every day. What are your tricks, small-purse carriers?

And in my make-up bag there are these essential bits and bobs: 

Over the years and through minimizing my closet, I’ve curated a small loungewear collection. It might sound weird to edit what you wear at home when no one else is going to see you, but it makes a difference. I feel comfortable, not sloppy (notice how I said feel, not look).

Marie Kondo has a great section on loungewear in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. She writes about how a lot of her clients keep items that they don’t want to wear outside of the house as loungewear even if it doesn’t spark joy for them. Because the items don’t ultimately spark joy, her clients end up never wearing them.

My loungewear sparks joy*.

I have three pairs of fitted sweatpants that I rotate between washings. I wear them about twice before putting them in the hamper. The ones I’m wearing in these photos are from Alternative Apparel and my other two pairs are from Target a couple of years ago. The Alternative Apparel ones aren’t cheap, but for the amount of times I wear them, they’re totally worth the cost. Plus they feel amazing and are from a socially responsible company. It’s a win win for everything but my wallet.

I also have two hoodies. Why two instead of one? For someone trying to be a minimalist two hoodies might seem excessive, but I need to have one while the other is in the wash. My love for hoodies knows no bounds; so much so that I freak out when I don’t have one to wear. Seriously. I owned one hoodie for about two years and would dread laundry day when I’d have to resort to a cardigan to stay warm (first world problems, I know). So I purchased the one in these photos by CHRLDR and my hoodie collection has been complete ever since. I can’t tell you how envious I am of Mark Zuckerberg – not because of his success and wealth, but because he can wear a hoodie to work. Ah, the joys of 24/7 hoodie-wearing!

Under my hoodie, I’m usually wearing a v-neck from Madewell or H&M that serve the dual purpose of loungewear and going out weekend wear.

Last but not least, I wear socks from Pure Barre, which is like wearing yoga pants when you’re not working out, but I have no shame! These socks are thicker than most athletics socks and they have grippies on the bottom so they don’t get soaked when you walk by your dog’s water bowl in the kitchen that is always inevitably surrounded by puddles of water. And they’re black, my favorite color

*If you think this statement is ridiculous or overused, please read or reread Marie Kondo’s books. There’s substance to this type of thinking and it’s not nearly as woo-woo as it sounds!

It puts me in a perpetual state of disbelief, despair and discouragement. I will still continue to protest, call my representatives and give to organizations that need our help — but I do think it’s important to balance out activism with sanity breaks.

That break might be different things for different people, but I really like to watch cleaning videos on YouTube. Yes, videos where people wander around their homes and dust, and put things in the dishwasher, and fold their laundry. It’s calming and soothing. And even when my own house is messy, watching these videos still (inexplicably) feels calming. My personal favorite is How Jen Does it. Outwardly, I have very little in common with a stay-at-home-mom in suburban Michigan who has two teenage boys, but I love how clutter-free yet homey her house is. I think she embodies “living with less” but still having her own style really well.

I know watching someone clean doesn’t do it for everyone (the videos made Matt want to run for the hills — houses that are too clean give him the heebie jeebies), but I encourage you to find or rediscover your guilty pleasure. And then, let your brain focus on that, instead of the news, for at least 15 minutes a day. The world may be blowing up around you, but somewhere near Detroit there are gleaming, clutter-free granite countertops and cookies baking in the oven.

And if that doesn’t work, try this. If you are a Chrome user, install this widget (Make America Kittens Again). It turns all photos of Trump to pictures of kittens. If that doesn’t lower your blood pressure just a wee bit, I don’t know what will. Oh. Baby sloths. Those work too.