Seven tiny resolutions for 2025

Because maybe it's the little things that really matter, after all

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I have, historically, been a person who is very much into making New Year’s resolutions. Getting fitter, better, faster, stronger, somehow working more while simultaneously also working less, while - obviously - also having more fun. Journaling, meditating, eating whole grains, swimming at the beach every morning, reading by candlelight at night, being present, and mindful, and kinder and better but also inexplicably becoming more driven and successful and efficient and easygoing and less neurotic and oh my god am I boring you yet? Or exhausting you? Are you bored AND exhausted? I don’t blame you.

Although part of me still nurses a deep desire to read highbrow artsy novels by candlelight (I would 100% fall asleep), do yoga as the sun rises and journal over a morning coffee, the stark reality of my current situation (motherhood) really needs acknowledgement: none of that is bloody well possible when you have a two year old!!!! And to be fair if I wasn’t doing it before we had our baby what chance is there that I’m going to start in the next decade? I’ll tell you: Zilch. Nada.

I was reading a thread on reddit or Instagram or somewhere last night. A twenty-something woman was asking if having kids was really as hard and exhausting and negative as so many people online make out. She asked what it’s REALLY like. There were, as you’d expect, a plethora of answers, each as different as the various women who penned them. It’s like asking what marriage is like, isn’t it. Depends on who you are, who he is, your life circumstances. It’s a sort of unanswerable question. And still it got me thinking about what I’d say in response.

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Because yes, it is both brilliant and hard. Transformative and profound and mundane and banal. And sometimes it’s the banal stuff that is the most profound and transformative. But the answers I read are always like this, and it’s exactly why I felt so dissatisfied with people’s description of parenthood before I became I parent. I wanted to know WHAT was hard, WHAT was great, I wanted the details. But they always got enveloped in vague statements; ‘it’s the best and hardest thing I’ve ever done’.

And yes, ok, maybe that’s true.

But here’s what I was thinking last night: perhaps one of the reasons we’re not very good at explaining which parts of parenthood are hard is because we’re not actually very good at knowing what makes us happy in the first place. Whether you have kids or not, we humans have a habit of searching for happiness in the most irrational of places.

We search for it in outcomes, rather than processes. We look for it in long-term accomplishments instead of fleeting moments and in extreme, rare, heightened experiences, rather than the small, the every day.

The truth, I think, is that it’s usually the small things that are significant. The tiny habits, daily rituals that we don’t even realise have formed an important part of the fabric of our lives. And when something as drastic as parenthood happens, it’s not surprising that most of these small but significant things get entirely discarded or forgotten.

The shame is that, of all the happiness-inducing things we might hope to retain in this new season of life, the small-but-significant things might actually be the easiest to cling onto.

And whether you have kids or not, I think this is a mistake we all make too often. We focus on the big things, the things we think will move the needle further towards contentment and peace, and we totally overlook the things that ACTUALLY do it. The things we can achieve in five minutes but always, always, always forget to do.

So today, for our final newsletter before I wrap up for Christmas (I have ‘wrapped up’ exactly zero of my gifts btw), I want to offer seven suggestions for small-but-significant things you might like to add into your life next year. Try one, try them all. Or try none of them and instead dedicate one quiet hour, when you wake up at 3am and can’t get back to sleep, to thinking about what actually makes you happy. The smallest, littlest, tiniest, most paltry instances of bliss.

Then forget about resolving to do the big stuff (that’s too bloody hard anyway), and instead, make yourself a promise to inject just a skerrick (a morsel, a pinch!) of small-but-significant happiness into 2025.

Pick flowers

The key - I think - to getting your daily allowance of small-but-significant happiness from flower picking is to not pick an actual bunch, just a tiny posy. Tiny posies are painfully underrated and so beautiful. I hoard miniature vases compulsively (our little boy has discovered them and now tries to hoard them from me in return). They hold maybe four or five little flowers, tops. They are so small you can always find something to put in them, no matter the season, and they make a sunny windowsill devastatingly gorgeous.

Don’t worry about being ‘present’ or ‘mindful’ or any of that shit during your flower picking. Just make sure to go out and do it. There’s just no way it won’t make you feel good.

Watch the morning sun

I’m an idiot and routinely look at my phone instead of the golden morning light. That light that pours through kitchen windows about 20 minutes after sunrise is like nothing else, and all too often I am oblivious to it, so focused on making breakfast or checking my stupid emails.

It’s a little bit of beauty that costs nothing and, if you actually stop to give it a moment’s consideration, will reliably drag you back into the real, offline, pleasantly golden-hued world.

Eat outside

Our house - and life - are in a total shambles this week. Our kitchen has no sink, dishwasher or bench top. Our living room has no furniture save one small, round table, at which my poor, harried husband is relentlessly packing boxes of our homegrown garlic salt until 3am each night. The floors are covered with discarded garlic and Australia Post boxes and it’s safe to say absolutely nowhere is toddler-proofed. This has driven us, through sheer, overwhelmed necessity, to eat all of our meals outside.

And it’s lovely.

Oh, it makes me feel European! It makes me want to light candles! We saw six different birds on an archway - six! We saw the rubbish truck come past last Friday. We see the sunset and hear the magpies call.

I used to eat every breakfast outside and then we had our baby and I just…stopped. Never again! I don’t know what exactly makes outdoor dining feel so good. But in 2025 I am not going to question it, I am just going to do it.

Put something from your garden into dinner

Doesn’t need to be anything big, doesn’t need to fill a harvest basket. Just add one thing from your garden to your dinner. If you think you have nothing, stretch your imagination a little. Could you throw some calendula flowers onto your pasta? Put a sprig of rosemary or some fresh lime into your soda water?

All too often, we let ourselves fall into mindless ruts, just going through the motions (eat, clean up, shower, sleep, repeat), I think it’s because life is busy and we are tired. But what happens when you put a handful of fennel blossoms onto your evening ice cream, throw homegrown basil onto the pizza you just got delivered or slip some roughly crushed mint into your glass of water? You make things 1% more beautiful. One percent more thoughtful. One percent tastier. You cast a little vote for a life that is about more than rushing from one thing to the next. And I think that is very much worth doing.

Smell the air

Do it - you’re gonna be breathing anyway! If you haven’t stepped outside and inhaled obnoxiously deeply in a while, you might be surprised by just how much there is out there waiting to be smelled! Breathe deeply enough and you’ll smell cut grass, the salty, minerality of the ocean, your neighbours’ flowers, an incoming storm, raindrops on hot pavement.

It is the smallest thing you’ll ever do, but it makes life surprisingly richer.

Water the garden

If you have the time, there is nothing quite as indulgent as a half hour spent quietly watering your garden. Ok, that’s a load of bollocks (I’m showing my age and parenthood-status, aren’t I), there is a veritable shittonne of stuff more indulgent than watering your garden.

But, right now, two-hour massages, trips to Thailand and 6-hour wine-matched degustations aren’t on my personal menu of available options. If they are on your menu of available options, screw your garden, go to Thailand!!! Otherwise, do as I do, and relish a few moments of peace, nurturing your plants and watching the last rays of afternoon sun glint off the flying droplets of water.

It’s not much, I know. Surprisingly often, it is enough.

Look at the stars

The night sky, if you choose to glance up at it, is a quiet, daily reminder both of our insignificance, and also of our immense worth. We know of no other life-harbouring planet like ours. We know of no other planet, in the dark expanse, where there are streams filled with fish, fields with flowers, or skies with birds.

For the last few months my go-to method for getting our son to sleep has been holding him quietly in our backyard (or not so quietly, if I’m bored and feel like signing the soundtrack to Grease or Phantom go the Opera). I swear he falls asleep faster out there (and I find myself far less impatient and frustrated). It’s such a small thing to do, to just step outside and look up. But how often do you do it? When was the last time you saw a shooting star, or watched a tall tree sway in the night’s breeze, like a giant coral in a vast ocean?

People are obsessed with virtual reality and I sometimes think about the hype and mania that would follow an announcement of a VR headset that could transport you to a quiet, leafy garden, where you could feel the cool grass under your feet, hear crickets and cicadas, smell a night scented jessamine, look up at a sky full of stars. When the technology eventually gets there, tech-fanatics will line up around the block to be the first to try it. Until then, I think I’ll just make a point of wandering out to my garden at night and looking up.

Until next year…

And now we have reached the end of this newsletter, and - very soon - the end of the year. I am trying new thing these days, I call it ‘making sure to take some time off’.

I will be taking a little break from this newsletter over the school holidays, to spend some much needed time doing nothing (or, more likely, spreading the 48 bags of clay, manure and mulch I’ve just had delivered to our driveway through our garden).

I will be back at the start of Term 1 to fill your inbox with more ramblings and, I hope, your mind with ideas for things to do that will make your own garden more beautiful, and your days more creative, peaceful and fun.

Until then, wishing you and your loved ones a wonderful festive season, a restful summer and an excellent start to 2025. Thank you so much for reading, and for your support - it means the world.

Xx Casey

P.S. If you’re bored whole I’m gone, don’t forget I have an entire, sprawling archive of guides for you to peruse at your leisure, all summer long. You can visit the archive here.

And if you’d like to the full archive, including all of my guides, videos, plant lists and recipes over the summer, you can upgrade to a paid membership by clicking the button below.

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Thank you for reading! See you next time for more Lo fi life!

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