The Joy of Less

I have decided to spend a little dough and purchase a minimalist book. At first I thought to myself "This goes against what we're trying to do by not spending money" Let me tell you, I've spent money on a lot of silly things, but this was not one of them. I'm only 17% of the way through the book (says our Kindle), and I am very impressed. It's so much more than just "get rid of your stuff!!!". The first handful of chapters are just thinking about why we do things things, ect. It really opened my eyes so much.

We live in a culture that just lives to consume, not consumes to live. How much do we really need? Do we really need to keep up with the Jones'? Why? Why do we feel compelled to have everything, when we already have so much more than we ever needed? Yesterday the book had inspired me to go through a lot with a fresh mindset, and it worked! I was able to get rid of a lot. This past weekend I had a baby shower to attend. I had all these Mommy Necklaces (these are cute little necklaces basically meant for nursing mothers to give the baby something safe to play with while nursing, vs your hair). I kept them because they're so pretty and I do wear them once in a while. But then I thought about it, and I really thought my friend would get much more use out of them than myself. So, I passed all of them to her. Not only did it feel amazing to pass them on, but she really appreciated it, and even her husband thanked me later at church saying that they meant a lot to her. WOW!

Anyway. I feel so refreshed in my minimalist journey. I had already made SO much progress, but reading this book is really just energizing me more than ever! I want to change my whole way of thinking. Not just purge a few times a year, but keep bringing things in. I highly recommend this book. You can find it here The Joy of Less

Don't forget about the clutter in your head!

I have to keep telling myself this is a journey. Think, marathon, not sprint. I keep hearing that, but seriously, it's the best way to describe it. I have slowed down a wee bit on minimizing while focusing on getting everything done that needs to be. It has occurred to me lately that I just have too much going on again. Some things I can't avoid, much as I'd like to. But some things I just reeeeeeeeeeally didn't want to let go of, though I know it was at a point where it was creating more stress for myself, and more to do.

Ever heard that saying "too much of a good thing"? I definitely think there is. When it gets to the point where there's more of something than you can use in a year, yeah... Too much. Especially if it's creating more clutter/stress. I have gone through some slight obsessions. For example, baby legs. Heard of them? They're itty bitty leg warmers for babies. Seriously adorable, and very useful. So I took that, and ran with it! My daughter had almost 30 pair. It was INSANE. To think of the money I spent on that, when a few pair would have sufficed.

I read my devotional today and it was talking about the American dream. You know, bigger, better, faster, stronger... More more more. It's so hard for my generation especially with all the mommy wars, and social media. Everyone wants what others have. I do too, sometimes. I was just talking with my husband about this yesterday, actually! Then to have it right there in my face today was almost like the answer I was looking for.

Back to my original idea for this post (I saw something sparkly, sorry!) I tend to think SO much. I get the gut feelings, but the I have to rationalize EVERYTHING. I pretty much just drive myself crazy. So, when you decide to take it from gut, to brain, ask yourself these questions. Does this add value to my life, or stress? Do I really need ALL of this, or just some of it? If you find yourself thinking a ton about it, maybe talk about it out loud with someone. You never know, the answer just may come to you in a really unexpected way.

But my point is, I want to stress less. I am going to be taking the time to face these things that are stressing me out, and find a solution to them. Getting rid of the mental clutter, as well as the physical clutter :)

Do you have anything on your mind lately you're trying to sort out? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. I hope my journey is helping others who're wanting to try this out as well!

Distractions, and a confession.

Distractions... They're everywhere. Electronics I think is a big one for us. The computer, the T.V. (we got rid of Dish last year then after a few months without it turned it back on), the Kindle, our phones. Geeeeeez! If I could just use them the way I intend to, it wouldn't be an issue. But I get caught up. I feel like we're missing out on life because of all of these distractions.

I want to be healthier. I want to put more time into my business. I want to get our house organized so that it's just maintenance after that. I want less stress, and more time. Yet I can't seem to break away from the distractions. I've also got books I've had for years that I want to read. I want to crochet more. Why do we do this to ourselves? I usually use these things as a reward or break when I've done a lot of work, but then that's where I get sucked in and can't break away.

So here it is, my confession. It's MY fault. I have the choice of where to put my focus, and sometimes, I don't make good decisions. I feel like until we admit things like this, it won't change. Yes, we have VERY busy lives. But the little bits of time I do have, I need to choose wisely what I do with that time. If I'm trying to get healthy, and I spend that time playing Candy Crush (DON'T PLAY IT IF YOU HAVEN'T, it's addicting), even 10 minutes at a time 5 times a day. That's 50 minutes of my day I can't get back. Why not 10 minutes of Candy Crush, 30 minutes of working out, and 10 minutes tidying up the house? There are lots of options, but I just have to stop making excuses, and get to it!

No one likes to have these things pointed out by others, because we get defensive. So, let's sit down and think to ourselves about it instead, and admit to ourselves what our weakness' are, and if we're wanting real change. I definitely do, so this is me giving myself a swift kick in the butt, and signing off to get some stuff done :)

To go along with minimalism

We have taken so many car loads to the local mission lately, that we are slowing down a little bit and focusing on some projects we've been needing to get done. Something that's come up lately, is re-purposing things. I feel like this goes hand and hand with minimalism. My biggest issue with buying new things, is there might be something you already have that you can use, and save from just being thrown into a landfill.

For example. We have these outdoor chairs that have just had it. For a bit my husband and I wanted to go get new chairs, but we haven't yet. Next thing we know, he and our oldest son are out in the shed doing "man stuff" and BOOM, a bench for our fire pit! He had some leftover wood, and also found part of an extra shutter out there.

Another example. I really need some kind of shelf to clip my desk lamp to in my work area. The last time my husband was in the attic, he found a broken shelf and brought it down. This was almost a year ago when we first moved in here. He fixed it, and painted it, and now it's ready to be put up!

I think the biggest gain from this though, is our son is on his way to becoming a man. He's about to turn 9 this year, and honestly that just feels so big to me. I mean, he's going to be half way to being an adult! There is a 4.5 year age difference between him and his little brother, and my husband and I just both feel it's a really good time for them (father and son) to start bonding. He's not exactly interested in what our 4 year old is. So to go along with what we're gaining from minimalism, they are building on their relationship. These are memories our son will have for the rest of his life!

Our daughters room. DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNN

Recently, we went through our daughters bedroom. She's our only daughter, plus she's the youngest. She was pretty spoiled to start out with, and it's calming down a little, but she definitely still had too much stuff! Not to mention, we have most of her brothers toys in her room as well due to his room being really small, and some behavioral issues we are working through with him. He uses toys as projectiles, it's not a fun time.

So, wall to wall, floor to ceiling, we did our thing. To include the closet! I was able to get rid of a lot of her clothes, and found quite a few broken toys and trash items. We pulled both our youngest kiddos in there when we were ready for them to make some decisions on which toys to give away to other boys and girls, and to our surprise, they were able to do this! We had a hang up on a tiny pretend kitchen, and cash register set. So we had them choose one to give away. Thankfully they chose to give away the little kitchen, because they already have a bigger one.

After all was said and done, it was SO much easier to clean because there weren't any toys and misc items all over the floor. It is now much easier for them to clean up because their toys fit into two bins. To be honest they don't have that many toys compared to most kids here in the US. We had started changing our ways a few years ago by keeping that kind of stuff to a minimum. We don't want our kids to be lost in a sea of toys, and we want them to value people and their time more than objects. We have learned that they are NOT at all bothered by this. I think we were more bothered by the idea of this in the beginning.

I think most of the time the reason kids have so many toys, is because of us, their parents. We love them so much, that we want them to never go without. We want them to enjoy their childhood, and have fun. They can still do this without a sea of toys, I promise. We are living proof of that. I have seen so much creativity come from my little ones, and be still my heart... They play SO well together now that there aren't so many toys to distract them. They pretend all the time. The two youngest are only 15 months apart, and I didn't think I'd see them grow into best friends still at such a young age.

Saying goodbye to fast food.

I know this is a very touchy subject. I am sure I may get a little backlash from this blog post, but please keep in mind these are my thoughts and opinions, and this is part of my journey that I am sharing with everyone who chooses to follow along with it.

First of all, I know many will think "Yeah, well I am so busy that sometimes I just have to get it, or we won't have time to eat". I don't have any of my kids in after school activities. Well, my oldest has bible study. I do however, have 3 kids, and two of which have special needs. Often times, we have appointments, and we live way out in the boonies. I have been able to cut out some of these appointments, so we're not constantly on the road, but when we do it's a half-full day even of driving from A, to B, to C! I am the QUEEN of "We have to eat fast food", or, I was.

32 days ago (yes, I have an app on my phone that is counting), I asked my husband to stop at Burger King on his way home from work. He works 45 minutes away, had closed that day, and I just did not feel like preparing anything that night. We used to live just a few minutes from his work, and conveniently just a few minutes from about 4 different fast food places. I'll touch on that more in just a bit. Anyway, 20 bucks or so later, and 15 minutes extra commute for him for having to stop and wait for food, we had our dinner.

It had been at least a week before that since we had any fast food. Before we moved out here, it was a good few times a week we were eating a meal from a fast food place. It just did not taste good at ALL! Then after we ate, I felt like dead weight, and just wanted to go to sleep. I felt awful. I have seen the light. Once we finally started to cut down, and then ate it again, it was like my body was begging me not to eat it. Like I was putting the wrong kind of gas into my car or something. It didn't really even taste that good to me anymore now that it wasn't the typical meal we had been eating.

That night we made the decision to just stop eating it. We had a trip coming up to go visit my parents for Thanksgiving too, so it would be a big change for us. It's a 6-8 hour drive, depending on traffic, and our kiddo's. So, we made sandwiches, some snacks, and even some breakfast egg muffins the night before. On top of saving a ton of money, we also felt better and were less tired for the long drive, AND, we saved some time on the drive because we just ate in the car. We have 2 dogs we travel with too, so I don't like to stop somewhere that they can't get out with us.

So, remember I said we lived minutes from a bunch of fast food places? Someone told me that they figured out how much they spent in eating out in one months time, and it was outrageous. I thought, I'm sure we spend a couple hundred, but probably not much more. We spent over FIVE hundred dollars eating out in one month. That was a month we didn't have any other travel than appointments and errands. It was purely out of convenience that we stopped anywhere for food. 500 bucks is a lot of money for our size family on one income, believe me!

So, as part of our journey to minimalism, we are looking at EVERYTHING we do in our lives, and deciding what we can do to improve our quality of life, by living with less. Fast food is less garbage for our bodies, which will result in better health both short, and long term, AND it is saving us a large amount of money.

Less is more.

The idea is pretty simple, yet it's SO hard to really live by this. We live in an age where consumerism is constantly shoved down our throats. Think about it. You watch T.V., commercials come on, and it's "buy this" "buy that". Same with the web, radio, and just driving around. Think of all the billboards telling you what you "need"! Do we really need all these things to be happy? Or, is it possible that we are actually becoming a slave to our possessions?

Here's an example. Facebook. It can be such a great thing! Really! A way to connect with our family, and friends. But what else do you see on facebook? One thing that stands out to me, is what people show off. And I will be the first to say I have done it a number of times! My husband bought me a beautiful necklace last Valentine's day, and BOOM, off to Facebook land to show it off. Now, I'm not saying never buy someone you love a gift, and never let on that you like receiving gifts. What I'm saying, is, sometimes we are so excited about something we just got, that we want to share it with everyone. When it comes down to it, why do we do this?

I think partly, is we want to give thanks publicly to the person who gave us the gift. It's nice to be appreciated. But another thing it might convey to others, is, "neener neener neeeeeeeeener" We didn't have much when we first got married, so when we started having a little extra cash flow, it was so nice to get new things. A new T.V., a new computer, a new car, ect. You work hard, you deserve to have some things you want. But where do we draw the line? The age we live in says, we DON'T. We always need to upgrade. Bigger, better, faster, stronger... You know?

We have started to change this about ourselves. Sure, we still have things we want. Sometimes we still spend money on things we don't need, but we are trying to change that. We are turning away from all the latest and greatest, and trying to ignore it. Because when it comes down to it, is it really that important? Is it really going to make our lives better? No. It's going to cause more distractions from what's important, and it's going to keep our cash going out just as fast as it comes in. .

So, onto what I was getting at. My husband and I decided we are not going to bring anything into our house that we do not need, and we are going to talk about the things we bring in before we make that decision. We have debt. Car debt, house debt, and we want to climb out of it. We do OK, and we give to a lot of charities. We want to be able to do that more, too. We can't take our money with us, and in the end we don't want to be remembered by what we had, but rather what we gave.

As we are not making careless decisions with our money, we are hoping, and expecting our savings account to grow, so that we may pay off our debt. Our children are young, and now is the time to instill some good habits and lessons. We will probably never be that couple with the beautiful family photo's done every few months. We will probably never be that family who's home you envy because it is so big, and fancy. We will probably never be that family who has expensive cars, and all the latest gadgets. But we will (I hope, and pray) be that family who is happy, and loving, and gives more than they receive.

God willing, we will be able to keep the momentum going, and keep learning and opening our minds to this lifestyle.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this, and if you have any suggestions of your own. Please leave a comment if you feel compelled.