Simplifying Our Lives

Kenny and I have been on a journey to simplify our lives for the past year. This has been a process that we are no where close to having complete, but we have made progress. Some of the areas of progress include our clutter, our money, our goals, our food, and our time.

Clutter - I plan to post a more detailed post about this one where I'll detail how many t-shirts, socks, sweatshirts, and pairs of underwear I owned. The numbers would shock you. They shocked me and I lived with the stuff!! This winter we went through our entire wardrobe and simplified what we owned. Originally I thought I'd have a garage sale and do something good with the money, then I realized I wanted the 'stuff' gone and donated it to Goodwill.

Money - Every month Kenny and I get an allowance. This way we don't have to have discussions about whether or not we should buy the pack of gum or the sun flower seeds. We are both cheap and don't like to spend our money on things we don't 'need', so believe me when I say, we've had those discussions. Now we each have 'our' money and the other person is not allowed to comment on how we individually chose to spend our money. The rest of our money was already quite simplified so we didn't have to do much else. We do however still need to simplify our bank accounts. We do not need 2 checking accounts and 4 savings accounts. We have so many because we never combined all of our accounts when we got married. It's only been 3 years :)

Goals - A couple months back I wrote out goals. They were categorized, and within each category there were various goals. I soon realized I was being too detailed and needed some leeway.   So last month I simplified. I now have two things I will not compromise on and other things I would like to do if time permits and I get to them. Two things I've come to realize I won't compromise on are: daily time with God and weekly date night. Those are the two most important things in my life right now and that is where I chose to spend my time.

Food - Our food consumption has become cleaner and healthier. A majority of our food we consume is whole foods. We shop on the outer edge of the grocery store, with a majority of our purchases coming from the front where all the fresh foods are located. Food is an area that has come a long way, but one we want to simplify even more. The next step is buying all of our food locally ie farmers markets, and the final step would be to raise the food ourselves!

Time - This one has been the hardest and the most rewarding. I recently read this article, and one of my favorite quotes from the article was:

It’s not as if any of us wants to live like this, any more than any one person wants to be part of a traffic jam or stadium trampling or the hierarchy of cruelty in high school — it’s something we collectively force one another to do. 

We don't really want to be busy, but it is a choice for me not a necessity. So we have chosen to not be busy. To say no to people. To have free time to do as we please. This is an area we are still working on, but it is an area we will fight for. 


This next week I plan to go into more detail on the areas that I am most passionate about.