Oh, my dear friends, I am so happy to finally be sitting at home, with a cup of coffee next to the computer, and not seeing any trips on my calendar in the coming two months. I need a little down time! We all know December tends to get a bit wild, but then it didn’t slow down for us until this past Sunday. We had an absolutely lovely trip to Florida over the new year, and last week we were in Indiana for our first training session as we prepare for Kenya. At last, I can slow down and let it all soak in. Taking the time to just think on busyness after it passes is one of my favorite things. It helps me appreciate all that has happened while also appreciating the quiet. So now we enter the quiet.
Two and a half weeks into our six months of simplifying and things are going very well. I continue to feel freedom in this time. Instead of thoughts of ‘buying another something for the mantel would look so nice’ or ‘I should find a few new shirts for the kids’ that so often bog me down, I’m feeling the opening of time. Time to hang pictures that have been waiting in the corner of my bedroom or to finally find a real home for the stack of books and papers on the end of the dining room table. I am clearing things away and truly enjoying the spaces of our home.
Now that we’re home, I am continuing the process of simplifying. Yesterday I went through the kids’ clothes, pulling out outfits that are too small, and finding a place for them in the donation bin. Today I spread out all of their toys and separated those that are currently being loved on from those that haven’t been touched in a few months. Tomorrow I plan to finish their room altogether. I’ve had many questions about the process of going through toys and clothes, a pretty challenging thing when kids are involved. I’m putting together a list that might be helpful for some of you and will be happy to share that very soon. This has been quite a learning process through the last year, and I certainly don’t want to keep everything I’ve learned to myself.
So here’s a question: If you could go through and completely organize one area of your home, what would it be? I’d love to hear your thoughts! My answer will be in the comment section.
Today we began our six-month journey of simplicity. I wouldn’t say it was hard, but there were a few times I caught myself beginning to make a mental Amazon list before realizing my purchases would have to wait till summer. Just little things. For example, we noticed that a few pears had quickly gone bad in the produce drawer in the fridge. Pete reminded me that we used to have these little plastic things that seemed to do a decent job of keeping the fruit good a bit longer. I nearly said, “I’ll order a few right now.” Instead, we’ll be sure to buy less fruit more often. Pretty simple.
A slightly bigger issue arose when Ella pulled out her school shoes this afternoon and said her teacher told her she should bring a new pair. Upon examining the pink, sparkly Stride Rites (not cheap but purchased for a good price before the school year on Zulily), I discovered that the sole of one shoe has definitely seen better days. Any other day, I would have glued the sole, told her to wear them for play shoes, and purchased a cute new school pair at Target. Instead, I’m fixing the sole and sending them back with her tomorrow. The situation did bring up a good opportunity to talk with Ella again about this experiment. She complained for a moment about the shoes being too worn out, but I gently reminded her that we’re not buying new things at the store for a while and pointed out the good qualities of her shoes. It didn’t take much convincing that they are still pretty fantastic since they are nearly entirely covered in sequins. Tonight I’ll glue those soles back in place and hope they last a few more months.
Ella’s sweet sparkly shoes
Over the weekend, I observed something in myself that I hadn’t necessary expected. I started to feel slightly anxious about having a limited amount of time to make purchases. I suddenly wanted to decorate our guest bathroom. And then I remembered a few developmental toys I had meant to buy for Sam. And my mind kept going over all these things that I might want in the next six months. I looked at my Etsy wish list about a hundred times but managed to only make one purchase. I did buy the items for Sam but I held off on the rest. All day yesterday, I wanted to shop! Apparently, my desire to purchase and the financial freedom I currently have to buy these things has gone to a place I wasn’t even aware. Feelings of anxiety like that make me realize I need to take a deeper look at the hold my material stuff has on me. I wonder if that is one reason God wants me to experience this break from purchasing before going to Africa. It’s one thing to stop purchasing because it’s no longer an option, but it’s entirely different to still be surrounded by the things I want and choose not to purchase them. Definitely something I need to dig into a bit further.
That’s where I am at the end of day one. So much to come in the next six months. I have a feeling it’s going to be tough but also really, really good.
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Some of you know that we just returned from an amazing week in Florida. Warmth! Sunshine! It was wonderful! If you’re waiting for photos, they will be coming soon. I again fell behind on backing up my iPhoto library and no longer have any space for more pictures, including those taken on the beach. I’ll get them up soon. These two kiddos make perfect little beach models! Here’s a little sneak peek…
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a new adventure that we are about to begin. Something that I’ve been desiring but haven’t had the nerve to actually step out and pursue. First, if you felt I left you hanging for far too long, I apologize. I needed time to process everything and learn how to articulate what it is that God’s doing. I still don’t know if I have the right words, so please bear with me. I’m going to do the best I can. I think it will become more clear as time passes. But for now, this is the story.
Since returning from our seven weeks in Kenya nearly two years ago, I have had an urge to live differently. I think it’s hard for just about anyone to travel to a third-world country and not desire some kind of change, even in very tiny ways. We took very little with us for those seven weeks, filling most of our six, large, Rubbermaid containers with items from the missionary and hospital staff wish list. Nice pens, salami, powdered Crystal Light, American candy bars, peanut butter. We each took five to seven outfits and two pairs of shoes along with one sweatshirt, a pair of pajamas, a special blanket for each of the kids and the essential toiletries for each of us. We packed a few books and toys for Ella and Sam to share along with a couple books and the laptop for Pete & me. I suppose we had a few other items as well, but that was close to everything. We didn’t want or need much. During our seven weeks in that beautiful African country, we didn’t miss a single thing. We borrowed books, toys, and movies from the neighbors. We used what furniture and appliances were provided in our two-bedroom apartment. I found a few tea cups in the kitchen to display across the mantle and made a double strand of bunting to decorate the wall with a bit of string, a needle, and a cut-up, out-of-date calendar I found in a drawer. That was all we needed. It’s what we had and we were happy.
I’ve longed to return to that state of simplicity. Some may think it was fine for us because we were only there for two months, but I know in my heart that the kind of simplicity we experienced during that time is what I was made to pursue. I’ve avoided it until now, telling myself that we will live in that state again as soon as we are back in Kenya. However, our move is still at least an entire year away. In the last year, we’ve organized, purged, sold everything in an estate sale, and moved houses. Each step has gotten us closer to the simplicityy my heart desires. But we still have room to grow.
Since moving into our new home, I’ve felt the urge to continue to simplify. Finally, a few weeks ago, God woke me in the night with what felt like a clear call to radical simplicity. Pete & I have shared the call with close friends and have felt it confirmed in multiple ways. We’re both so excited that it keeps us up at night, talking about what we can cut out of our budget and praying for guidance. I’ve also read a couple books during this time that have helped put words and scriptures to my thoughts.
In Jen Hatmaker’s book 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess, I grabbed onto the idea of “radical simplicity & radical obedience.” This is exactly what Pete & I feel we’re stepping in to for this time. We want to make things incredibly simple in whatever way God leads us and to use that simplicity to draw us into deeper relationship with him. There is nothing I love more than hearing my Papa’s voice (a deep yearning in my heart & gut, not an actual, audible voice) and pursuing his desires for me. I have seen too much personal growth and experienced too many incredible adventures to want anything outside of his will for me. Yes, it can be a bit scary, but it can be even more exciting.
So, here’s the plan. For six months, starting January 12, we will buy nothing outside of necessity. We have gone through our budget with a fine-tooth comb and cut out everything we don’t need. We’ve drastically cut down our budget in the areas of food, household goods, gas, and toiletries. We’ve completely cut out most entertainment, restaurants, clothing, and subscriptions. There are a few things we’ve really needed to pray about, which is why we didn’t start the day after we heard God speak to us. We will continue to have our nanny, Donna, spend three hours, four afternoons a week with the kids. This will allow me time to process and write about this time of simplification, which I feel God is leading me to share here on the blog. Donna is an amazing presence in our family. She is like a third grandmother to our little ones and loves Jesus as much as we do.
This entire process is going to be all about praying and listening to where Jesus is leading us. If we feel we need to simplify more in one area, we will. This will be an ongoing experience that we hope will break us from the mindless consumerism that our family has become quite comfortable with in our daily lives. If I want something, I hop onto Amazon and have it on my doorstep in two days, sometimes less. Or I can run up to Target and fill my cart to the brim and not even watch the price as I swipe my check card with one hand and sip a Starbucks latte with the other. I am going to stop wishing to live a life of simplicity and we, as a family, are going to pursue it.
One last thing. We recognize that this is what God is doing in our family at this time. Each individual and family has a unique path. We encourage you to pray and discover what God is doing in your life, because that is the very best, most exciting thing you could possibly do.
As we continue making progress toward our estate sale (details here), I’ve taken a little time to process what I’m learning about freeing myself from so much of my material stuff. Perhaps you’ll find this list helpful, too.
1. Know your reasons.
Why do you want to simplify? Is it so you don’t have to spend so much time keeping things organized? Are you preparing for a life change like a move or a new baby? Whatever your reason, it’s just that…yours. Don’t worry what it might look like to someone else. Just make sure you’ve thought it through. If you need to, write it down. That way you can remind yourself why you’re doing the work if you lose your motivation.
2. Find a cause.
What are you going to do with the stuff you’re purging? I suggest finding a great cause that you want to support by donating your items. Maybe it’s a local shelter, a church rummage sale, or your own sale to start a long-awaited vacation fund. Having a cause makes it far easier to part with things. If you’re donating to larger second-hand stores, I recommend looking into how they do as a company. Some chains don’t have the best policies. (Have you heard the Goodwill low-wage controversy for disabled employees? You can watch the NBC Rock Center report here and read about it on Forbes.com right here.) We try to stick to local organizations that help people in our immediate community.
3. Cut out distractions.
What are the things that are keeping you from making progress on your simplifying? Are you allowing enough time to get through each section? Are you constantly having little hands pull things out of boxes and demand they are absolutely in love with the toy they haven’t touched in a year? It’s important to strategize how to work around any distractions. Send the kids to grandma’s for the day (or the whole weekend!), turn off the phone, reschedule lunch dates, or leave your front curtains closed so no one stops in for an unannounced visit.
4. Move space by space.
Instead of trying to tackle your entire house in one fell swoop, take it space by space. It feels far less daunting and will give you a sense of accomplishment as you finish each area. It definitely helps prevent burnout, which you don’t want to hit if your entire house is a reorganization mess.
5. Use good boxes.
This may seem trivial, but I’ve found it can help in ways I hadn’t imagined. Using good, strong boxes helps the actual simplification process by encouraging you to keep your mind set on organizing. They can also keep things looking tidy, which helps prevent burnout on bigger jobs, especially if it will take more than one day to finish the space. Personally, nice boxes have helped me part with my nicer things simply because I wasn’t putting them in junky containers. In the end, it’s important to plan your boxes appropriately for transport. How much help will you have to move everything? What size vehicle will you be using? Big boxes may hold a lot, but they get heavy quickly and need more space in a car. (The boxes I’ve purchased for every move since we got married and now to prepare for our estate sale came from Sam’s Club. They have various sizes, but these are my favorite. They can be flattened, stored, and used again for future projects.)
6. Take pictures.
It’s hard to part with old tennis trophies, letter jackets, camp t-shirts, and other items that hold sentimental value, but are they really serving a purpose in an old box in the attic or hanging in the back of a closet? Instead of allowing such physical items to take up valuable space in our homes or even in our minds, take a picture of it and give yourself permission to part ways. Collect all your photos and put them together in an inexpensive photo book. Keep the book on a shelf and share it with friends or flip through it when you’re feeling nostalgic. After all, we’re usually more connected with the memories tied to an item than to the item itself.
7. Consider the emotional attachment you have with the item.
It can be hard to part with items that have some kind of connection with us. Was it a wedding or birthday gift? Did you get it at a special time in your life? Is it something you once loved and poured your time into? When simplifying, emotions can run wild, especially feelings of guilt for wanting to part with something “special.” One thing I constantly remind myself is that there are seasons of life and seasons come and go. We don’t need to hold on to the things that once brought us joy if they no longer do. And yes, that includes gifts. Do you think the giver of that gift would want you to have it if it no longer fits your purposes? This part of the process is probably the hardest, which is also why it’s so important to already have selected a great cause for your donations. If you know the set of mixing bowls your aunt gave you for your wedding shower will be going to your church’s kitchen, it will probably be easier to say goodbye to it.
Another note on guilt. I used to have time for lots of projects like sewing, baking, jewelry making, stamping, painting, etc., but I no longer have that time. At the moment, I want to be with my family and prepare for our future. I’ve allowed all of my project supplies to throw feelings of guilt over me for no longer putting them to use. It’s the same for a number of books on my shelf that I know I will never make time to read. Instead of continuing to allow these things to influence my emotions, I’ve boxed them up and will be selling them. I don’t want to give material things that kind of power over me, so I’m tossing out the guilt.
8. Take breaks but not too many.
Purging our things is an emotional event. Be sure to take time to break from it if you start to feel stressed. Watch a short episode of a light show on Netflix, go for a walk, have a cup of coffee. Let your mind rest. But don’t make your break too long or take too many. You might lose good momentum or end your work altogether.
9. Finish the job.
Finish what you’ve started. Complete each space to your liking and then get the boxes out of your house. If the boxes don’t leave, you may be tempted to start pulling things out again or the boxes might end up feeling like more clutter. You worked hard to get rid of stuff, so work just a bit harder and finish well.
10. Give yourself grace.
Simplifying is not easy. We live in a society that tells us we should have more, keep buying, continue to increase. We have emotional attachments to most of our material possessions. If you feel like you need a break, take one. If you want to hold on something just a little while longer, do it. If you get stuck, be gentle with yourself and ask a friend to join you. Sometimes an outside perspective is all it takes to keep moving forward. Remember, this is your life, these are your things, and you might need time to process it all. Praying helps tremendously. Do it before you begin, when you’re in the middle, and then again when you feel like you’ve finished. Speaking from lots of experience, God has a way of meeting us, with all of our wild emotions, right where we are, even with something as seemingly unimportant as simplifying. He never intended that our material possessions have a stronghold on us.
It really is amazing to feel a bit lighter by simply letting go of a few…or a lot…of our possessions. I’d love to hear about your own experiences and what you’ve found has worked well for you!
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A note on our own progress. We’ve nearly finished! We’ve gone through the house top to bottom. Now I’ve taken over for the small jobs like cleaning out the filing cabinet and refiling newer papers. We met with an estate sale company this week who say they will be able to hold a sale for us at the end of August. We’re working out the details, but we’re so happy to have a timeline! We plan to either go camping during the time of the sale or stay in a hotel. Something fun to separate ourselves from the sale. I’m glad our things will be going, but I don’t need to know who is buying each item. I’ve already said my goodbyes. And yes, I’ve taken plenty of pictures of our memories!
A little more than four years ago, Pete suggested we go through a few of our things before moving from our two-bedroom apartment in Minneapolis to our three-bedroom-plus-lots-of-storage-space house in Duluth. I agreed it might be a good idea and worked alongside him as we opened boxes we hadn’t touched the entire year we had been in that apartment. We laughed and shared memories from our high school year books and summer camp photo albums, put on old sports jerseys and a shirt I sewed in college. Many things went back into boxes, while we were satisfied to simply take pictures of other items instead of continuing to actually move them from house to house. The boxes took days for me to sort. I felt emotionally tied to everything held in those cardboard containers. Pete encouraged me to do as much donating, photo-taking, or tossing as I could manage. When the movers arrived a few weeks later and said we had noticeably downsized since the move twelve month earlier, I was proud. I had parted with enough items to feel we were going to begin a touch lighter on Lake Superior.
We settled into our new house and, well, you know what happens when living comfortably in one place for an extended period of time. Kids grow through multiple sizes of clothing, they collect toys and games and mountains of books. As a family we gather tools and trinkets, kitchen gadgets and hobby supplies. Furniture moves in and collections of all sorts grow. After being in our cozy house for three-and-a-half years, I started to feel I needed a change. Not huge, but a little organization was definitely going to be necessary. So last winter I started reading blogs on how to get organized, I put together a Pinterest board, and I found an inspiring book that helped me feel like I could get things in order. I was tired of constantly putting things away and spending valuable time apart from my kids while trying to make my house look nice. Looking back now, I see that my need to organize was only the beginning of something deeper.
After spending weeks attempting to get my house in order, I still felt like it was out of control. If only I could get it organized and keep it that way! It felt like an impossible task, though just months earlier I had very little trouble with it. I realized that I was spending just as much time before the big organization binge trying to keep things neat. And it was starting to get to me. I began to feel anxious looking at the baskets of toys and piles of clothes surrounding me. I felt guilty knowing I had boxes of untouched craft supplies and unfinished house projects that I couldn’t seem to find time to squeeze in.
And then, two or three weeks ago, I started to feel an urge to separate myself from all the material stuff around me. I brought it up to Pete, who has always desired to live fairly minimally, by asking if we could get a dumpster for a week or two. (Can I tell you how happy he seemed with that question?!) We couldn’t start right away, though, because I was working on my sister’s wedding. While waiting the couple weeks until the wedding, we got to pray a lot about what exactly God was doing in my heart. We both felt that this wouldn’t just be another organizing stint. This would be much, much more.
We’ve known for years that we would have an estate sale before our big move to Africa. We don’t want to put piles of our things in storage and not have them used for years at a time. We still have a year or two before that move, though, so imagine our surprise when we strongly felt God telling us to prepare for the estate sale NOW. What?! That doesn’t make any sense! But we couldn’t shake the thought. I felt like the sale was confirmed in the fact that I got really excited about it. Such a change from my sorting in Minneapolis when I emotionally could not part from more than a few items. By the time we were able to start last Monday morning, I was actually giddy. All I can say is that was not from my own will. I have always loved my stuff and wouldn’t even consider tossing or selling something that I might be able to use in the next couple years. I know that God is preparing our hearts for Africa, but the timing of this is not at all what I expected.
I’ve had a few friends ask, “But an estate sale means you sell everything in your house, right? Why would you do that already?” My answer: yes, and we don’t exactly know yet. We do hope to sell nearly everything. If you see it in our house, it will likely be for sale. Book cases, books, dishes, pictures, bedding, toys…everything. We’re not leaving for another 18-24 months, so we’re praying about how this will play out. We may use the opportunity to clear our belongings and put the money toward a few items that we need and will really use. God has revealed a few details that we will share when the time is right, but for now, we’re trying to listen carefully to what God has for us. We know that His plan and purposes are so much better than our own. And that makes me incredibly excited.
I usually consider Jeremiah 29:11 far overused and fairly cliche, but I’m trusting what this verse says right now. “I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord. “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” We already believe with our entire beings that God has a great plan for our family. I absolutely trust that this place God has called us to – living minimally – will not harm us, but that it will bring us peace and that it will draw us closer to Him. And the prospering part? I’ve felt deeply that God is freeing me from the guilt and busyness of my material possessions so that I can embrace each moment with my beautiful family. Ella will love having more of my undivided attention before and after school when she begins kindergarten in September. Sam will thrive when we’re able to have more of our day together to do fun and developmental activities. Pete will be able to rest in our home after stressful shifts in the ER and I can be more of the attentive wife I know I was created to be. And for me? I will be able to soak in life. Not the life that my material things give me, but the life that He has already given me, free from so many unnecessary distractions. I tasted this life for two months in Kenya when we had only a few of our things with us. That taste was incredible. What an amazing thing that we will be able to experience something similar here, in this city we so dearly love, right now.
God is so good! I am humbled to be chosen for this life. I truly am.
Later this week, I’ll be posting a few tips I’ve learned on getting organized and making the separation with our material goods a little easier. Also, if you’re interested and live in the area, I’ll announce when the estate sale will be as soon as we know. Please pray with us on this as we’re still working out the details with a few local companies.
