My friend Tonya Parrott and I are working on the Bible study and small group questions for Enough: Find More by Living with Less. We want to feature dozens and dozens of real examples from people who have learned to spend less, give more, downsize, reduce overhead and live more simply, and also the joy and peace that such living has brought them.
Many of you contributed to the book Enough, and you’ll get your free copy when it comes out in a few months. But if you have learned new ways to move toward enough, or if you haven’t yet shared your success stories, would you do so now? We’d love to learn from your moving toward enough experience.
Please send me your success stories Send Email or just post them in the comments here. Thanks so much.
Let’s help people find ENOUGH!
Will, I was stuck at the Denver airport after a retreat and stumbled upon “Simplify Your Life” by Elaine St. James, a tidy little book that began my process in 1995. It’s a great framework for starting to trim back and amp up the sanity in our lives.
I particularly followed the following suggestions from the book:
1. Live where you work. This enables me and my husband to live with one (used) car
2. Get rid of kitchen clutter. We own and operate off of: 4 forks, 4 plates, 4 spoons, 4 coffee cups, 3 pots (total!) etc.
3. Ladies, ALL pants are hemmed to the same length. This cuts the shoes required by at least half.
4. Don’t own clothes that require dry cleaning.
5. Move to a smaller house and rent rather than own
6. Turn off the TV, cancel all subscriptions to magazines and newspapers
7. Get out of debt and operate on cash only. Live on half of what you earn.
There are 100 well-thought-out tips in this book, but the result of simplifying has been:
More face time and interaction with my husband, less financial stress, improved health, and an overriding atmosphere of peace in our lives. Worth the trimming, don’t you think?
Wow! Great stuff. Thanks Lisi!
Mine is not book worthy. But food for thought maybe . 1990-Dallas-put everthing in storage-moved to CA. to start a new business-moved on 42′ boat -want a new pair of shoes-you have to give one away. Entertainment-Salmon trolling under the Golden,take the boat/home and anchor in a cove for private time. Then children-home and stuff. Boys 2 & 4 -am called again. Storage. Go to a fishing villge ouside La Paz,Mexico for two months-hang out with locals,kayak with the whales,no phones or t.v.,-best adventure of my life. Reality again-children need -well-best to be back in the states. Home and stuff again. Large house-tons of stuff. Okay -yet again-get rid of 70% of stuff-move to a small cabin. Reality-you just can not do the extreme we would to do with children . Medium home-land and water if possible, a home that serves my community, works for us . But when am 60 I just might be on that boat again !! Or maybe a tepee next time.
Recently my husband Ted and I downsized . Our high school son is graduating and was totally onboard with the idea. We got rid of about about half of our stuff, rented out our house, (we were upside down or would have sold) and moved into an apartment that is half the square footage of our old house. We felt we needed to shed some of the encumbrances in our lives. This move accelerates our plan to get out of debt; gives back time, effort, and money spent on home maintenance, yard maintenance, and driving the toll road; and put us much closer to the Brushy Creek ACF venue where we worship and reduces our respective drive times to work to 7-12 minutes.
Downsizing makes me feel so free. Nothing is in storage. If it didn’t fit in our new place we got rid of it. I still think we have too much stuff. We’re holding lightly to everything we have. It’s all expendable.
We are praying this move will allow us to live more missionally. We spent so much time driving and working on our home that we really didn’t have a lot of time to socialize with our neighbors. And we’ve come to realize that communities don’t really happen when church is a destination (especially a far one) so now we live a comfortable distance to invite neighbors to church events and hopefully . are intentionally getting out into the public areas of our apartment complex and neighborhood and seeking to build relationships with our neighbors. Hopefully as the weather warms we’ll make even more connections since we’re right by the pool. Woo hoo.
While I liked some of Lisi’s suggestions I sort of like the idea of having enough dishes and silverware to entertain a group of people. And, at least for us, a big screen TV and cable makes sports night or movie night a pretty good avenue for getting together with people we don’t know very well. We’ve found that amazing conversations start when people just hang out and feel comfortable in our home.
Thanks Maureen!!!!!