Living With Excess

As you are aware of, I love to simplify and organize. That isn’t any new news to most of you to say the least! Even though I stopped blogging at Organizing Life With Less (and now all of the posts are imported into this blog!), I still enjoy going through our home and getting rid of what we do not need.

I’ve been inspired again by a book I am reading called “More or Less” by Jeff Shinabarger. I am only 47 pages into it, but I have felt the nudge again to think about how we live our life. Particularly in regards to HOW much we own. This quote really caught my attention:

“Excess is that thing that we could give away today, and it wouldn’t change a single aspect of our tomorrow. Excess is more than what we need – and in turn it may be exactly what someone else needs.”


I look around our home and I think about how many things I could give away today and not notice one bit of change. I own far more than I need.


I have been looking through our cupboards and notice that I have bottles and boxes of food that I haven’t touched in quite some time. Our freezer is filled with things food items that have been there for probably over a year (granted some of them being from our garden). As I perused through our cupboards, I thought about taking the challenge that Shinabarger suggested – see how long you could just eat out of your cupboards alone. When I started to truly look deep into our freezer and cupboards, I realized we too, could go a LONG ways!


So that is what I am setting out to do. I am not going to take it to the extreme and try to eat every single meal from our cupboards, but over the next few weeks, I am going to try and be more creative and use some of the food (THE EXCESS) that is no longer worth keeping on our shelves and simplify our cupboards. Some food I have donated and others I have planned for some recipes. All this in attempt to remember that excess is in our home and what am I going to do about it? How can getting rid of some of the excess change our life? Simplify it?

If I remember, I will try and blog about some of the recipes that I came up with (or had to be creative with) in order to clear the excess. I do plan on buying staples still (like milk and eggs) but from here on out, I am going to try and do without.

Are you up for the challenge? How many days or weeks would it take for you to clear out your cupboards? Clear out your freezer? Let me know if this is something you are going to try and do as well and if your family even notices!