Simple Living: Ideas to Simplify Your Life
New 2 month series on how to simplify your life starting TODAY!
Simple living and organizing life with less, is something I have been passionate about for years now. Many emails and questions I get, are about the desire to live with less. Live a simpler life. Life a contented life. Is there a “perfect” way to live with less? No. Is there one right answer out there, that we all have to find and abide by? I honestly do not think so. We each have our own story and each live different lives. For a reason. For me personally, I believe what matters is what we are living for.
How do you begin to live a simpler life? This is a question that I wrestle with daily, as I walk around our house, I know we have much more than we deserve, yet hang out to much more than we need to. That is why I wanted to start this series: for a personal reason, but also to maybe help guide you into a simpler living lifestyle. I want to share my personal story and life through this series as well. As we all walk this road together.
Where to begin? I think one of the best questions you can ask yourself is:
What is most important to you?
This simple question really wraps up everything into a few simple thoughts. If you can answer this question with a list of a few things, this helps bring your focus back to what truly matters.
So, what is most important to you?
Here are a few things that are important to me:
1. Love God and share His love with others
2. Serving my husband
3. Caring for and serving those God has brought into my life
4. Being the best steward I can with what I have been given
5. Spending my time purposefully and enjoy life
It’s simple. Yet those 5 values are jam-packed with responsibility, time, and energy. But in the end, I feel that is what is most important to me. Everything else in life, I could take or leave it. And THAT is what the next step is:
GET RID OF EVERYTHING ELSE that does not fit into what is most important to you.
What does that look like? That I am still working on. To me, anything that does not fit into those 5 things, could potentially be a waste of my time. For example, watching tv doesn’t really fit into any of those categories. Will I quit watching tv? No, but typically when I watch tv, I am watching something specific (purposeful) instead of just having ambient noise in the room. Take a look at exercise. Exercise helps me be the best steward I can of my body. I find exercise helps me enjoy life, life around me, and I am choosing purposefully to do something. I used to make jewelry, collect craft supplies, etc., but found I wasn’t being the best steward of my time and money when I lost interest in some of those hobbies. You get the idea?
It is so easy to fill life with the unnecessary, the unfulfilling, and unsatisfying. What is in your life, that is NOT important to you, but you continually hang onto it, participate in it, yet dread doing it?
Narrowing down what is MOST important to you, helps keep you focused on what you value most, and in the end, helps you live a SIMPLE LIFE.
What IS most important to you? Feel free to share below!
