Living with Less Part 3

Well, we are on our way to having less to clean, trip over and store in our small home. Recently, our pastor started a series called "The Simple Life". And it has really continued to fuel our desire to clean out our home and begin to live with less.

Living with less has really moved into many areas of our lives. My recent birthday was nice as I didn't receive all this "stuff" to find a home for. On Sunday, we took more time (several hours) and went through the many boxes in our garage. We went through our TWO rubbermaid boxes of extra notebook paper, pens, pencils and misc. office supplies and reduced it to one small box. (The rest will be taken to an office in town. We went through our dress up clothes for the kids, games, and "junk drawer" boxes. We also organized and packaged up all of our aquarium items, as I am actively trying to sell our aquarium on craigslist. I also have several other things to sell. We even have a "free" pile outside of our home and over half of it is gone in less than 24 hours!!

I've created boxes for my family all over the country... A box for each sister and my parents as well as a few things for some friends in town. I took our second car load of goodies to the goodwill today and BOY, we still have SO many things!!

I have heard from a couple of you that you are working and desiring to do the same thing in your homes. I wanted to offer some encouragement and some "tips" that have helped me to rid my home of the things that are piling up but I seem to not be able to part with.

• The things that are being stored in your home should only be "seasonal" items. These things should be used at least once a year. If you have things that you must "keep" they should have a place in your home that you can access them easily and you know exactly where they are. Keeping loads of cards in a box in the basement, guarantees that you will never remember that they are there, therefore never use them and you've wasted the money to purchase them, and the property taxes that you're spending on your home to store them.
• If there are things that you just CAN'T part with, put them in a pile and allow yourself a "veto". Ken and I allow each other vetos every once in a while. Things that are sentimental to either of us, we can choose to keep them. But these things are few.
• I also have a box designated to "sentimental" things. I have magazines, programs, memory item etc from our dating, marriage, high school, college, kids first years etc. And, although we haven't gotten to them, I will be more discerning to what I keep as the years go on.

Good Luck to those of you who are working towards living lean. If you have 40 minutes or so, I would encourage you to visit Calvary Community's Website and listen to the two sermons from 2/21 and 2/28 regarding the Simple Life. They are MP3 files - no video.