A Simple Life

Our crazy month of September is finally almost over.  One thing that this month has taught me in many ways through many avenues, is the blessing of simplicity.  We have begun, now that our life is a little less crazy, to reevaluate many things here at the Minion cottage. One of them is living more simply.

I am so fed up with stuff.  Americans consume more and more "stuff" every day, and much of that "stuff" ends up in a landfill for the next 200 years.  I am not an environmentalist tree-hugger, but I believe firmly that it is our God-given responsibility to take care of the land that we call home.  And I am tired of seeing people waste money, resources, and energy to get "stuff".

I am not an extremely sentimental person, and I grew up in a family off self-proclaimed "tossers" (yet my parents still have a full basement, attic, and shed, but I digress), so simplifying and minimalizing come a bit easier for me than they do for others- as you can see by my streamlined counters.  But just think about how much of your time you waste looking through 10 lbs of stuff you don't want to find the one thing that you need.  Or think about what living space you can't use in your home, office, etc because you have too much stuff.  The Bible tells us to not lay up for ourselves treasures on earth, but to lay up treasure in heaven.  That thought has been very convicting to me this month.

Being newlyweds (4.5 months!), we don't have a lot of excess stuff lying around, but we do have some already.  I think when I realized that we had gone from enough stuff to fill my bedroom and his dorm room to enough to fill a 3-bedroom house in less than 6 months, and that once we get a bigger house that the same thing might happen, I really started to reconsider our "stuff".  We have no basement, attic, garage, or shed, so all our excess "stuff" takes up an entire bedroom in our cottage.  It bothers me that we can't use one room in our house, because we're using it to store a bunch of "stuff" that we may never use.  So my project this week is to make our 3rd bedroom usable.  It will be a big project since we're storing Christmas and other house decorations, Andrew's tools, and our suitcases in here, but I am looking forward to seeing what the end result will be.

How about you?  What do you need to declutter in your room, office, house?  Take the challenge to take one part of your life, whether it be a room, attic, cabinet, or even as small as a 'junk drawer', and declutter that part of your life.  Who knows- maybe you will like that so much that you decide to keep going!

Psst...one of my favorite bloggers addressed the issue of "stuff" and our duties to be good stewards of the earth in this post here.  She also has a great series on simplifying everything from your priorities to your kitchen to your Christmas.  Check it out!