One of the things on my mind recently has been our recent shift towards a much simpler lifestyle.
When I say a much “simpler” lifestyle, I’m still trying to define what that means, even for us.
There have been so many factors that have come into play that have led to this, but I thought I would just take a blog post to explain some of our journey to arrive here.
When we were first married, we were broke. I mean…BROKE. I was still in college, and Theo was working for less than $10/hr. We paid our rent (and all the “bills” like internet, electric, etc were included), bought our groceries and sometimes put gas in our car. I clearly remember some grocery trips to the store where we couldn’t buy bread because our account would then be overdrawn.
Throughout the years, we have had ups and downs in our finances, but mostly we have been able to make ends meet with very little to spare. Listen, we are blessed and thankful and never once have we been starving or without heat or the ability to get ourselves somewhere important. God has always provided himself to be a fantastic provider- sometimes juuuuuust what we need to get by, and sometimes even more than that.
Because of living on a rather small income for years, Theo and I have always had to be frugal and simple by necessity. There is no Starbucks or vacation or nice clothing when it there are bills and groceries with nothing left over at the end of the month.
Living simply and being frugal became our lifestyle by way of habit, and it became engrained in us as a mentality. Until we started to make a little bit more money. And then we started to add things into our lifestyle that we NEVER could have afforded in previous years. Things like turning the heat up much higher. Going on a family vacation to Michigan this past summer. Buying new duvets for our beds, and even being able to afford the price tag on a NEW piece of furniture instead of a hand-me-down or garage sale find.
Slowly, our pattern of thinking started shifting. If we have “x” amount of money, then we can spend “x”. We bought a large house because it seemed like the logical next step and we eventually wanted a large family. Our grocery budget went up (THANK GOD I could now afford more than rice and beans!!!) and while none of these things were bad or even wrong, our mindsets just slowly started to change.
This past summer, everything kind of changed. In June, we made the very hard decision to disrupt our foster placement. We had three kids for over a year, and because of the ages, we used three bedrooms in our home (one for Theo + I, one for the littles and one for Heavenly). Once she left, we had TWO vacant rooms and were only using two bedrooms in our house. We all were struggling with grief. Listen, it doesn’t matter the circumstances, if you have lost a family member, there is grief. We all just wanted to be together all of the time. We all needed each other. We all started sleeping in the same room. Listen, we had a four bedroom home and no one wanted there “own space”. Everyone just wanted to be TOGETHER.
Around that time, we also decided to sell our house and buy/move to a fourplex apartment. Although it was going to be temporary, we decided to downsize to 900 sq ft. I went through our entire house and purged, we sold half of everything and prepared to move. Then, the move fell through.
So here we were, in our large house with four bedrooms (two used, two not). We sold or donated a significant amount of our material possessions and furniture.
Basically, we simplified.
And we loved it.
We loved everything about it.
We loved the time TOGETHER as a family.
We loved having less stuff, less clutter.
We loved that choosing to live simply didn’t mean we were BROKE, but it meant that we actually weren’t consumed with income and that while we still had to be wise with our budget, we could live free of it’s constraints.
We let go of the American dream we didn’t know we were pursuing and we LOVED it.
We spent time together on family vacation and not once did we turn on a TV or movie…and we loved it.
We explored and got outside and realized how little we didn’t need.
And that started our journey towards “simplicity”.
I’m not going to claim to be “minimalist”- we still have our big house and it’s full of material stuff. I’m not obsessed with getting rid of material possessions, but I am trying really hard to be intentional about what things I simplify in our life, and how that works for our family.
It’s not all about material possessions, either. It’s about simplifying so much more than that. It’s about a mindset, and not just a house purge.
We haven’t quite figured it all out yet. This will be a journey and I’m sure there will be stages where it doesn’t seem we live as simply, and stages where we feel like we’ve got this down. I might excel at simplifying our clothes, but not so much my home decor or my kids toys. However, I just wanted to chronicle the beginning of our journey.
Tomorrow, I’ll share some of my practical tips on pursuing a life of simplicity.
What about you? Do you find you can relate or not so much? Does a lifestyle of simplicity appeal to you? Do you have any questions about pursuing simplicity or what it might look like in the day to day that I can answer in a blog post?