simplicity

Simplicity is Not… {Part 2}

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Happy Monday, everyone! I hope your weekend was as relaxing as a weekend is supposed to be.

Did you make anything that you normally buy? I didn’t try anything new this week, but I did make a batch of corn tortillas; we had some friends over for dinner Thursday night, so I made tacos with fresh tortillas. Definitely gave my tortilla press a workout, making 40-ish tortillas!

Today I want to talk about another thing that simplicity is not.

Simplicity is not getting rid of all your stuff. That’s minimalism, which has its own benefits, but I’m not going to go into that too much today. Unless my thoughts lead there as I type… we shall see.

Here’s the thing about possessions. If you use it regularly, it’s not superfluous. If you’re willing and able to get rid of it at a moment’s notice, for whatever reason, it’s reasonable to have. If it has a home in your house that you’re happy with, then keep it. Get my drift?

But. You knew there was going to be a “but,” didn’t you?

But. If you don’t use it, wear it, read it, or have a good place to keep it, then you have to do some thinking and searching within yourself to decide if it’s really worth keeping. I still struggle with the “what ifs,” and I like to think I’m pretty go with the flow regarding our possessions by now. We have two deep-dish casserole dishes, for example. Could I get by with one? Probably. But (there’s that word again…) I do occasionally use both, particularly on church potluck days. It’s nice to have both in case I’m cooking for a large group. And they both have a home in my cabinet, and are not (usually) in the way. So I keep them.

Along with simplicity not being the same as getting rid of your stuff, it also is not against the idea of purchasing new items. For example, I got an Amazon gift card for Christmas, and I could have used it to buy a Kindle book or an Amazon digital video (something that wouldn’t take up real estate in our home), but I chose to get a tortilla press. I’ve just been rolling our tortillas out by hand until now. The tortilla press has given me the ability to make fresh tortillas more often, which is a win in my book. There’s nothing bad in a homemade tortilla (well, a corn one anyway; flour ones need some sort of fat to taste good). So the more we can have this delicious delicacy, the better we are in my book. Before you make a purchase, though, you want to make sure that the item you’re buying fits in your values, whatever they may be (yes, I know they probably aren’t exactly the same as mine, and that’s okay).

For my final thoughts on this subject, I want to explore Scripture’s take on minimalism.

These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans,  but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay. Acquire no gold or silver or copper for your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics or sandals or a staff, for the laborer deserves his food. And whatever town or village you enter, find out who is worthy in it and stay there until you depart. As you enter the house, greet it. And if the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it, but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town. Truly, I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town.

~Matthew 10: 5-15, ESV~

Did you catch what Jesus sent them out with? Nothing. The disciples weren’t supposed to take a bag of belongings. They weren’t supposed to accept wages for their work while they were out preaching the gospel. They weren’t even supposed have an extra tunic or pair of shoes! They were promised food. That’s it.

This week’s challenge: Think through each purchase you make (at least one or two of them). If you don’t know whether or not you’ll use the item, or if you can’t think of where you’ll put it once you get it home, don’t buy it. You can always go back for it once you’ve answered those questions.

Blessings,

Wendy

Simplicity is Not… {Part 1}

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simplicity

 

Welcome back to my exploration of what simplicity means to me. This week, and for the next couple of weeks, I want to explore a few aspects of what simplicity is not. Once we establish those parameters, we’ll dive into what it is.

The aspect I want to explore this week is that simplicity is not taking the easy way out.

In other words, simple is not synonymous with lazy.

The idea for this series came to me while I was rolling out some homemade flour tortillas the other day, and my brain started working, asking “does making tortillas meet your goal of living simply?”

In a word, yes. It does.

But Wendy, making homemade tortillas is way more complex than buying them. Isn’t it? 

Again, yes. But that doesn’t mean it’s not an aspect of simplicity.

To me, simplicity means caring for my family in as wholesome, edifying a way as possible. It means providing my children with a non-rushed, well-rounded childhood, while imparting our values on them. It means offering food that is not only healthier, but tastes better, than the processed items. It means striving for self-sufficiency.

A couple of months ago, the kids and I read Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher for school. It’s a lovely novel, written in 1917, about a girl who is suddenly thrust from city life to country life with virtually no warning. It takes Elizabeth Ann (later called Betsy) a lot of adjustment to acclimate to life on the farm, but in the end (spoiler alert) she decides that she likes it better. When given the chance to go back to city life at the end of the book, she declines. Betsy learns that the simple things in life – the birth of kittens, churning butter, walking to school – make her happier than she was being coddled by her aunt in the city.

I think we can learn a lot from Betsy.

I don’t mean that we should all go and live on farms in order to find our own brand of happiness, because honestly, that probably wouldn’t make most of of happy. But we can find peace in the things of the past that are considered “lost arts.”

My challenge to you this week: Think of something you normally buy and try to make it instead. Tortillas, bread, butter, paper… the list is endless. But pick one thing and see if it brings you a sense of calmness while you’re creating something with your own hands.

–Wendy

What Simplicity Means to Me: A 52-Week Exploration

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I had a huge long post written out on this topic, and looking back at it, it’s very meandering and not very well organized, so I’ve decided instead to explore the topic a little bit at a time, with something new each week. Since it’s Monday now, that’ll be the day I post my simplicity entries.

Hopefully throughout the rest of the year, I’ll share tips, reasons, and other things as they come up on the topic. If you have questions, please leave them in the comments or fill out the contact me form, and I’ll do my best to answer them in future posts.

But for today, I think I’ll talk about my family’s journey to getting where we are now.

It started with hubby. He grew up with a mom who, though not a simplicity or minimalism person by any stretch of the imagination, had no problem whatsoever throwing away toys etc… when they weren’t picked up. I grew up with a mom who was always frustrated with me and my brother for not cleaning our rooms, but rarely did anything concrete to solve the problem. So, now that we’re adults, it was much easier for him to get on the “get rid of stuff” bandwagon than it was for me. It’s still hard for me sometimes, although I’m getting better.

He started reading blogs about minimalism, and the idea intrigued him, so he brought it up to me to find out what I thought of giving it a try. I was definitely skeptical at first. I definitely fell into the “what if we need {insert item here]?” category. A lot.

“We need dishes for 8, even though there are only 4 (at the time) of us. We need lots of clothes so we have options. We need the old silverware even though we just got new stuff for Christmas; what if we get rid of it and then run out during a dinner party?”

You can see how that particular game can go on forever.

Then, when I was pregnant with Small Fry, he got me this Kindle book.

minimalist mom's guide

(The “look inside” feature won’t work on my blog; I just grabbed the image from Amazon.)

I devoured the book. I started reading Rachel’s blog. I started reading the other blogs she recommended in the book. And I got used to the idea of getting rid of stuff. She even dared to suggest not automatically keeping all the gifts you receive at your baby shower (gasp!). At the time I read this, I didn’t expect that I’d have a baby shower this time around since Small Fry was baby #3, but my step-mother-in-law threw me a surprise shower. And guess what? By the time the shower came along, I’d read the book again, and had started getting rid of some of our stuff, and even though it was weird at the time, we returned some of the gifts from the baby shower. Not everything. Mostly just the duplicates. But stuff went back. And we got some much needed supplies that didn’t come in during the shower instead (mostly diapers; we didn’t get many of those at the shower because people knew our ultimate goal was gDiapers or cloth).

Fast forward 6 months. We moved out of our 1100 square foot, 2 bedroom apartment into a 2000+ square foot (I’m not sure exactly), 4 bedroom house. We wouldn’t have chosen the house on our own, but we prayed for a domicile closer to our church, and about a month later my brother’s father-in-law called me up and said his rental was available and would we be interested in renting it. When I asked him the price, he essentially said “you tell me.” Since it seemed clear to us that God had placed the house within our budget, and it was 25 miles closer to church, we took it. But I’ve digressed. When we moved, we took two truckloads of stuff to Goodwill. We were able to move in one of the small U-Hauls plus two pickups.

Twelve months later, here we are. Christmas just passed. And guess what? We didn’t keep all of those presents, either. Only the ones that were necessary and/or met our life goals (things like “reducing plastic” and “toys that last only, please”). And while it’s still a little weird returning gifts, it’s less so than it was the first time around.

Now, don’t think this series is going to be all about minimalism – it isn’t. But we had to embrace minimalism in order to get to simplicity. It may not be that way for you, but it was for us. So that was the right place to start.

I hope you continue to join me the rest of the year. Maybe you’ll start to embrace the simple things in life too!

Blessings,

Wendy

P.S. I can’t post on January 6th without sending a special wish to my hubby: Happy Anniversary!! The past 13 years have been the best of my life. I love you.