In which there is a practical side to this

I’m not completely esoteric and cerebral about this simplicity thing.
A couple of people have asked what I am actually doing to reflect a simpler way of life.
Here are a few off the top of my head (while the tinies snore….time is limited!):

1. The first thing is that we’ve stopped a lot of the “doing”. Busy does not equal better/more spiritual/more important. Just like more money doesn’t equal more love or more time.  For instance, we are already feeling at our limit between Brian working full time as a carpenter plus “on-call” as a flood tech all hours of the night and weekends PLUS trying to finish his grad school work. Then we’ve got two tinies to boot. We simply couldn’t do it all and maintain our family life, let alone a love affair. So we dialed down what we could. Some people didn’t agree with some of our decisions. Like we couldn’t be that involved at our local church or attend a Bible study. But you know what was the better thing for us? To NOT go to Bible study and instead have an evening together at least once a week. That was holiness to me.
2. I’ve learned that we can both do about two things well. For me it’s my family and the household right now. Sure I have a couple things I sprinkle in like my Bible study on Thursday mornings or getting together with friends now and again. But really that’s it. I don’t have time to do major writing or freelancing right now, for instance. For Brian, it’s family and work…so having to do school as well is pushing him (and therefore me) over the edge. Boy, will we be glad when he’s done those last two classes. I’m sick of single-parenting.
3. I don’t keep a lot of clutter in the house. I spent four years accumulating crap from Target and have now spent four years getting rid of it all. Do you know how many times I have cursed Target and their wretched clearance aisles that have resulted in me spending oodles of money that I could have saved?  Many times, my friends, many times.  I have decided to embrace my small space and be present here. Instead of pining for a large house or filling this shoebox of a condo with those things. Nothing prioritizes your stuff faster than 800 sq feet. No need to save all of those vases from the florist. No need for 15 scarves. No need for books that I don’t read or even like. No need for those shoes you never wear. No need for a coffee table. No need for bar stools. No need for more Bath and Body Works crap. No need for most of those decorating items….less stuff to dust. (Sidenote: I’ve found that I’m starting to cross the border from simple to minimalist so Brian has stepped in to slow me down. I am the antithesis of a pack rat these days so he is reining me in now and then.)
4. There are big benefits to a small place. I can vacuum this place in 10 minutes, flat. I can clean the entire house - and I mean, a deep-raised-by-a-MacLeod-kind-of-clean – in less than two hours. Plus you can’t stomp off all mad because, really, where will you stomp to? The washroom? So you spent time on top of each other and get to talking.  Of course, I still want a deep freeze but that’s another post.
5. I combined contact information. I had addresses in several places – Yahoo, in Excel docs and in an enormous address book. So I picked one (Yahoo) and just consolidated all addresses in there. Then I can download an Excel file now and again when I need it (i.e. printing labels for Christmas cards).
6. I have gotten rid of all of our CDs. (Word to the masses that might want to give me a gift (ha!): never buy me another CD, please.) I converted the ones we actually listened to still (which were surprisingly few…come on….what was I doing with four (FOUR!) Celine Dion CDs???) to iTunes. That freed up the space that a lot of CDs were taking plus it again consolidated things. I’m big on consolidation in case you can’t tell. It’s my new thing.
7. I am getting rid of my photo albums. I have all of our photos on my computer, in a backup hard drive, uploaded to Snapfish for sharing and ordering PLUS I was ordering the full set and putting them into actual albums every month with captions. HELLO! Waste of time and money and energy or WHAT? Plus, Anne is just barely two and I already have 8 (EIGHT!) albums. That’s space I don’t have, sister. So now they’re all getting into a photo box, albums are on their way to the Salvation Army and I’ve stopped this pathological ordering of prints. I’ll print off or order the few that I want to frame. Otherwise, the photos on the computer and on Snapfish are enough. Seriously. This is the digital age and I need to get a clue.
8. I went through our clothes and got rid of everything that hadn’t been worn in at least 6 months. That included my “dream skinny clothes” that fit for all of six weeks before I got pregnant with Anne. Rats. But now we have space in our closets. And some skinny person that went to Salvation Army will be mighty happy. Drat her skinny hide.
9. We don’t buy toys in our house. I know. I’m the meanest mum in the world. We don’t have room for them and when toys are strewn, top to teakettle, Mummy is an absolute bear to live with (I have this on good authority). So we have one green bucket for toys and that’s it. If something comes in, something goes out. Period.
10. I try to avoid malls and shopping. It’s amazing how hard this is to do when you live in a rainy, cold climate during the winter months. But we go to the community centre or the library or to a friends house or just stay home. But this is bigger than just frugal living for me (which is obviously part of this….) but for my kids to grow up knowing that you don’t have to spend money or shop to have fun.
11. I keep myself limited on commitments – even online. So I don’t do Plaxo, Friendster or MySpace. Just Facebook for staying up with friends/family and Xanga for blogging. That’s it. I don’t do message boards much (just one special one *wink wink* “Hi, girls!”). I save all of my blogs/websites that I like to read to Google Reader so that I just have to read one page in the morning to stay on top of things instead of bookmarking and visiting dozens of sites. I have enough going on in real life.
12. I don’t have a cell phone.
13. I ask myself every time we are shopping “DO I NEED THIS?” and more importantly, “WHERE ON GOD’S GREEN EARTH WOULD I PUT IT?!?” If the first question doesn’t stop me in my tracks, the second one usually will.
14. We try to live sustainably…but still have a long way to go.
15. We try to live frugally. This is a hard one when you are paying for a (very very very expensive) graduate degree. So we work hard to make sure our expenses don’t exceed our income…not an easy feat these days. Another reason we’re looking forward to Brian being finished with school is for our finances….we have a lot of goals once those expenses are gone. Things like paying off our debt which shouldn’t take long, saving up our supply again, working towards paying off as much of our mortgage as possible, giving more of our income and so on.
16. Speaking of which, we give at least 10% of our income. We support our local church, an AIDS orphan in Rwanda, a few friends of ours that are missionaries and also do occasional donations during the season like at Union Gospel Mission. Because really, we have so much. And it’s good to keep that in mind.

Basically for me, it comes down to being mindful in my life. I want the details of life to never overtake the real life I want to live. For instance, the great thing about a tiny place is that I can clean it super-fast which gives me more time with my kids (although I make them help me…I’m a big believer in child labour….). No TV means that we either read or have conversations or get outside.
I want to have a life that matters…to my husband, to my children, to my community, to my family…a life that demonstrates the fruit of living a life in the spirit.