For me (alice), there are multiple reasons why our family would try this 30 Days of Simplicity experiment:
1. I know how easy it is to get caught up in our consumeristic culture and we need some intentional ways to get untangled from all the messages that tell us real life can be found in "buying stuff." I think a 30-day fast, of sorts, could help us get out from under the weight of our "BUY MORE!" society.
2. We have too much stuff. Like Laura said, we lose sight of what's important when we are drowning in our stuff. Shoot ... I can lose sight of the other side of the room! In some way, making literal space in our home might help us make figurative space in our heart and soul for God, for others, for generosity.
3. Others don't have enough ... and we want to help more. The simple truth of the matter is that if we spend less, we can give more. Period. We can give more to God's work at Orchard, to House of Hope, to Bread for the World, or Feed my Starving Children. I want to see how little we can spend for 30 days to see what simple habits we can include in our "real life." Maybe by changing a bunch of little things, we can free up more resources to give to God's work in our world.
4. I want to teach my kids that we are more than what we can buy. I want to teach them that we have more than enough. I want to teach them to be full of gratitude, instead of just full of desire for more. In some ways they are way ahead of me, though ... so I may just find that they end up teaching me these things!
I could write more about the slavery of debt, about my desire to have a more compassionate heart, about learning to be more obedient to Jesus' radical teachings about money and stuff ... but I think the 4 reasons I just wrote are enough for now.
The Shireys are going (to try) to cut our grocery spending by 1/3. We hope to buy nothing "new" for the month. No clothes, books, junk food. No dining out. No once-a-day "biggie" Diet Cokes from Wendy's (ouch). Nothing other than necessities.
We hope to do some purging, too ... to transport some stuff from our home to Goodwill. We will purge catalogs and magazines that make us want to buy more stuff from our shelves. We hope to eat the food we have in our pantry and freezer until it is all gone. We hope to give away clothes and shoes and coats that we aren't using. You get the picture. We'll see how it goes ...
One last thing ... we also want to make this a month of gratitude. So, we'll do some writing about that along the way, too. A month of simplicity AND celebration. I think God might just smile on this!
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2 comments:
Best wishes on this effort, I will be monitoring to see how it goes. My wife and I live what we think is a pretty simple life. I prefer the term efficiently generous, implying that we try to minimize waste with trivial things so we can be generous in the big things.
Here's an idea for future posts. One of the challenges with this topic is to avoid legalism. To one extreme, we can feel extreme guilt and paralyze ourselves when we look at the sorry state of much of the world. On the other hand, we want to have some objective ways and goals to shoot for, such as the 33% spending cut that you mentioned.
If we desire simplicity, how can we avoid legalism and still take some significant steps to cut the clutter in our families' lives?
Austin,
Thanks for your comments. I hope that you will continue throughout the month to respond to posts and to share what you and Megan have been learning along your journey. As with any spiritual discipline, there's danger for messed up motives, legalism, and self-righteousness. Your question is an important one...we'll definitely make it a post for discussion. Thanks. We're gearing up to post on a regular basis through January. Really grateful to have you as a part of this blogging dialogue-
Laura
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