As we're nearing the end of the month, please post comments of your learnings and of resources that you have found helpful to you. For example, a few friends have told me that www.flylady.com has helped them gain some control over their home. The site offers tips and coaching for de-cluttering, as well as many other helpful hints. Any other resources you'd recommend?
A year or so ago, Alice, who is a queen resourcer, passed on to me a list of suggestions for simple living that was written from two sources: Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster, and Margin:Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives by Richard A. Swenson. I have kept it on our fridge and have done read-throughs of it several times, using it as a tool to review how my personal life and how our family is doing in regards to simplicity. I'm copying the list for you below.
SUGGESTIONS FOR SIMPLE LIVING
Simplicity is: voluntary, free, uncluttered, natural, creative, authentic, focused, disciplined, diligent, healthful.
Simplicity is not: easy, legalistic, proud, impoverished, ascetic, neurotic, ignorant, escapist.
RELATIONSHIP
Cultivate a close relationship with God. Practice regular hospitality. Help each other, emphasize service. Always speak the truth: develop a habit of plain, honest speech. If you consent to do a task, do it. Avoid flatteries and half-truths. Make honesty and integrity the distinguishing characteristics of your speech. Don't judge. Reject anything that breeds the oppression of others. Consciously seek to identify with the poor and forgotten. Start by visiting hospitals, prisons, nursing homes. Schedule "simple" dates with your spouse. Teach your children.
ACTIVITIES
Make your commitments simple. Don't overwork. Fast periodically from media, food, people. Elevate reading, go to the library. Reject anything that is producing an addiction in you. Cut down on the use of addictive, non-nutritional food and drinks such as alcohol, coffee, tea, soda, sugar, chocolate. Simplify Christmas and other holidays. Develop the habit of homemade celebrations.
PACE AND ATMOSPHERE
Slow down. Do not exhaust your emotional bank account. Lie fallow. Say no. Restrict/eliminate television watching. Turn off or mute advertisements. Learn to enjoy solitude.
POSSESSIONS AND FINANCE
Cultivate contentment, desire less. Resist covetousness and consumerism. Buy things for their usefulness, not their status. Learn to enjoy things without owning them. Benefit from places of "common ownership"- libraries, parks, rivers, beaches. De-accumulate. Develop the habit of giving things away. Offer others the use of your possessions.. Develop a network of exchange. Avoide impulse buying. Don't buy now, pay later. Avoid credit cards if they are a problem. De-emphasize respectability. Simplify your wardrobe-give away excess. Learn how to make do with a lower income instead of needing a higher one.
APPRECIATION
Be grateful for things large and small. Emphasize a joyful life. Appreciate creation. Send cards of encouragement and appreciation when others are not expecting it.
SPIRITUAL LIFE
Make the Word central. Meditate on and memorize Scripture. Pray. Encourage simple worship. Shun anything that distracts you from seeking first the Kingdom of God.
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5 comments:
Thanks, Laura ... for posting these. This is such a great list.
One thing that helps me with simplicity is choosing what to focus my mind on. For instance, I can look at a Pottery Barn catalog and become very confident that I NEED a new piece of furniture or something. OR, I can subscribe to magazines that help me focus on issues related to poverty and Jesus' heart for the poor, like one of my favorites, PRISM. You can subscribe to PRISM by going to the Evangelicals for Social Action website, which might be something like ESA.org. However, you might have to "google" it to find it.
Simply choosing to read about God's work in the world on behalf of the poor and marginalized makes purchasing a new pillow seem not that important.
Also, we keep large bins in the basement and fill them with items for Goodwill. I took several bags and boxes of items to Goodwill on Wednesay and OH, it felt so good! The constant removal of clutter is a great way to stay "addicted" to simplicity.
That's all for today. I am pleased and ashamed to let you all know that our credit card bill is 1/2 what it usually is for the month. Thanks for being a community around this experiment. I am thrilled with how it feels to simply spend less in an effort to honor God in the area of money and stuff.
Can't wait to hear some more of your ideas...
P. S. Just to keep the record straight, we always pay our credit card bill off every month. That is a testimony to my husband's incredible money management skills, not mine.
Thank you, Laura and Alice for this opportunity to broaden and deepen our understanding and practice of simplicity. I feel like the public radio listener who enjoys the programming but does not contribute to its support. I have logged on a couple of times this month to read, but have not taken the time to comment. I guess my own need to keep things simple this month meant that blogging was not for me. I have been enriched by everyone's comments and have often considered them in the wee hours of the morning when sensible people are sound asleep.
I have LOTS of thoughts on this topic - too many to unload in the time remaining for this exercise. Please do revisit this topic again and again. Like the wise Dave Bartlett says, "Vision leaks." We need to be reminded to pay attention to what is truly important. God has filled our lives with abundance and given us the freedom to choose. We can drown in the abundance or we can use His incredible gifts to glorify Him. To paraphrase Rob Bell, "There is a life where we have enough time; where we can deal with our stuff; where we don't feel like a slave to our cell phone, our computer or a list of things to do; where we have time for what really matters."
Such a life is not to be found in a culture that proclaims "Just Do It" and "The one with the most Rubbermaid storage boxes wins." In the last several years of working with individuals and groups on organizing issues, I have seen a deep spiritual craving. Time-management and stuff-management fixes have become a huge industry. Some of it is good and some of it just gets in the way of what we need most of all. God. Simply God.
In 1995, we moved my Grandmother from her huge house to a nursing home. It was incredibly difficult for her to leave behind so many of her things and a huge task for us to deal with all the stuff she could not take with her. At the end of her life in 2000, I especially noticed how contented she was in her tiny room surrounded by all that she really needed. I used to share this story when I did speaking engagements, but I set it aside because it seems to make people uneasy. I think people don't like to go to that place where they think about parting with their stuff. It used to make me uneasy too, but now I've spent so many years of intentional thought (and sometimes action) on this topic that I truly look forward to the day of having all I need in my little corner of the world. I read that at the end of her life, Mother Teresa owned just 6 things. A blue sweater, a chair and a Bible, and I don't remember what else. I often find myself looking at something as I'm cleaning my house and thinking, "Do I really want this bad enough to dust it?" And then it goes to the donation bag I keep in my car trunk.
The point of this rambling is that simplicity is a journey. Having a traveling partner along the way is a true blessing. Our culture distracts us daily with loud voices of consumerism and fear. Our voices speaking the joy of simplicity are part of that culture too. Alice and Laura, thank you again for beginning these conversations. I look forward to God's continued leading for us in this area.
If I have a purpose for living more simply and give away what I save it keeps me more focused. Laura says she spent $600 less. That would support the family of a persecuted pastor for a year. http://www.worldserve.org/suffering_pastors.html
$100 pays for a child in Haiti to go to school for a year. Ask Becky Bartlet or Doug Tensen about that.
For vacations we often camp to save money. (Orchard Hill trips are great!) or stay with relatives.
My husband or I took each of our sons on a third world mission trip to help them (and us) know how much of the world lives and the abundance we have and hopefully teach us all more about giving and serving instead of getting.
We do projects to raise money for giving-like fixing up cars, selling on ebay, etc.
Reading biographies about committed Christians like The Heavenly Man.
We try to share our home with others.
Listening to my husband's experiences-he today returned safely from the Philipines-PTL.
He said on one island he went to half of the children elementary school age (about 200) do not attend school because their family does not have the $4 for school fees and the $2 for uniforms. A few dollars can go a long ways in many countries.
PS. The $4 school fees is an annual charge!
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