Never Again. (Or, Enough is Enough)

As I sit in my mostly empty house, surrounded only by what remains of the contents of my kitchen, a half dozen boxes of photographs and albums, and a hodgepodge of about 3 or 4 boxes of random items that still need to make their way to our new home--our house-on-wheels--my heart resonates with only one thought:


Never again.


Never again will I allow myself to mindlessly acquire "stuff".
Never again will I allow my mental capacities to be taxed with the task of maintaining and caring for said unnecessary "stuff".
Never again will I allow my time and energy to be taken up by things at the detriment of spending time with people.


Maybe this is all a little overdramatic (I'm good for that, just ask my husband--or any member of my immediate family for that matter!), but realistically not by much.


Our family has spent a solid 6 months of ruthlessly purging our lives of all of the extraneous "stuff" surrounding us, in order to be in a position to move into our 400 (or so) glorious square feet of indoor living space and make our home travel with us wherever we go. That doesn't allow room for much, if any, excess. If we don't need it with us on the road, for the most part we don't need it at all in our lives.


A few exceptions include the lawn and garden items and some larger tools that we used regularly in our house-on-dirt, but I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about the 5 sets of dinnerware, each serving between 4-12 people. I'm talking about the equivalent of a full van load with all seats down full of books that were essentially donated to Half-Price Books. I'm talking about the 12 tubs of outgrown children's clothing that we were storing for who knows what reason, since we are pretty much 100% positive that our family is complete with the six of us. I'm talking about the several large boxes of teaching supplies that were at least 10 years old and had not been used in at least 5 years. These things were all taking up space in my brain--somewhere, because I knew that they all existed! These things were all items that I had to inventory and decide how to re-home, and put forth the effort to find those new homes for the items.


All of this brain-power, time and energy could be much better spent with my family, my friends, or even with being more available with my time to just "be" with acquaintances and strangers. I never want to trade away my time and energy for "stuff" in this way ever again.


Now, I recognize that we could have just hauled in a dumpster and thrown everything unnecessary away and been done with it, but adding another irresponsible act onto our negligence in the acquisition of the "stuff" would only make matters worse. We strive to do the right thing in all that we do, and a big part of this is with stewardship. Just because I don't need 6 sets of glassware doesn't mean that someone, somewhere does not need them. So, instead of pitching the extra sets of glasses, we sold or donated them to either an individual or organization who could use them. And we have done the same with approximately 2/3 of our belongings since January 1, 2012.


Of what remains, we've stored about 1/3 of our belongings (including the furniture which are heirloom pieces) and the remainder is what we are moving into the RV with us.


The jury is still out on if all of the time and energy spent selling those items that we sold before sending to the donate pile was worth it. The total is in the $1000s of dollars--that we've in turn spent on items that we've needed to transition into our new home. So I'm inclined to say that it has been worth our while. I also know that we have been able to sell most of these things at a really great price to people who needed them and we have walked away with some really rich stories and experiences in the process.


We've been able to donate extensively, not just in our thrice monthly van loads to Goodwill, but also to many organizations and individuals who could specifically use our unneeded items. Many items that were otherwise destined for the landfill or Goodwill found new homes as beds in transitional housing projects, restocking the clothing bank of a Community Pregnancy Center which was destroyed by a flood earlier this year, shoes that will provide both jobs and footwear for a community on the African continent, cloth diapers for the next 2-3 years for a friend's new baby (who is due to be born any day now!), and seed items for a yard sale to help fund our dear friends' adoption.


Through it all, we've kept with our family standard of only sending 2-3 kitchen bags of trash to the landfill each week. I say this not to boast, because I know that all households are different and that not all communities offer the same recycling opportunities that ours does, but to demonstrate that downsizing and purging does not always involve sending large amounts to the landfill. If done in a responsible manner, your excess can lend itself toward someone else obtaining their "enough".


And really, that's what it's all about.
Learning when enough is enough, so that everyone can have enough.


That's what I desire to be about, and what Jason and I desire for our family to be about. In order to make this more than simply words, but put action to it, we've walked a long road as a family over the past 6 months to get to this point. However, I'll venture to say that we've not yet arrived, and I hope that I never feel as though we have.


Until everyone has "enough", I hope that I can always find space in my life to contribute to that, however that may look like.


But again I say, never again. Never again will I let that which is most important be buried beneath the weight of all that simply appears to be of value.

A Recovering Perfectionist and The Pursuit of Excellence

As we're systematically working through all of our "stuff", we have pretty much touched every.single.item. that we own--or we will, before all is said and done. We're not deciding what to get rid of, so much as we're deciding what to keep. It sounds so similar, but the two are polar opposites. The former asks the question, "What can I live without?" and removes that from your home. The latter asks the question, "What can I not live without?" and brings that back into your home. See the difference?

So, while it's mostly been more tedious that challenging, I ran into a roadblock last night.

For the first time in at least 7 years I opened the box of things I have saved from high school. First I looked through scrapbooks and photos (mid-90's mega-huge-hair and grunge styles were totally rad, right?!). Then I pulled out a notebook that my best friend and I used to pass notes--way back before smart phones and texting. Then I glanced at some awards and my high school diploma buried in the middle of the box. Excellent place to store that, no doubt. And then I found it. The file passed to me from my parents full of my report cards, standardized test scores, college admission and scholarship letters. And I didn't like what came next.

Memories of who I was, earlier on this journey, came back full force. See, I was a pretty good student, scored better than average on those SATs and ACTs that no one tells you how little they mean after graduation anyway, and earned several scholarships to help finance my way through 4 years at a private university. And I took way too much pride in that when I was a teenager. I was a perfectionist and 15 years ago, these papers represented who I was. 30-Something Stephanie was suddenly transported back to Teenage Stephanie and it was hard to face who I once was, in light of who I am today.

I strongly believe that the pursuit of excellent is both a worthwhile and holy endeavor. I've never been disappointed that I gave my best effort, but have been sheepish more than once when I gave less than my best. However, pursuing excellence is very different from perfection, which I have never seen positive results from. God alone is perfect, and striving for perfection will always leave you empty and hollow. It's a results-driven mindset that sets yourself up for failure, more times than not. It's the student who studies hard for a test, gives their best effort and earns a 98% on the exam--only to be disappointed that they didn't get the other 2%.

In college I finally started to work through my perfectionism, as a student, when the proudest that I've ever been about a grade in a course in my entire life was a C in Chemistry. I worked my butt off for that C and wanted to shout about it from the rooftops. It meant more than the dozens of A's I had received in my career as a student, and even if it kept me from the Dean's List that semester, that mattered so much less than the fact that I did my best in a class that was so far beyond where my natural abilities lie.

I will also fully admit that perfectionism is as much of a disease as alcoholism or any other psychological addiction. In the same way that alcoholism takes the consumption of alcohol to an unhealthy point, perfectionism takes the pursuit of excellence to an unhealthy point. I say that I'm a recovering perfectionist, because I have to make the choice every day to fall back into the trap of perfectionism or to decide to give my best and that my best is good enough. And sorting through the box that takes me back to a time when my focus was off-course. A time when my best wasn't good enough. A time when the best was all that mattered to me.

With four children of my own now to raise, I see how ingrained this confusion of perfection with excellence is. Every day we talk about their days at school with our older girls, and in Kindergarten and Prep-K, it's mostly behavior that comes up and how they measured up on their classroom behavior charts. Without fail--and it doesn't matter if she was on "Terrific Tiger" or "Right-On Rabbit" or anything in between, I ask my daughter if she did her best. When she answers 'Yes', I tell her how proud that I am of her and thank her for choosing to do her best. If she answers 'No', then we talk about how to make different choices the next time. We always turn the focus back on her actions and choices. It's easy now that there aren't grades to figure into the equation. That will definitely make things more challenging, to eliminate the focus on grades and emphasize effort. Will we get it all right? Absolutely not! That's part of parenting. You give it your best and still don't get it just right. I don't even want to imagine trying to be a perfectionist parent. Talk about setting yourself up for failure! However, I am determined to save my children--particularly my daughters who perfectionism is so much more dangerous for--from walking that road. They'll have their own struggles in life, but this is one that I hope to spare them from.

So, what about that box from high school? I purged a few items near the top, but quickly repacked the rest. If I only return a handful of boxes to storage, this one needs to be one of them. At this point, it's a box that I cannot live without. In part, because the memories of who I once was are still too fresh and too raw to appropriately sort through the box. In part, because there's a piece of me that still needs that reminder, on the days when perfectionism seems to win, that the fight to tip the balance toward excellence is worth it. However, mostly because someday--maybe 7 more years from now--I'll pull out this box and see how much further down this road of being a recovering perfectionist that I am, that it finally means nothing to me. On that day, whenever that may be, I cannot wait to send that file to the recycling center along with yesterday's newspaper and the pile of junk mail. Someday.

Taking a step back: why are we doing what we are doing?

So I realized after posting last night about kicking the microwave out of our kitchen--which conveniently saved me from making an impulse cup of chai tea today, because it was "too much effort" to pull out a pot to heat the milk on the stove (lame, I know...hopefully I'll get past that soon)--that we may need to clarify for our readers exactly what we are doing and why we're doing what we are doing.


We've been living in our current home for almost 8 years. When we moved in, it was just Jason and me, our cat, a few hand-me-down pieces of furniture and 27 boxes full of everything that we owned in the world--in impeccably labeled and inventoried boxes, no less--because Jason totally rocks the packing and moving thing!


Fast forward seven-and-a-half years and we have added 4 kids, subtracted a cat, added a house full of furniture, rooms filled with "stuff", and built a storage shed which is full of what doesn't fit in the garage. While I recognize that we are nowhere near the "Danger Zone" of becoming hoarders, and by American standards we already live pretty simply, we had become lax with living our value of stewardship and were uncomfortable with the level of consumption that we had reached.

1200 cubic-feet of fabulous "extra" storage space!

While child-bearing years and the sleep-deprived haze of the past 7 years do explain part of how this has happened, it's not really an excuse for us. We are responsible for our actions and decisions, even those made on auto-pilot. We have acquired more than we have mindfully decided to bring into our lives, and have added people to our home--who we deliberately chose to add and love with all of our being--that also bring in "stuff" without consciously thinking about it. When we looked around and saw what was happening around us, this past autumn we decided that it was time to take a step back, re-evaluate our priorities and shift gears so that the life that we are living is the life that we are choosing. It was time to move from living on the default setting to deliberate living.


It's amazing how that becomes so much more possible when you are neither preparing for nor adjusting to life with a new baby, as had been the norm for us for the past 7 years. We

How much is too much?

We're committed.

Solidly in the thick of it.

We've been feeling it for awhile now and have turned the corner to take the decision seriously and put the action behind our desire.

It's time to downsize.

When you say that at 60, no one bats an eye. Of course--as you look to retirement or the "empty nest years", or whatever you have planned for the next 1/3 of your life, a normal transition is to downsize.

When you say that at 30, most people look at you like you've grown a third eyeball. Especially when you talk minimalism while raising 4 young children. However, our perspective is that this is precisely the time for us to do it, before we get too caught up in accumulation and live life while it is ours to live.

American culture tells us that now are the prime years to gather wealth, accumulate the treasures that will fill our lives and our homes for decades to come and to set our sights on bigger and better. While we wholeheartedly agree with this statement, our definitions of wealth, treasures and bigger and better are different from most of Americans. Our desire to gather wealth is to gather a wealth of experiences. The accumulation of treasures is in the moments shared with those that we love and making space for the quantity of time from which quality time can emerge. In setting our sights on bigger and better, we are looking for how we can make a bigger impact on our world and make the lives of those around us better than they were yesterday.

Now, this is all most definitely possible while also accumulating stuff, which we have also spent much of the past decade doing, but for us we have passed the balance point on the fulcrum. In taking a step back and re-evaluating the whys of what we do, we see that a lot of stuff has crept into our lives without a real purpose. We want the things around us to be useful, beautiful and purposeful. We desire to keep a proper perspective that our "stuff" is just "stuff". Too often we forget that we are just stewarding the resources we've been blessed with. If we hold onto something too tightly for fear of scarcity, it can begin to possess us, and poor stewardship ensues. Alternatively, as we hoard possessions to the point where we don't even know what we own, a similar lack of stewardship emerges.

For instance, how many sets of dishes do we really need? Without looking into my cabinets, I'm pretty sure that I have at least 4 different sets of full place settings for between 4-12 people. Really?!? That's a little ridiculous for me, considering I can't recall ever having a dinner party that required all of the sets to be used at once. It's time to let some of these go to someone who would put them to good use and steward them well.

What about the shelves upon shelves of books that I've read once? If I'm not going to read the book again, a better way for me to steward these resources is to sell or give the books to someone who will read them. Owning books does not make one a reader. Reading books makes one a reader.

When my father died suddenly at the age of 58, he left behind a handful of expansive barns and garages full of treasures that he collected over his years. For what? For someone (many someones!) else to sort through and determine what was worth keeping and what to find a new home for. After watching my mother and his brother labor through this process for the better part of 18 months, it confirmed for me that I want to keep a tight reign on accumulation. I'd rather my family have a quick job of sorting through few things after I'm gone and less time laboring over how to re-home possessions and wondering if it was something that I valued.

As I mentioned, my father died at 58, his mother died at 58, and her father before her also died at 58. If I was a superstitious woman, I'd say I'm likely already over-the-hill! Fortunately, I have grand plans of living a vibrant life well into my 60s while I'm still young, then being the fun and quirky old lady in the neighborhood when I'm in my 70s, pretending to be senile as I move through my 80s and then when I'm in my 90s and actually do start to lose my mind no one will ever know the difference. However, with part of my family tree ending abruptly only 2/3 of the way through life, I do look at life and how to live it a bit differently. With retirement not guaranteed, I refuse to put off plans for "someday" that can be made today. I want to live life while it is still mine to live and not come to the end of it wishing that I had spent less time striving to accumulate and financing "bigger and better" and more time actually living.

So, as we continue to simplify our lives to make room for life, we recognize that in a society that marks success with "bigger and better", our value of "less is more" is almost absurdly counter-cultural. However, I don't think we'll really miss the 3 extra sets of flatware or dozen extra sets of bed linens that do not add real value to our lives in the same way that the freedom of not being possessed by our possessions will.

***Disclaimer: Our definition of "enough" may be very different from our readers, and that's totally okay! It may even change over time, as ours has. Whether your family lives in a home with 2,000-square-feet per person or 50-square-feet per person, we all have to find that balance for ourselves and it's different for each person.***

--Update: Shortly after reading this, a friend sent this link for a 5 minute video at TED on this topic.  

Christmas. Simply.

Have you noticed it?

The evergreen garland appearing on public buildings as Halloween candy was still fresh in the trick-or-treat pails. The lights springing up on houses in your neighborhood. The endless refrain of Christmas carols playing in the malls, and even in the grocery stores.

It seems as though Christmas creeps in earlier and earlier each year, and becomes a game of one-up-man-ship by everyone trying to create a more grand extravaganza than the year before. Even "Black Friday", the un-official start to holiday shopping, is inching into Thanksgiving Day with many stores opening their doors next Thursday night for shoppers who cannot wait until 3:00am.

Before I go on, please understand that just because it doesn't work for me, does not mean that I am poo-poo-ing extravagant Christmas celebrations as a whole. They certainly can and do have their place, and I know that our perspective on Christmas is not a one-size-fits-all view either.


That being said, I'm already feeling Christmas burn-out, and Thanksgiving is still a week away. For most of our life together, Jason and I have valued living simply, but have focused in on this priority in a more intentional way over the course of the past year or so. We see so much excess around us and in our home that distracts and deflects from that which is most important and we are working to simplify our lives to be more in line with the vision of who we should be and what we believe that God has called us to do.


Christmas just amplifies this, in society and personally, and I have felt the pull early this year to plan ahead, in order to be mindful of what is important to us, and to set out our plans for Christmas ahead of the busy-ness that bombards us beginning November 25.


For us, experiences, people and keeping the coming of our Christ as the focus of Christmas are our of primary importance to us. We want to make sure that the way that we celebrate Christmas reflects that. Our kids will remember what we place value on through our choices and our actions, not what we talk about as being our values. What they see and experience will stick with them for a lifetime, long after they forget our words. We can tell them what our values are, but unless they see them lived out, they won't take them to heart.


Therefore, I have primarily been focusing on how to reflect on the birth of Jesus in meaningful ways with them, through activities, interactive stories and play surrounding the Christmas story. As our children grow, our activities and play are growing with them. We have several nativities for the kids to play with as they choose throughout December, as well as a Playmobile nativity that we add to each night in the days leading up to Christmas as we tell another small part of the Christmas story. Now, sometimes the angel sleeps in the stable (because they don't get the baby Jesus piece until Christmas morning), or the wise men exchange beards, but the kids get to interact with the story and it helps them to process the pieces and learn the history.

Christmas 2010-Caroline and Lydia play with a toy Nativity set

Christmas 2009-the nativity scene one evening. I think the wise men had a pretty wild party.
And someone dropped off a jack-hammer! 

Secondary, we want our kids to have rich experiences, and with that we make celebrating Advent--the time of waiting--a time of lots of fun experiences and activities as a family. Each day, beginning December 1, we open a door in our Advent calendar to find a Christmas activity for the day as we are waiting for Christmas. Some days are as simple as coloring a Christmas picture or building snowmen in the yard (if we have enough snow), to visiting a live Nativity or going to one of the local museums for their holiday exhibits. The kids talk year-round about our Advent activities and are anxiously awaiting December 1 when we open our first door.

Ian gets "Elfed" at The Indianapolis Children's Museum Jolly Days

Finally, people are exceptionally important in our lives, and we try to create space to spend time during the holiday season with people that we love. We visit with as much family as we are able and try to make those gatherings as relaxed and refreshing as they should be. We take 20 minutes or an entire evening to visit with our neighbors and reconnect with friends that we see less frequently when the weather draws us indoors and makes impromptu visits more of a challenge. We send cards and letters to family and friends who are dear to us, in an effort to stay connected though time and space separate us. We write hand-written notes of thanks to our children's teachers and those who are coming alongside us to raise our children up.

And because people are important, we choose to share our love and appreciation through gifts. A thoughtful and heartfelt gift is a way to express love or gratitude to others. Many gifts are homemade and prepared with love, with the recipient in mind throughout the process of creating the gift. Those that are not are gifts that the recipient has specifically expressed as something that would be useful or valued by them.

This includes gifting our children. We don't want them to adopt the perspective that "more is more". In striving for simplicity, going overboard at Christmas can seriously undermine this value in our home. We choose a few meaningful gifts that either we know to be useful to them or something that they have expressed interest in that we perceive to have long-term value to them. We select beautiful toys that we hope that they will play with for years to come, crafts and activities that will stimulate and engage them, perhaps igniting a passion, and books and magazines that they will read again and again. I also create at least one hand-made gift for each child to teach them that gifts do not always have to come from the mall.

When our budget is larger, these gifts can be pricier, and when our budget is tighter, these gifts are less-expensive, accordingly. But quality and thoughtfulness do not have to be expensive, and often can be found at a sensible price. I've seen (and purchased) some very expensive junk toys, and have seen (and purchased) some very inexpensive, superior-quality toys in my tenure as a parent. My challenge to parents, in particular, is not to get so caught up in "what a great deal XYZ toy is!" and overlook its value. Yes, it may be 1/2 off, but if it's just "more" and not meaningful, then it's still money better saved than spent.

While the world around me is all abuzz and in a frenzy over the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season, choosing to celebrate simply has done my heart good. For me, it all comes back to one not-so-silent night, in a dirty, smelly barn when a baby boy was born to an unwed and nervous teenage mother. Keeping Christmas simple helps keep that in the forefront of my mind, where the pomp and circumstance does not.

Now, if you'll forgive me, I must get back to enjoying November while it's still here. There are leaves left to crunch, turkeys to roast and a host of gratitude to share before I hang the mistletoe and trim my tree.

Newsboys and Ducks: A Post From the Mrs.

So, Jason showed me a few of the ins and outs of the blog, and I picked up on the most important part: how to write on it. Hopefully he does not regret this decision. I remind him frequently that my middle name is Brooke, as in the babbling kind, but I'll try not to be too wordy when I step up to the plate here. :)


An overarching theme in my life lately and the circles that I find myself in has been about motivation. Specifically the motives behind our actions.


The old Newsboys song, "Shine", has a line in it that says:
...The truth is in
the proof is when
your heart starts asking
"What's my motivation?"


If you were a teenager in a Christian church in the 1990's you are probably singing along in your head now too. For that I'm so sorry. But Truth is found in a variety of places, not just the highest quality of music...but that's for another time. If you have not heard the song up to now, you can check it out here on Youtube.


What is your motivation for your actions? Are you motivated by fear? Most of us are.


Now, I'm not talking about choosing not to go visit a Haunted House this season because of fear, as one of my friends responded when posed the question. I'd say that fear is probably not a bad motivation for deciding against that choice, in my opinion. Fear and not wanting to change my pants.


However, if you are allowing fear to dictate the answers to the important questions in your life, I'd go so far as to say that fear is a poor motivation for decision-making. When fear controls your decisions, you are giving over control of your life to this fear.


This can be every decision from personal questions such as: "Should I go talk to that gentleman standing on the street with a sign asking for a dollar?"
It can be vocational questions such as: "Should I take this job/leave this job/start my own business/expand my business?"
It can even be spiritual questions such as: "Is my motivation for choosing my faith or religion because I truly want to know and follow God or because I'm afraid of going to Hell?"


Our oldest daughter is in Kindergarten and she provides an excellent example of how our motives are more important that the choices that we make. Her class is like most other elementary classes, including my own when I taught at her current elementary school several years ago. Her teacher has a classroom management plan that includes rewards for good behavior.


Caroline tells me every day that she got a Smiley Stamp on her chart and will ask me if I'm proud of her that she got a stamp (for good behavior) on her chart. Each time I tell her that I am proud that she's doing the right thing, not that she got a stamp. The stamp is just a symbol of the desired behavior. I want her motivation to be that she has the internal desire to do the right thing, because it's the right thing to do, not the desire for approval of others.




Do the right thing, because it's the right thing to do.




It's so simple, and one of the mantras around the Simpson Six homestead. However, we often get caught up in fear and worry about the approval of others. I don't care if you are six or sixty--we all care on one level or another about the approval of someone, somewhere in our lives--often much more than we should. The Minimalist Mom (another blogger that I LOVE to read--if you are interested in or intrigued by minimalist living, check her out here) wrote a great article about not caring what other people think. We like ducks a lot around here, and they've got it right. Just let everything roll off your back. Easier said than done, right?

We only have one life, and we are the authors of it. Take back the pen from fear and from trying to please everyone around you and write your own story. I'm certain that it will be much more thrilling, exciting and fulfilling than what others and fear could ever write for you.