Tag Archives: minimalism

Less is More: How Not to Feel Deprived

Buying less not only means saving money, but it can also be freeing in other ways. For ten years of my life I gave up coffee. This was mostly because of two factors. My new (then) husband could not stand the smell of coffee brewing, and during those ten years, I was either pregnant or nursing or both, and choose to stay away from the caffeine. I didn’t actually miss coffee much after a little bit, and I could knock that expense out of our budget. I no longer felt I needed coffee, had desires for coffee or felt deprived … Continue reading →

Simple Life is the Most Rewarding

Leading the simple life is not only less expensive, but it can be more rewarding, too. The last few days after Christmas have been wonderful. We’ve spent no money at all, but we have been having the best time. Days have been spent playing board games, cooking good meals, watching a gentle snowfall and the winter birds outside our windows, visiting neighbors, making a snowman, drinking hot chocolate, watching a Star Wars marathon, and just being together. It has been a perfect time after the busy Christmas rush. The simple life. Today, we’ll go to church and maybe hike through a … Continue reading →

Bringing in the New

Every Christmas Day, I clean my house. From its consistency in my life over the past twenty years, you might think that this is a sort of profound ritual. It is not. Rather, it is the motion of a guilty conscience. You see, we have so much. We probably have too much. Even though we’ve cut down a lot on the gifts that we give and receive, it still feels like a lot to incorporate the new into our lives. It’s also a New Year’s ritual of sorts: evaluating the old in our lives and bringing in a little bit … Continue reading →