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I really struggle to live and enjoy the present …but it is something I have been really working on this year.  I think it is key to both simple living and minimalist living.

I find it much easier to plan and dream in the future.  Things in the present are taken care of as they pop up, but my mind lives weeks and months ahead.

The future is addicting, it is filled with promise and hope.  Why focus on where I am at now on my book, blog,  or savings account when I can see the future when I reach my goals?

Living in the future also brings a lot of worry.  A deadline or a looming problem can take all my time when there is nothing I can do about the thing I am worried about.

It isn’t that we should only think about the present.  Not at all!  We need to have plans and we need to remember what was done in the past.

But we need to live our lives in the present.

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I am hoping everyone is getting geared up for Christmas this week and excited.  We don’t want to reverse any of that

Holidays have the potential to go against the de-cluttering work you have been doing.  Sure, it might be a huge minimalist feet to maintain the amount of things you own during the Christmas holidays but what if I challenged you to go a bit farther?

While everyone else is going to finish off the holidays in a few weeks with resolutions to lose weight next year, what if you beat them to it and lose the ‘house weight’ during the holidays.

Reverse The Holiday Gain

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Christmas should be simple right?  Family, cookies, fun, snow, and sitting around the fire?

Instead it seems like a mess of shopping, fighting traffic, work deadlines, crammed schedules and expectations.

So here is a list of 10 things that can make the holidays much simpler.

10 Steps to a Simple Christmas

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Here at Loving Simple Living we feel pretty strongly about too much stuff… we don’t like it, don’t want it, don’t want to clean it up, don’t want to organize it, and don’t want to even ‘want’ it.

But this isn’t for all stuff.  Some stuff is really great and can still communicate love to another person without creating more clutter.

So how can we gift the Simple Living way?

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Image: Bryon Lippincott

So often when people write me they start with something like this:

“I’m not a minimalist but ….”

Somehow people think that minimalism is something to attain, something to strive for but hard to reach.  Like you can only consider yourself a minimalist if you can put everything you own in a backpack or one load of laundry.

I’ve got news for you

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We have talked about simplifying lots of different areas but lets face it, we are all different.

November starts holiday seasons with lots more activities and lots more hosting of activities so I wanted to see if we could talk about your crazy spot.

We are all searching for simple living and minimalism for slightly different reasons. We all come from different spots, and we all have different destinations in mind.

What is in the way? What is your crazy spot that needs to be simplified?

I want you to close your eyes and think about the holiday season coming up. Dream up the best scenario you can think of. How do you want it to look? Feel? Sound? Taste?

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Back when we decided to start adopting minimalism and really cleaning out the house I felt crazy.  When I started homeschooling I felt crazy.  When we take off on camping road trips for weeks I feel crazy.  It isn’t just me, I get the crazy look from lots of people who I tell about these things as we go along.  For the most part the ‘crazy look‘ isn’t a negative thing (I think), it is just different… a different they maybe hadn’t thought of.

I thought all these things were crazy when I first started but now I have met so many other like minded people, and I have lived these ideas for a while.  I can now say that none of these things are near as crazy as they might seem.  None of them are that big of a deal to do.  It isn’t near the HUGE undertaking it initially looks like.  In fact it seems so common and un-exciting that sometimes I have a hard time blogging about it at all.

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I wanted to post about Halloween and simplicity.  ….really any holiday and simplicity.  I think holidays are great, but they have turned into such a stressful and materialistic mess.  Halloween is hard for me too because I have mixed feelings about the holiday.

I am all about people facing their fears, but I don’t understand the need to create fear.  I can kind of understand the people that go ‘all out’ for Christmas, but the people that go ‘all out’ for Halloween kinda creep me out.

So how can this holiday be simple and fun?

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In response to a readers question a few weeks ago I wanted to share with you a chapter out of my Simple Living – 30 days to less stuff and more life book.  E-mail is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to time and organization.  Here is what I have learned to keep it under control.

Lesson 13 – E-mail

Frazzled and crazy in-boxes often end up making for frazzled and crazy schedules and lives where things are missed or forgotten. The goal today is to:

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How many bottles do you have in your bathroom?  By the sink?  In the shower?  Cabinets?  Bottles, tubes, brushes, bags, tins, these come in many forms.  We don’t need piles of stuff, we need simple beauty.

A few weeks ago a reader suggested doing a post about simple make-up.  I love reader suggestions …I don’t know if I am the best person to speak on this, but I can give you my thoughts.

Simple Beauty

Really, it is more than just make-up, it is the whole beauty routine – pretty much everything that can be used up in the bathroom (except the TP).  There are skin products, hair products, hair removal products, smell better products, smell less products, look younger/older products.  Both genders and all ages have collections of things in this area.  We don’t need a pile of stuff, we need simple beauty.

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