Excited to share this guest post from Carmella.  I have ‘house envy’ of her cute little place.

Our Simple Little House

The light can’t help but fill the room. Everywhere you look, there’s a window welcoming its arrival. Even if you look up, there’s a window there at the ceiling, in that high dormer, not to mention the one in the gable end that breaks open a view of treetops and sky.

The white plank walls and ceiling seem to expand in all that light, making one believe there’s more space than there actually is. And all this light and all this white is anchored steady by the color of wood underfoot.

Stretching across the far end of the room is the simple kitchen with its painted cabinets and open barn wood shelves. Opposite this, floor to ceiling bookshelves line the wall near the slip covered sofa and vintage easy chair.

An antique pendant light hangs above the dining table that’s pulled up to a banquette tucked beneath a window on the adjacent wall. The ship’s ladder stairway leads to the loft where three boys bunk; the hall leads to the bath, the master bedroom, and writing nook.

This is our house. It’s just 665 square feet.

Not so long ago, there was more. More house, more stuff, more debt; more to care for, more to clean, more to store. Like most people, we’d taken the traditional path toward the American Dream; the path that lead toward the well-paying job, the good-size house (and its 30-year note), and the lifestyle that seemed to always have us ready to spend.

Then, unexpected job losses and the real estate crash of 2008-2009 detonated an explosion of the perfect financial storm. In the tumult, we lost nearly everything.

And there we were, dumb-struck, black-eyed, and sweat-stained, standing at ‘Square One’. Read the rest of this entry →

Image: Foto76 – FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The following is a guest post from a reader. Louise, thanks so much for sharing your story today!

Living simply, living slow

I started living the simple life about 20 years ago and at that time it was because I had very little money.  For me, this style of living has developed over the years.  Now, I have more money but I really don’t have any desire to accumulate material stuff.

There are two kinds of things in life.  There are the important things and things that have no purpose.  I want to live my life with things that have purpose and meaning.

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Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Thanks so much for sharing today Michael!  Love your perspective

Simple Living and Simple Kids

What surprised me most about having kids was all the stuff that came along with them.  It was like when they came into our home there was a secretly strong gravitational field around them and it sucked things through our doors regardless of what we wanted.

It was the worst when we had our first kid because we don’t know what we really needed ….so we just got everything – diaper bags, cribs, portable cribs, changing pads, changing stations, changing bags, food, spoons, the list was nearly endless.  As our kids grew we were quickly caught up in this whirlwind of more and more.  But we didn’t have to and you don’t have to either.

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Photo by Bryon Lippincott

I love how this family is benefiting from Simple Living and creating their own life!

Thanks so much Bethany I love the way you think.

Living Simply, With Children

Most people don’t care if my husband and I are minimalists. They don’t care if we choose to go without a television, have a limited wardrobe, and only a few electronic gadgets. They don’t even care if we choose to cram our meager possessions onto a 29-foot sailboat every summer and spend 3 months (soon we hope for it to be 12 months) living on it.

However, it all changes when we add our 5-year-old daughter to the mix.

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Let me introduce you to Cheryl and Roland.  They are super cool people I would love to visit some day! Read on and see why

Simplicity often enters your life in the moment you least expect it. It may silently appear after the death of a loved one when you are faced with the responsibility of inheriting belongings, collections, pictures and memories that can only bring half-meanings to you. More commonly though, the act of living simply comes about the time of a big move, when the realization hits that maybe you own too much stuff.

For us it was a change of environment, a paradigm shift and the relocation from a one bedroom apartment in Seattle to the sunny plains of central Europe. Life gave us an opportunity to move abroad and escape the consumer culture of the “west”, so we took it for all it was worth.

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This is a guest post by T.E.Sowers.  Thanks so much for sharing how minimalism has been changing your life!

Minimalism and International Adoption?

I completely understand your confusion!  After all, how in the world are these two things connected?  If you are reading this blog you know that simple living can make many of the challenges we face in life easier to manage. Let me explain how it made the complex, seemingly never-ending process of international adoption possible for my wife and I.

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Today we have a simple living story from Kim about the day simple living really started to ‘click’ for her.  Thanks so much for sharing!

I enjoy reading about others journey thru this quest of living a simple more meaningful life and not gathering our importance and value with money or stuff. Here is a look in to my own journey of de-cultering and finding a balance of living a simple organized life.

Hi, my name is Kim; I’m a wife of 21 years to my hard working husband Rodney and a mother to our 3 children Wyatt 18, Dakota 16, and Colton 14. We live, work and attend school in Las Vegas, Nevada. After being born and raised in the Texas Hill Country I have to say I love Las Vegas and I’m over the top about the sunny weather.

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I love sharing other stories of simplifying.  This is Nancy’s story from Maui!

My journey in living a more simple life began when my family of 4, moved to Maui. When we got off the plane here on this little island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, we each had a suitcase and a few carry-ons. Our one car was being shipped over and we had about a dozen boxes that were coming via the slow boat.

We came to Maui in a desperate time for our little family. My husband had been unemployed and he was searching for a stable job. We left our home in Oregon on a cold January morning, headed South to California and eventually found some stability on Maui.

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Today we have a guest post from Saida.  She shares her thoughts and experience with Simple Living.  Thanks so much Saida for sharing!

In the Summer of 2011, I read Simplicity Parenting, by Kim John Payne. I was intrigued. When I completed the book I wanted to learn more so I google-ed ‘simple parenting’. My Google search unearthed an entire movement that had somehow missed my radar.

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Elizabeth has been talking to me about this post for quite a while and has been working on the way she wants to word it.  Thanks so much for sharing your experience and perspective today.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Case for Minimalist Parenting

“I wish I could be a kid again.”

Ever said that to yourself, trudging through another long day with no end in sight?

It seems like everyone remembers their youth with fondness and maybe even a little jealousy. But it’s a phrase I’ve never really related to.

Wanna know what I remember? Feeling suffocated by a jam-packed schedule – a huge blur of my youth I never really escaped until I left home for good.

Read the rest of this entry →