Wow…it’s been awhile since this page was written!  I wanted to update it, but I didn’t want to lose the truth of what I was thinking at that time.  So, for what it’s worth, I’m currently a happily married mom of three, we’re down to two TV’s, and yes, there is now an abundance of books and blogs on the subject of simplifying and minimalism.

I’m a happily married mom of two.  I’ve helped clean out the homes of three separate grandparents, helped one of those grandparents downsize, and have moved seven times in our fifteen years of marriage.  (At one point, the stats were four moves in five years.)  Each move helped clarify the idea, in my mind, that more is not better.  The final straw was our last move, over three years ago:  facing the packing of dozens of dusty books, for the umpteenth time, to move to yet another home.  (I was an English major….books are my weakness.)  I began to seriously search for information on how to simplify, on how to live with less, on how to let go (the hardest part) of things I thought I “needed.”

The seed of the idea for beginning this blog was planted one spring day after school.  I was standing in the crowd of parents outside the “first grade doors,” keeping one eye on my daughter and listening, with growing fascination, to two fathers talking nearby.  Well…one was talking; the other was mostly listening.

“We’re almost done!  The drywall’s finished and they’ve started painting today!” one said with excitement.  The other dad murmured his approval.  I remembered only a year earlier getting our basement finished, and I smiled as I thought of the excitement that things like framing, drywall, mudding and paint brought to me not all that long ago.

“And—get this!  We’re gonna have three TV’s down there!” Dad number one announced with a huge grin.  “It’s awesome!”  He then went on to describe the location and purpose of each.  Dad Number Two seemed even quieter now….or maybe that was just me reading into the situation.  The three TV comment, though, got my wheels to turning.  How much is enough?  Three TV’s in one space…..isn’t that too much?

The phrase “sour grapes” leaps to mind—but I have to admit that we, too, have three TV’s in our house.  One in the living room,  the “big screen” in the basement, and the old-school, almost twenty-year-old tube set in the far corner of the basement, hooked up to the Wii.  So it’s not so much that I wanted what I didn’t have.  It was more of a sudden, overwhelming awareness of how much we have.  How much is enough?  When does it become too much?  Where is the line drawn?

The other push to start this blog came from the search that question began.  As I began researching about the concept of simplifying your life and uncluttering, it seemed that there were only a handful of books and blogs on the subject.  I kept looking for the book that would meet me where I was at, “simplifying from a Christian perspective,” and eventually I found some excellent resources.  Most of the time, however, the idea of “uncluttering” was noted and jumped over in favor of “organizing.”  In my experience, I’m realizing more and more that organization is not always the answer.  Getting rid of stuff is.  That led to me wanting to write down my own thoughts and experiences with simplifying.  Hopefully it will be a benefit to someone else.

I would love to hear readers’ opinions on the idea of what is “enough,” “too much,” and “simplifying.”  I know it’s different for each person.  I hope these writings can start a conversation about–or, at the very least, start people to question–what “enough” means for them.