last week, i posted a link to download a free book called organized simplicity. (i’m not sure if the link still works now, but you are more than welcome to try…
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well, i’m only a few chapters in, but i’m really enjoying the process. (the hard part is you have to organize your life at least enough to find the time to keep reading about how to organize it…)
something that i LOVE about the book is that, before telling me to organize my closet, it asks me to figure out my purpose. the whole point is that you have to live and strive for what simplicity is for you and your family– not someone else’s. a simple life is first found by figuring out what values, goals, and achievements are important to your family– and then focusing what can best achieve those things (and getting rid of things that don’t).
b & i just hammered our purpose statement last night and honestly, it’s really refreshing! it’s great to have a framework to work with and see what our common goals are as a couple (and hopefully later with our kids). in the next couple of days, we are going to write out our immediate goals to help us accomplish our purpose… and that’s exciting.
honestly, even though my stuff isn’t organized yet, i feel great about how we are doing this– it allows us to remember why we are doing this when we make the painful decision to get rid of something, or sacrifice something we want now to allow us to get something we want even more later.
i would really encourage anyone to this purpose step– even if your closet is clean. b & i had a really great time talking through some of the thought-provoking questions in the book and learned a lot about each other and what we really wanted. besides that, seeing the big picture of why we do what we do is a gigantic breath of fresh air.
(just as an example, b & i decided that our purpose as a family should focus on the over-arching commandment to love God and others. the four main ways we decided we could/should do this was through strong communication, true hospitality, academic & artistic expression, and responsible stewardship. we took some time to further define how that would look for us and our family… but i’ll spare you those details.
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