Simplify Your Gifting

It's the time of year when you are either going crazy trying to mark every last item off your gifting list or you're dreading the part where you have to drag yourself out of the house and shop with all the crazies.

Some people love this time of year because of the shopping, but if you're like me it's more like hot chocolate and peanut butter fudge that get you through the madness. I have always loved this time of year because of the food, family, and twinkle lights. (Twinkle lights are my favorite! ❤) I love giving and receiving gifts too...I don't like how the world has changed our mindset of gifting.

The holidays have become so commercialized and more about the consumer than about the gift or the thought. Join us for the next 6 weeks, as we share some ideas on gifting and saving ourselves from the madness. It's time to reclaim gifting!

No Thanks for the Memories

Wanna hear something crazy? I burned my high school yearbooks. (Insert gasps here)

It’s come to my attention lately that we treat trophies and photo albums like holy grails. An object that hails highly in our mind as being a symbol of a memory or accomplishment, but where is that memory really held? Things only have whatever meaning or value we give to them. The memories are inside of us, not the object.

That’s why I burned my yearbooks. Let’s be honest, most of us probably didn’t have the most amazing high school experience. I couldn’t wait to get out of there and away from all the immature drama and the stigma that went along with it. I never really had a “crowd” I fit in with, and I already had a summer camp job lined up after my senior year that caused me to miss my graduation ceremony, and I couldn’t have cared less. I was ready to move on, so looking back, I don’t really want to be reminded of all of that. My best memories throughout my teens were made outside of school.

The four dusty books that just took up space and were constantly being shuffled around had to go. Call it an effigy if you will, but ceremony notwithstanding, it needed to be done to release the anxiety and frustration that came with keeping them around, now 15 years later. The people I care to remember are friends on Facebook, but even at that, we rarely speak. We all have families, jobs, and hobbies that keep us busy now. It’s all part of the circadian rhythm that is life.

Alicia has started to do some of this too. We found disks that contained the same pictures she had multiple albums of, so we decided to pitch the hard copies in sake of redundancy. Digitalizing documents and photos is a great way to declutter, and also maintain the integrity of the items that you hold dear in case of an emergency.

I’m not telling you that you need to go out and do what we did, but really start to think about the keepsakes in your house, and what the sake is you’re keeping them for. Memories? Those are inside YOU! Objects, trophies, pictures, they don’t tell the whole story. You do. 

Enough

Through divine intervention, I stumbled upon a book that would strengthen not only my choice of this simple living lifestyle, but also my faith. When I first started looking at minimalism, I wasn't viewing it as something faith-based, but more of a practical I-want-less-stress-and-stuff viewpoint. I now see why this was the book I found instead of the one I set out searching for.  Enough: Finding More by Living with Less by Will Davis Jr. is thought provoking and each new chapter and section moved me into a deeper understanding of what I had really gotten myself into.

Book break-down: Davis breaks the book down into the 5 views of living this sort of "enough" mentality. He starts out by discussing what this "enough" is and what it means to have enough. The second view is of  More Than Enough. This view is about living with more than what we really need and how this is or isn't biblical and how those who have more than enough can greatly impact others around them. The third view is on Less Than Enough. He goes in depth on what it looks like to have less than what is actually needed and how even those who have less than enough can greatly impact those around them. The fourth view is Moving Toward Enough. In this section, he writes about how we start moving towards this idea of enough and how we start looking at the value of things around us. The fifth view is Less is More. Davis discusses what it looks like once we've achieved the idea of "enough" and how it can radically change us.

"Our culture pushes us to strive for more - more money, more stuff, more clout. But how much is enough?"

This book so deeply impacted me in this lifestyle and I am now seeing it from a biblical standpoint. Back in January, I thought I was on a simple journey of decluttering and letting go of things I no longer needed, but this book has kicked it up a notch. It was sometime in June that I first posed the questions to Jason, "how do we know when we have enough? How will we know when we're done decluttering?"

I realize that the following won't fully make sense to you without having read the book, but I hope I've provided enough provoking thoughts to make you want to dive in, so, here it goes...

• A small section in the book of Proverbs talks about a man named Agur and how he prays that God will give him enough. "Give me just enough to satisfy my needs." Do we really need any more than enough?
• One of the greatest struggles we face in today's world is contentment. If we don't have the latest and greatest, we're not good enough. If we don't look a certain way, we're not good enough. Isn't it time we have enough of this thinking?!?
• We are manipulated by the world to think that everything we have is the most valuable thing, but if you were faced with a house fire and only had 30 seconds to get everything valuable, what would you grab? What is truly the most valuable?
• There are times when God gives us more than enough to help those around us who have less than enough, but we don't see the need because of the wool covering our eyes.
• When we have an excess coming in, we don't need bigger barns for storage, we need to use the excess to bless others around us.
• Scripture tells us that we are called to take care of those who don't have enough or those who have less than enough. Have you encountered any of these people or are you so caught up in your own enough that you are missing them right in front of you? I know I am.
• Most Americans have no clue what it's like to live with less than enough. Not everyone in the category of "less than enough" had a choice for where they are in life.
• Where does your value lie? If you really want to know, follow the trail of where your money goes daily.
• What are we really doing with what we have? Are we using what we have to meet a need?
• If we don't know what we really have in storage or surplus, do we really need it? What if we all developed a sort of "just keep it" mentality?
• God isn't necessarily asking us to use something we don't have - He just wants us to use what He's already given us. Just ask Moses.
• Are we too scared to leap for fear of not being able to see where we will land?

Back to my own questions - how do we know when we have enough? - I know we have enough, we still have more than enough and there are days when the thought of that beats me up and tries to break me down. We have more than we need, but maybe this is our time of being full so that we can be used to help those around us...maybe this is our time to be a blessing. How will we know when we're done decluttering? - I still don't know the answer to this one, but just today I woke up thinking about needing to let go of some things in my closet and then at church was presented with a way to use my purged items to meet the needs of someone else. I don't know if we'll ever be done (it can be a very draining, but humbling process), but in the mean time, while we are determining our idea of enough, we are being used to help others and have been given a voice to share what we're learning on this journey.

10 Items or Less

No, I’m not talking about the express lane at the local store. It’s a concept I came up with while driving and thinking (both of which happen a lot these days, especially together). I tend to be slightly, ok, more than slightly OCD with things and to help me along with this minimalistic lifestyle, I almost need to put numbers with things. Goals. Limits. I’m a man, so compartmentalizing is second nature.

My idea was with clothing, to keep each “category” to 10 items or less. This means 10 t-shirts, 10 dress shirts, 10 pairs of pants, 10 pairs of socks, 10 hats, etc. This was extremely difficult for me in the beginning because I had way more than 10 of each. Sometimes 3-5 times more than that. It was ridiculous. I now wear a work shirt 5 days a week, so my t-shirt drawer became even more of a waste of space.

I had to amend some areas, such as pants. I don’t need 10 pairs of jeans, slacks, and shorts individually, so I decided to lump them all into 1. I have 4 pair of cargo shorts that I like, and in the summer, I can’t wear them too many times before they need washed, so 4 is a good number for me. I only have 2 pairs of slacks, and that’s only because 1 belongs to my only suit for the dressiest occasions. That left 4 open spots for jeans, which is also a good number for me. I wear them the rest of the year, and 1 of the 4 is considered a “work” pair that are older I don’t care if they get torn up.

Another category that I made a conglomeration was the “comfy clothes” area. I like gym shorts and sweat pants to lounge around the house in. I currently have 1 pair of swim trunks, 3 pairs of pants, 3 pairs of shorts, and a set of thermal underclothes for when it gets really cold. That still leaves me with 1 spot, but I’ll be pairing down this group again soon, so I won’t even have 10, thus the “less” part of the equation.

You get the point. It helps me keep things in check and also helps with the “1 in, 1 out” mentality that I would like to get to. Only replacing and not adding to. The point is just to learn to live with less, and the numbers don’t always matter, but for me, it helped me stay inside my own box and gave me boundaries. I know I’m not the only one like me out there. Hopefully this gives you a new approach that will help you lose the excess and keep it out.

Man Up

We see it everywhere today, a rising epidemic of boys not being raised into men. A neuterization of the male population, where they can order a latte and hold a webinar, but can’t change a tire or fix a leaky faucet. Some can’t even change a light bulb. I was fortunate enough to have a father who was a jack of all trades. A product of hard work and good raising. Where the value of a hard day’s work and a hard earned dollar are more important than the clothes on your back and the car you drive or even the house you live in. He never did anything around the house without telling me to come and watch because one day, I would be the man of my house and would need to know how to do that. I owe him for the man I am in that aspect. 

Sometimes, I know just enough to be dangerous, but I still know what I’m doing for the most part and there is very little I have to ask help for, and it’s all because of him.

If you’re reading this, and are a man with children, remember that you are a majority of the influence they have in their life. If you have a boy, show them how to be a man. How to do the fundamentals in life, and also how to be a gentleman and treat women with love and respect. If you have a girl, set the standard for men in their life. Let them see what they should look for in a husband and be the benchmark that they gauge every boyfriend against.

 “Train up a child in the way they should go, and when they are old, they won’t depart from it.” – Proverbs 22:6

Go Through Old Shoes

You know that one pair of shoes that just fit your feet? The ones that are scuffed with signs of hard wear. The ones that the sole flaps a little when you walk. The ones that have a permanent knot in the shoe lace because it's been there since you can remember. Those are the ones. Those are your go to and possibly your favorite. Yeah, those. They need to go.

We tend to hold on to something that is beyond repair for the sake of holding on. For the sentiment of "they're my favorite" or "I've had them forever." Shoes aren't meant to last forever. Shoes happen to be a consumable item. We wear them and when their time is done, they have to be replaced. Runners know this. Avid runners know how many miles their running shoes should have and when it's time to retire a pair, they let go and purchase a new pair for the passion. They know that running in worn out shoes isn't good for their habit of running.

So let's talk about habits. They're hard to break. On the flip side they can be hard to start, especially good-for-you habits, like eating healthy and exercise. Bad habits are so easy to start and can turn themselves into an addiction quickly. How many of us are guilty of picking up our phone first thing after waking up? How many of us are guilty of mindless scrolling of social media during our morning habit of coffee? What about while driving? At work? At lunch? At family dinner? At church? Do you see where I'm going? What once started out as an innocent click to share something funny or a cute photo of our children has now become this habit that is consuming most, if not all, of our time. It's like the old pair of shoes..."just one quick check," "oh, that's too cute not to share," "quick, let's take a selfie and post how much fun we're having!" That one little click of the icon turns into minutes and then hours of clicking and scrolling, searching and browsing.

Recently, I upgraded my phone (was it a necessity, no...did it end up saving us money on our phone bill, yes) and switching over all the stuff from my old phone was supposed to be easy - log on, sync accounts, and voila - done! Yeah, not so much. With this upgrade, I found old contacts still in my phone and apps that I don't use or need. It also made me evaluate whether or not I needed those "old shoe" apps front and center on my home screen. So here's me...tossing the old shoes (no I'm not completely ditching social media), I'm just making it harder for myself to mindlessly "just check."

Measure Twice...Cut Once

Ahh, the smell of Home Depot...where does that smell transport you? I go back to my childhood when I'd go to the hardware store with my dad. I was taken back this weekend when Jason and I walked through the automatic doors; it was like they were ushering us in.

The project: bunk beds. I've been tucking the twins in mini cribs/mini beds for almost 3 years. And each night, I've been watching their feet slowly like through the end slats. I've searched Pinterest, page after page, and then angels started singing when I laid my eyes on a link for making crib mattress size bunk beds (ahhhh!).

I mentioned my idea to Jason and he took it from there. He drew up plans and figured out how much lumber we would need using the least amount of cuts. He wanted to get the most out of the purchase and...we did!

We did make some minor adjustments to the plans in Home Depot and after all was said and done, we had 3 small, extra boards. We were able to finish the assembly of the bunk beds in an afternoon and survived our first building project together.

This project shed some light on spending habits...have we gotten so far off track that we're not even measuring at all before making a purchase? I can't tell you the number of times I've carried around and item in the store just to leave it behind because I decided I didn't need it, or the number of times I've left a store without buying anything. Crossing their consumer driven threshold doesn't legally bind you to making a purchase befor exiting.

Measuring can be going through your closet again to make a second purge or it's asking a neighbor if you can borrow the tool you need. Maybe it's doing an inventory of your bills to make sure you're using the services you're paying for, but it's also about measuring our heart for what we really need to be happy. I don't need the excess to just lay around and take up space...I don't want to have to clean around more junk! I would rather take the time to measure again just in case than make a purchase that left me wanting more and feeling less. 

I'm of the mindset of cutting the excess. How about you?