The Simple Life at Home

I mentioned in my previous post my desire to simplify my life. This became a goal of mine when my husband gave me a piece of art with the single word "Simplify" on it. It struck a chord deep within me. Now, I know that many people have much more stressful lives than I. I am blessed to be able to stay home with my children. We have a lovely home. And I have many good and treasured friends. But somehow our life just seemed to be running on a treadmill. Wake up. Do chores. Do schoolwork. Do more chores. Run errands. Go to activities. Fix dinner. Watch tv. Go to bed. Repeat. Day. After. Day.

It's all so mundane. I want a richer life than that for our family. I want our family to have time together. Memories. I don't want to have to spend my days constantly organizing and re-organizing all the "stuff" that can fill a home. I don't want us to spend our time sitting glassy-eyed in front of the tv, living vicariously through others. I want to us live those adventures ourselves.

How do we go about that? Well, here are my initial plans:

1) We've temporarily cut tv out of our lives. We had our satellite service suspended for about 2 months while we learn to find other things to do with our time. Swimming, reading, walks together, picnics, games, shooting hoops...Anything that will build relationship between us and make us a stronger family.

2) I am ruthlessly going through the house to find things we can part with. I've been eliminating old paperwork and scanning what I still need so I can re-claim all that drawer space. Paperwork is the bane of my existence right now. And do I really need two colanders and three wisks? Well, my mother-in-law seems to think so, but since she only comes every two years, I'm going to chance parting with them and let her re-buy them the next time she comes if she wants to.

3) And here's the biggie: we have to move to a less expensive place. We live in South Florida - paradise by many people's standards, I know. We have lots of sun and sand. But we also have lots of property taxes, lots of hurricane and flood insurance and lots of pressure to "keep up with the Jones's." It's a very materialistic place. We just can't afford to live here and get ahead. Or even stay even. So, in about 3 weeks we are heading off to the mountains of Tennessee to determine if that's the place for us. I am praying that hubby loves it there and that he can find a job. But if all goes according to plan, we could sell our property here and have enough to buy a house cash there. No mortgage. That would be a huge blessing for us. On top of that, the cost of living is about 20% cheaper there.

So that's my plan. Relocate, reduce and...well, I can't think of an "R" word for eliminating tv, but you get the point.