SLT069: Head Over Heels In Love With Simplicity

The number one reason we love simplicity is that it gives us flexibility to live our lives the way we want. Sure, it takes some real effort to get to the point where we could drop what we were doing and take a 30-day vacation, but once you get to the point where you can shape your life to do the things you want to do, and live they way you want to live, you’ll love simplicity too. It is so worth the effort and probably how you’d like to live your life too.

During our recent trip, we covered over 6600 miles with our tiny teardrop camper in tow. But thankfully, we didn’t drag along a lot of complexity with us as we traveled. But simplicity doesn’t just “happen.” Some deliberate decisions and actions ensured we could enjoy our experiences together as a family without some of the misfortunes of the Griswolds!

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SLT067: Simplify Your Wardrobe Redux

Way back in Episode 47, Simplify Your Wardrobe, we explored our relationship with the clothes that we wear and asked ourselves some questions such as: So what things shape your current wardrobe? What does your wardrobe look like now? What would your ideal wardrobe look like? and What are some of your favorite pieces and why? We also introduced that we were going to give a microcourse called Dress With Less a try, cutting our wardrobes down to 33 pieces each for 3 months.

Well, it’s been over 6 months and 20  Simple Life Together episodes since then and while we’ve mentioned quite a bit about our progress along the way, we thought we owed you a good, solid wrap up. So this is it!  Read more…

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SLT066: Predict Your Future

Abe Lincoln said, “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” When living simply, taking action now can help you shape the life you want to live. Back in Episode 38, we talked about the concept of preparation meets opportunity. You may recall a few lines from that show that went like this:

“When you’re working on that Life Plan, or your dreams and goals, prepare for those opportunities you want to come along. I’m a firm believer that you can determine your own destiny if you make your own future. Shape it yourself. You’ll have obstacles along the way for sure, but you’ll also find encouragement and inspiration, too.”

We want to give you a little bit of context for our journey by connecting some dots. Our goal is that it may help you form you own dots to connect later on. So, If you’ve been listening in or reading our blog posts for a while and are familiar with many of our back episodes and posts, now you’ll see exactly why we picked some of the subjects that we did. If you’re new to Simple Life Together (and we have more and more joining us each week…yay!) then this will be a great “jumping on” point for where we are and how we got here! So, the “What’s In It For You” is this...taking deliberate small steps forward from the ideation we talked about on the last show, will help you shape your own journey to live simply. “The best way to predict your future is to create it” is a great way to think about it. So thanks, Mr Lincoln, for that fine quote and the title of today’s episode.  Read more…

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SLT065: Strategic Simple Living

When it comes to making long-term plans for our lives, we all go through a “dream stage”…where we just kind of day dream about what our life might be like. Seriously, we’ve all, at some point in our life, thought about what it would be like to win the lottery or be super rich…and you kind of lose yourself in the dream. While I’m sure there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, it’s really more productive to do some systematic ideation. By dreaming systematically, you’ll likely improve your chances for success. For us, this is strategic simplicity.

By going through a process of systematic ideation, you may come up with more questions than answers initially. But in the end, you’ll probably be a lot closer to what you want and be able to formulate a real plan of action. Yes, truly strategic simple living!   Read more…

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SLT064: Healthy Smoothies Made Simple With Farnoosh Brock

We hinted in Episode 63 that we’ve been enjoying more and more healthy smoothies. About two and a half years ago we did a 12-day juice fast. Since then, we’ve slowly incorporated juicing into our lifestyle at least 3-4 times/week. By doing that…juicing became a regular part of our life.  We became addicted to how good it made us feel which led us to look into other ways to improve or expand our healthy eating goals. Juicing led to eating more raw foods, eating smaller portions…and now smoothies!

healthy smoothie recipe simple smoothie

So, who better to talk about smoothies, than our friend and someone who’s become our own personal… “healthy liquids expert,” Farnoosh Brock, the author of The Healthy Smoothie Bible Read more…

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