Clutterfree

I just finished a great book by Joshua Becker called Clutterfree with Kids.  Here are my favorite thoughts...

"Since deciding to live with less, I have less clutter in my home, less stress in my life, more time for my family, more generosity in my spending, more energy for my passions, more contentment in my heart, more gratitude in my soul, and far more opportunity to pursue things of greater worth...

Why would I want what everyone else has when they all want what I already possess?"


Also, a couple of people he quotes in the book:

"Comparison is the thief of joy."  - Theodore Roosevelt

"Simplicity, clarity, singleness:  These are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy."   -Richard Holloway


I don't feel like I have any thoughts of my own to add that could contribute much to that.  SO well said already.  Plus it's late and I'm tired :)

Balance

I'm re-reading The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck.  It's a book I read when I got home from my mission.  I was facing hard times and stress and insecurity like I never had before.

This time around I'm getting something totally different from it.  I love books that offer new insights every time I read them.  Here is what struck me a few weeks ago...

"To be organized and efficient, to live wisely, we must daily delay gratification and keep an eye on the future; yet to live joyously we must also possess the capacity, when it is not destructive, to live in the present and act spontaneously."

Nothing magnifies the difficulty of living this way like the first months of new motherhood.  Which I am staring down right now.  My kitchen is a mess.  My to do list is dusty.  I am carrying around 15 extra pounds.  There are moments that living joyfully seems like a joke!  I am trying to master keeping an eye on the future (and the glorious, glorious hours of sleep it holds) and living in the present.  It is such an impossible task.  But sometimes, when I'm sitting in a quiet room, holding this little guy...I close my eyes and take some slow breaths...and it seems possible for just a moment.  This is, after all, what I've been praying for and crying over for the last two years...