Simple Life Together

Designing the life you were meant to live is not only possible, it's is something you can take control of yourself and MAKE it happen. A great place to start is by making the commitment to simplify your life. As I said in the last episode, simplifying your life is one of the most impactful things you can do. As we bring Simple Life Together to a close, we wanted to offer a little update on where our simplicity journey has taken us over the last three years. This is Part 2 of that update. Do yourself a favor and listen to Episode 78 first ;) This is what will most likely be our final update episode, so if this is your first time listening in, I'd suggest you go back to around Episode 65: Strategic Simple Living to make sure this episode and Episode 78: Still Simplifying After All These Years Part 1 make sense. Of course if you want in on ALL the goodness, just start at Episode 1! It'll be worth it, guaranteed! Thank you all so much for listening in! It has been a great ride and I'm sure we've learned much

Simplifying your life is one of the most impactful things you can do to ensure you're living the lifestyle you've designed for yourself. The life you were meant to live. In this episode of Simple Life Together, we offer a little update on where our simplicity journey has taken us over the last three years. And...it has been amazing! This is an update episode, so if this is your first time listening in, I'd suggest you go back to around Episode 65: Strategic Simple Living to make sure this episode and Episode 79: Still Simplifying After All These Years Part 2 make sense. Of course if you want in on ALL the goodness, just start at Episode 1! It'll be worth it, guaranteed! Comprehensive list of past SLT Episodes

It's been a while since our last episode and many of you said you wanted an update. So, we posted on the Simple Life Together Facebook page and the Edit & Forget It Facebook Group and asked for your questions. Since we're in the thick of the Holiday season, many of you had holiday simplicity related questions. Others were looking for lifestyle answers for their questions, and many just wanted to know what we've been up to. Well...we sat down for over an hour last night and just kinda "freestyled" it. Read More... Topic: Simple Answers to Listener Questions Update on Vanessa's S.I.M.P.L.E. Organizing System Course Vanessa launched her S.I.M.P.L.E. Organizing System course to a small list of people and it went really well! That said, we're not really happy with how the course is currently hosted on an external site. The content is proven and system works, but we’re just not happy with any platforms we’ve tried. They’re too expensive and seem clunky. So we’re considering just making the course an “in your Inb

There are so many reasons to simplify. But one very lucrative reason to simplify is to increase the sale price of your home and set the stage for a quick sale. So, let's talk a little about simplifying to sell your home. To do that, we’re going to share some of our experiences with doing exactly that over the last couple of months, so if you’re selling your home...or know someone else who is...or if you’re simply looking for a fresh start in your current home, maybe we can shed some light on things that worked for us. Read More... Topic:  4 Key Points To Keep In Mind When Simplifying To Sell Your Home Topic We recently had a fantastic sales experience when selling our home in preparation to move to East Aurora, NY. Our home went up for sale the evening of the 15th of May...and before our realtor was even able to put a sign up in the yard, it sold on the morning of 16May! The first 3 couples that looked at the home all put in solid offers. The first 2 for $10k over asking price! We accepted both and had

Back in Episode 65, we talked about Strategic Simple Living and shared a few great tools you can use to plan your simple living strategy. Specifically, we used the 4 Direction Ideation Tool of Looking Outward/Inward/Backward/Forward as lenses for developing your strategy. We shared how we used this tool when downsizing for trying to find the perfect area for us to live. But when we came to a decision point, we used a different framework for evaluating our final choice...and actually choosing where we're moving to. So, armed with all we learned from the 4 Direction Ideation Tool process, we did our final analysis through the lenses of the 4 major areas of our life: Home, Work, Community, and Self.  And yep, we're moving! We don't have a hard and fast timeline yet, but we actually put our money where our collective mouth is and bought a lot to build on! Read More... Topic:  4 Critical Areas You Need to Consider When Downsizing Background So there are 4 critical areas you need to consider when downsizing,

When it comes to simple living, we can all use a few more tips to help us along. We’re going to share 3 more simple living habits you can start using right now for a better today and tomorrow. One of our most popular shows was Episode 55, 7 Habits for Highly Effective Simplicity. We passed along what we feel are the top 7 habits you can develop to bring some serious simplicity into your life. That show was shared thousands of times...over 2300 times on our Pinterest page alone! Well, today we’re going to share 3 more. So let’s jump right in!  Read More... Note: Get a copy of Supermom vs Super Mom for yourself or gift it to a Mom who needs a little "less" in her life. It's less than $5 and will save you countless hours and effort! Buy Supermom vs Supermom Topic:  3 Simple Living Habits You Can Use Right Now Habit 1: When searching for a solution, start with yourself first. Chances are, just like Dorothy with the ruby slippers in the Wizard of Oz, you had the power all along. Tap into resources you alr

Okay, folks. We had intended this episode to be more of a “finality”. It was supposed to be more of a "farewell" episode and post. But the truth is, we’re having trouble with this because Simple Life Together is such a big part of our life. If it sounds like we’re waffling a bit, that’s because...well, we are! So I guess you could say that we're simplifying Simple Life Together. We should just jump right into the dirty work and break it all down for you...  Read More... Note: Get a copy of Supermom vs Super Mom for yourself or gift it to a Mom who needs a little "less" in her life. It's less than $5 and will save you countless hours and effort! Buy Supermom vs Supermom Topic:  Simplifying Simple Life Together It Hasn’t Been an Easy Decision to Simplify Simple Life Together! On the last episode and up until we went to SimpleREV in Minneapolis we intended for this episode to be our last for quite a while. Here's why: What started off as us documenting our journey to simplify our lives, turned into

Vanessa was getting ready to throw away a magazine (because of course, she practices the "one in one out rule") and the headline on the cover was: The Balanced Life! She told me that she paused for a moment and thought, "Do I have balance?" We hear so much about it, but how do we define work life balance? What does it really mean? Can we really achieve a balanced life? And so we got to talking about balance for a while, and thought we’d explore that a little more…. (Read more...) Note: Get a copy of Supermom vs Super Mom for yourself or gift it to a Mom who needs a little "less" in her life. It's less than $5 and will save you countless hours and effort! Buy Supermom vs Supermom Topic:  How Do You Define Work Life Balance? It seems like the whole "balance thing" has become a buzz word. We hear about balance all the time in magazines, on television, supposed experts, life coaches, etc. Terms like work life balance, balanced diet, and even balanced budget are pretty pervasive.  But what does balance re

Never underestimate the power of habit. In mid-April of 2014, I decided that I needed to make some positive changes to my morning ritual. I've talked about my morning ritual a few times on the Simple Life Together podcast, and we discussed the power of habit, routines and rituals back in Episode 30 and also in one of our most popular episodes, The 7 Habits for Highly Effective Simplicity in Episode 55. But recently I read a book on habits (well, actually I listened to the audio version) by Charles Duhigg, titled The Power of Habit. But let me back up just a bit and talk about my positive changes to how I spend my early morning. Following a visit to the doctor and the results of some medical testing, I decided that I need to get more active. Of course, my wife Vanessa had been encouraging me to do this for years...but you know how sometimes when the "advice" comes from a spouse or other close family member you occasionally ignore it? Well, yeah...that. Moving on... Note: The school year starts soon! Ge

We’ve mentioned in previous shows...sometimes simple isn’t easy. Consistent, voluntary simplicity can be even harder. Matter of fact, it can be an awful lot of work to make simple easy, but in the end we’re opting to live simply intentionally...in as many areas of our life as we can. And that’s going to take a little exploration and effort. After our presentation at the NAPO 2014 Conference in Phoenix, we met a certified professional organizer, Miriam Ortiz y Pino, who turned out to have a little more in common with us than being an organizer like Vanessa.  She’s been practicing voluntary simplicity for a long time now and after talking with her we thought it would  be great to have her on the show to share her thoughts on what voluntary simplicity means to her, and also tap into some of her tips and advice to those who want to simplify their lives too. Note: The school year starts soon! Get a copy of Supermom vs Super Mom for yourself or gift it to a Mom who needs a little "less" in her life. It's le

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! Note: The school year starts soon! Get a copy of Supermom vs Super Mom for yourself or gift it to a Mom who needs a little "less" in her life. It's less than $5 and will save you countless hours and e

We've been sharing our story about simple living here since the tail end of 2012. But we know we're not alone when it comes to simple living! We put the call out in our last episode for more volunteers to share their story here on Simple Life Together. Well...you answered the call and and today we have our second Profile in Simplicity guest who is going to share how she's simplified her life, too! But before we tell you any more about our special guest, we want to give you a little reminder/background about this segment. Read more... Background for Simplicity Profiles: We're looking at doing Simplicity Profiles every month or so. We’ll start the show with our featured guest and talk with them about simple living, how they embraced simplicity, what they've learned along the way, etc. We think the talks will last anywhere from 20 to 25 minutes. Sometimes longer, sometimes not. Then we'll do the announcements, sometimes a Thing segment, and sometimes the Qs & Comments segment. We think it’s great to highlight

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... Note: Our new book Supermom vs Super Mom is digital and will help you eliminate clutter in your life, too! Buy Supermom vs Supermom Topic:  Simplify Your Wardrobe Redux When your goal is to simplify your wardrobe, you don’t expect to learn a whole lot of lessons about your attachment to “stuff." But that’s just w

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 T

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... Note: Our new book Supermom vs Super Mom is digital and will help you eliminate clutter in your life, too! Buy Supermom vs Supermom Topic:  Strategic Simple Living Ok, so what is “syste

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! 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... Note: Our new book Supermom vs Super Mom is digital and will help you eliminate clutter in your life, too! Buy Supermom vs Supermom Topic:  Farnoosh Shares The Skinny on Healthy Smoothies We asked Farnoosh a bit about simplicity and a lot about healthy smoothies and her new book. So, we'll share the questions we

When it comes to simple living, or making any changes in life, there always seems to be plenty of experts around telling you what you should do, and how you should do it. Looking to get in shape? You can find an endless supply of “experts”...many of which will directly contradict each other...that are ready with their magic formula to help you. All you have to do is buy their equipment, take their magic pill, or follow their magic advice. But what it all boils down to in the real world is developing a simple plan that is right for YOU, and then kicking things into gear! When it comes to simple living or simplifying certain areas of your life, there are some things that have worked for us and that you can use to start making strides in areas of your life that you want to simplify.   Read more... Note: Our new book Supermom vs Super Mom is digital and will help you eliminate clutter in your life, too! Buy Supermom vs Supermom Topic:  Five Steps to Simple Living We're just going to offer 5 ways to help yo

We all have clutter in our lives. Naturally, one of the first steps on the road to simplicity is to challenge what and how much you consume. The basic idea here is that, the more you consume...meaning buy, acquire, receive, etc...the more complicated your life can be, and the more clutter you have, too! The less you consume the simpler it will be. So as important as editing is...and that’s an ongoing process...understand that just as important on the road to simplicity is your ability to slow your accumulation of stuff.  Read more... Note: Our new book Supermom vs Super Mom is digital and will help you eliminate clutter in your life, too! Topic: Stop the Accumulation of Clutter But stopping the accumulation of "stuff"(aka clutter) is not as easy as flipping a switch. You’ve got to change your mindset, establish boundaries like we talked about back in Episode 54, and exercise a great amount of self-restraint. The reality is, most of us have been on autopilot when it comes buying and accumulating things.

The number one question we are asked, is about simple living with kids: "Is it possible to simplify your life with kids?" Of course it is! Now we know not everyone has kids, but even if you don't you probably have nephews or nieces, or friends with kids. So, the good news is that even if you don’t have kids yourself, you’ll probably be able to apply a lot of this to other relationships in your life. Well first off, simple living with kids doesn’t have to be an oxymoron. Like simplifying the rest of your life, simple living with kids will take some planning, work, and positive change, but it will be well worth it. Read more... Note: Our new book Supermom vs Super Mom will be free on Amazon all day Friday, 21 March 2014 from midnight PST to midnight PST. Topic: Simple Living With Kids Well worth it, yes...but notice I didn’t say “well worth it in the end.” That's because there really isn’t an end when it comes to simplicity...that’s why we call it a journey. The “Stuff” Cycle: Before we get into the dif

So we talk all the time about scaling back, editing, etc. But there’s probably one thing or another that you’ve decided would be your simplicity splurge. That something that you’re just not going to scrimp on. Well, that’s perfectly fine. We all seem to have that little something that we’re just not willing to give up. For some it’s photos, for others, it’s coffee paraphernalia. Almost all of us have our little simplicity foil...that thing or things that seem to go against our efforts to simplify. Read more... First, A Big Announcement! Okay, we’re sharing some big news on this show...our first book, Super Mom vs Supermom: Simplicity Tips for Busy Moms, A Simple Life Guide to Getting Organized, Finding Margin, and Embracing Simplicity for Moms is done! Well, done enough! We’ll be updating the cover any day now, but it will be live in the Kindle Store at Amazon.com hopefully on Saturday, 8 March 2014. So, we’re posting the final draft, minus the cover art, on the Edit & Forget It Challenge Facebook page