At this point, you’ve probably heard of Marie Kondo. Her first book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up became extremely popular in 2014, spawning more books, TV shows, a patented tidying up system, a branded organizational line at the Container Store, and a self-branded online store so that folks could
Note: This is a guest post by Meghan Davis-Brass, pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Newton, Iowa, where she also teaches yoga and lives with her husband and dog. Meghan has entirely too much stuff and considers this one of her primary spiritual struggles. Then Jesus called the twelve together
Moving from one home to another can bring up a lot of emotions, and it’s typically the case that many of those emotions are not ones that feel good. But as my husband Will and I prepare to move from New York City to Upstate New York, there is one
Just a few weeks ago, my husband Will and I moved to New York City. Though we live relatively simply and our twin house in Philadelphia was not huge (about 1700 square feet), we had to downsize even more in order to move into our two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. There’s
Note: This is a guest post written by The Rev. Samantha Drennan, a part-time associate to the Bishop in Northeastern PA Synod (ELCA), full-time parish pastor, and cat mom. Becca (The Christian Minimalist) asked me to write this guest post after I sent her the above picture of guest towels.
It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials. Bruce Lee In math class, I always appreciated addition more than subtraction. It seemed easier to wrap my mind around adding more rather than taking away, especially when taking away brought the total into negative
A few years ago, when we started our Christian minimalism journey, my husband Will and I minimized 60% of our stuff. It felt good to simplify our material possessions. But letting go of things was much harder than we anticipated. We were prepared to have a hard time paring down
Note: This is a guest post written by Will Platnick, husband to The Christian Minimalist and Senior Platform Engineer at Paige. My father passed away after a fluke accident earlier this year. In addition to all the usual things that happen with grief, it was a tough time for
For the last month or so, my husband Will and I have spent some time doing what everyone who has lost a close loved one can relate to—cleaning out my Father-in-Law Norm’s house. Norm was a relatively modest man; except for his collection of illustrator artwork and specimens/lab equipment on
“New year, new you.” This phrase is pretty much everywhere when a new year rolls around. The beginning of a new year seems like a natural time to start fresh and make some beneficial changes in our lives. Yet 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail. We assume that it being