We've been moving a lot lately.

Since graduating from college three and a half years ago:

• I've lived at home with my parents,
• shared a 3-bedroom apartment with three other girls,
• got married and moved to an apartment with my husband,
• bought our first house together,
• uprooted and stayed in small-town New Mexico for a semester in a community housing building attached to a nursing home,
• moved back to Omaha and sold our first house,
• am currently crashing in my in-law's basement for (hopefully only) a few months,
• and now am impatiently awaiting our close date on a house in Indiana near where I'm working and Jon goes to school.

When our realtor came to stage our 1100-square-foot Omaha house before listing it, she was really excited that there wasn't a lot of clutter. She kept saying, "Where did you put all your stuff??" Well, there's only two of us; Our house still felt big to us after dorm life and apartments and community housing. When we move, we tend to weed out things that don't merit carrying an extra box. But mostly, we knew she was coming over. And to be honest, the trunk of my car was full of things without a place to be put away.

I stumbled across a blog called The Year of Less that inspired me. The author is a mom of whose family of 8 lives in a 1000-sqaure foot house on one income. She writes:

By Western standards, we don't have much... But we still have too much. Too much stuff, too much debt, too much to do. Too many things vying for our attention... As Christians we believe that we are meant to be world changers. Compassionate. Radical. Set apart for God. This world and its stuff ought not to have a hold on us... So consider this a fast of sorts. Or an experiment. Every month we encourage you to join us in our pursuit of radical simplicity by doing one small thing with us for a whole month.

Go read her blog! She's already about 70 days in to her year, and has a lot of good ideas up! Some of them are not for everyone, like getting dreadlocks or getting rid of your bed, but they make sense for her.  

My bed plans to be an heirloom and I have no plans regarding dreadlocks, but for the month of October I'm going to try to do one thing a day that is a step towards a simpler way of living -- more organized, more stewardly, more focused. Let me know if you're following along, and if you're up to any simplifying yourself!