I recently moved into a new house, a space of my own, and even as a self proclaimed home body, I had no idea how happy it was going to make me. Within days of moving in, it looked like I had been there for years because I got my pictures hung and my favorite things in place. I’m still working on getting everything organized just the way I want it…it’s always that last 10%, 10 pounds, or 10 minutes that hangs us up right?  This process of moving, and moving on, has gotten me thinking about simplification in my life, not just with my material possessions but in what I choose to focus on and do with my time. I tend to find a lot of synchronicity in my life these days and these thoughts were already on my front burner when I went to Nashville this past week and met and furthered this conversation with Monica Leed, author of SIMPLY SPACED - Clear the Clutter and Style Your Life, coming out in October. When I said I had four kids, the conversation shifted to the work she does for mom’s, simplifying, making things more efficient, because we don’t have a lot of time for the extra. She knows exactly what to do with this last 10%. 

Our head and heart space often mirrors our physical space, so I see what Monica does not only as practical, but also energy creating…always something I am looking to do. I aspire to simplicity, it feels good, and free, and fills me with gratitude.  I have lived the fanciest life, but studies show, and I have experienced firsthand, that the more choices we have, the less content we are. What I realize today is how my current lifestyle has helped me simplify by letting go, and in many cases shifting life’s details to my (almost grown) kids, to create a more cohesive environment for all of us, creating time for me to do what fills me up, setting that example for them, and allowing them to learn to take more responsibility for their own lives.  

Since I was born with a pretty anxious nervous system I have always sought calm in the surroundings I spend the most time in. But, having four kids, I have been behind the curve for quite sometime as far as keeping up with all the details. As with any field or topic, perfection is an illusion, and I work to let go of it day after day.  I’ve come a long way from racing back home to pick up the library book that one of them forgot and was in tears over leaving at home. Life is messy, sometimes we forget the details, and we learn and usually can still manage to pull things off. I make no secret of the fact that I have befriended many a one or two kid mom to help me stay on track and I couldn’t be more grateful for their expertise and attention to detail that slipped past me.  But I have also been more than inspired by one of my closest friends, also a mother of four, who coined the phrase “survival days” over a decade ago, so that her kids could learn much needed life skills and she could get a break.  If you know my friend Sarah, it’s not really a break, just a time to focus on other things…she never sits down and her kids are some of the most competent I know. 

After my divorce, and as I started to set my own professional goals, so many things that I used to have a strong hold on, like library books and kneepads, started to fall on my kids. My attention is focused on the big character building stuff, teaching work ethic, drinking and driving, and curfews, because with teenagers that stuff comes flying at you fast and straying outside those navigational beacons are the mistakes we can’t afford for ourselves, or our kids to make, even once. As I’ve said before, parenting is an art not a science, and there could be a curve ball in the next inning because of that amazing free will we have all been granted, but, the silver lining in letting go as they grow is raising more competent kids…who will soon be adults. 

I live in a top 1% place, materially speaking, we have so much more than the rest of the world. As I observe, and read books like Caylin Moore’s A Dream Too Big, The Story of and Improbable Journey from Compton to Oxford, (READ THIS BOOK, so inspiring & I love the TCU connection) it strikes me that the more we have, the more time we spend on the details trying to make our kids lives easier and more fluid today, which I am convinced will leave them struggling later when we aren’t around to arrange the puzzle perfectly, and they haven’t had to do it on their own. Fixing and doing for them is an easy pattern to slip into, we love them and we are are so far removed from survival, we have plenty of time to focus on the little things. But what if we simplify? 

The conversations I had dropping Lauren off at college continue to fill my mind and heart. As the oldest of four, she has lived a pretty independent life. As we walked and talked through Target, watching mom’s pushing carts that were almost to big to maneuver with toddlers sitting in seats on the back, she said:

“Mom, I always walked.” 

That’s because her brother was only 19 months behind her and the simplest answer was to put her down and let her hold my hand…and after awhile she didn’t even need that.  My challenge today is to let the younger ones walk like she did, because there is nothing like the empowerment and freedom that is created when we can handle our responsibilities on our own and teach them the paradoxical principal that abundance and simplicity are two sides of the same coin.