I’m thrilled to be part of the launch team for Lorilee Lippincott’s new book, Simple Living – 30 Days To Less Stuff And More Life. You can get it on Amazon right now for 99 cents (not an affiliate link – just spreading the word about a really good book!). The price will be going up next week to $2.99 (still a bargain) so grab a copy soon. If you don’t want to buy the book through Amazon, you can buy the PDF version on the Simple30 site.
Simple Living is written as a series of actions that you can take over the course of 30 days to simplify your life. I read it in just a few nights so that I could review it on here, but the material and challenges in the book are perfect for spreading out over the course of a month. Some of the daily actions are harder than others (filing cabinet, I’m looking at you…) but some are nice and easy. And Lorilee does an excellent job of mixing in philosophical tasks with practical ones (ie, one day you’re creating a list of what’s important to you and where you want to focus your time and energy, while another day you’re cleaning magnets and clutter off of the fridge). She keeps it perfectly balanced so that you don’t get overwhelmed with physical tasks to do, but you also don’t get so bogged down in the planned and dreaming stage that you never get to the nitty gritty clutter-busting stage.
I’ve been simplifying our life for quite a while now, and I found myself nodding in agreement with nearly everything in Lorilee’s book. She includes lots of great ideas, practical advice, and a good amount of what my dad would call “sense of proportion”. Sometimes, people get so gung-ho about a new idea that they burn themselves out rather quickly, and that doesn’t really accomplish anything in the long run. Lorilee advocates a more simple, gentle approach, and will teach you how to make small changes and then build on your success.
Our own simple living day involved a lot of harvesting, since it’s that time of year. Our son and I spent a lot of the afternoon in the garden, and this is what our counter looks like right now:
Tomorrow will involve lots of freezing and canning. Even though it’s a lot of work, it’s truly work that we enjoy. There’s something about growing things that is just awesome. It’s such a good feeling to harvest the veggies and fruits after all the work that goes into growing them. And I loved watching our boys in the tomato beds today, eating almost as many cherry tomatoes as they were putting into the bowls.
We also have lots of flowers in our garden, thanks to the multiply-like-rabbits nature of marigolds. We planted some a few years ago because we read that they were good for keeping bugs away. And then their seeds took over the garden. We pulled out about 3 million baby marigold plants this past spring, but we still ended up with plenty of them in our garden. But that’s ok, because this makes a very nice centerpiece on our dining room table:
Hope you all had a beautiful autumn (or spring, for those of you in the south!) weekend.
Kristia says
What will you do with all of those cherry tomatoes? Can or freeze?
Frugal Babe says
The cherry tomatoes made five quarts of sauce, and the big tomatoes made another five quarts. All of it is canned and in the pantry :-)
Spring76 says
Haha the comment box has appeared! Was it me or was it missing for a few days? I was getting all sad thinking I wasn’t going to able to comment on one of my fav blogs anymore…
I’ve has quite a lot of sucess this year and have got myself a small plastic green house/polytunnel thing, now I just have to wait and be patient for next spring so I can use it. Love the marigold tip, now I have the excuse to grow them!
Frugal Babe says
Sorry about the comments! I noticed they were broken over the weekend, and my handy IT guy (aka, my husband) fixed them for me yesterday. The marigolds are good for bugs, but they will take over the garden if you’re not careful! The second year, you’ll have tons and tons of baby marigolds sprouting from last year’s seeds. As long as you pull most of them early in the season, you’ll be fine. I wasn’t on top of that as much as I should have been this year, and we have some beds that look like they’re more marigolds than veggies…
Economies of Kale says
Yay, the comments are back :) That is a lot of tomatoes, hope you got them all canned or frozen. We only have two tomato plants so are lucky if we get enough to last us the week, however they did produce tomatoes all through winter :)
Frugal Babe says
Well if they’re producing all winter, I guess there’s no need to can or freeze them anyway! I would love to have plants producing all winter, but we’re supposed to get our first freeze tomorrow night, so we’ll be covering our beds with tarps and hoping for the best. I’d like to keep the garden going for another couple weeks, but we’ll see how it goes.