Simplify Your Life Week

While it might feel like a popular idea from recent years, the movement toward a more simple lifestyle actually goes back much further. In fact, simple living has been a theme that has popped up in different cultures, faith systems and nations throughout much of history. 

Simplify Your Life Week offers a gentle reminder to consider slowing down, minimizing, and making things as simple as possible.

History of Simplify Your Life Week

Even as far back as Epicurius in the fourth century BC, the paradigm was believed that a happier life came from carefully considered choices, fewer complications and fewer possessions. From the biblical Nazirites and Jesus to Confucious, Buddha and Muhammed, spiritual leaders and teachers have often encouraged their followers to embrace a simpler, more frugal style of living.

In more modern times, environmental activists have also been proponents of simple living, with the ideas that using less of the earth’s resources helps to preserve them for future generations.

But in addition to religious, moral and environmental convictions, there is the awareness that the world today moves so fast, it can be difficult to keep up with the forces all around. Technology drives everything at a speed that can make it easy to fall out of balance and into a lifestyle of stress, unhealth, exhaustion and dis-ease.

Simplify Your Life Weeks aims to remind people about what is truly important in the whole scheme of things. The event is meant to draw the attention back to the basics, allowing people to make reductions in a number of ways, including reducing stress, lowering their amount of busy-ness, reducing the number of possessions they have, and minimizing in other ways.

How to Celebrate Simplify Your Life Week

Make your own world a little easier and freer by joining in with some of these ideas for Simplify Your Life Week:

Simplify Your Possessions

Marie Kondo may have been one of the most popular names in the organizing and simplifying spectrum lately, but there are a number of other simplifying experts also. Many of these state that decluttering a person’s space allows them to de-clutter their minds as well. While the moment of cleaning out a closet or getting rid of junk may not feel good, the freedom it can create is amazing. This may also include simplifying home decor by removing items that gather dust or take up mental space and going for clean lines and

Simplify Your Schedule

Many people live their lives with back to back meetings, coffee dates, play dates, sporting events, volunteer work and other commitments. And while some of these can be healthy, too much can be overwhelming. Individuals and families can participate in Simplify Your Life Week by creating more margins and white space in their calendars and limiting the things they say “yes” to.

Simplify Your Home Decor

Simplify Your Life Week might include a project that allows for simplifying home decor. Start by removing items that gather dust (taking up time and mental space). Instead, go for cleaner lines, more blank walls and solid colors or simple patterns that soothe the soul. As stated by William Morris: “have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”