How I’ve Simplified My Wardrobe

When I first started blogging, I had a barebones minimalist wardrobe with just 6 tops and 6 bottoms, and that was it. For real.

I did a video on my minimalist wardrobe and people could not believe that that was possible. But I’m just such a simple person that it worked for me.

Yes, I re-wore many things over and over and over again. Yes, people saw me in the same outfits all the time, but I honestly didn’t care because it kept my life so simple.

It eliminated decision fatigue, it made it easy to keep my closet organized, and it freed up time and space in my life for things that were higher priorities to me than how I looked and dressed.

Over time, as I’ve done more speaking engagements, interviews, business meetings, TV, and video, I’ve realized I need to adjust and expand some from my long time “6 tops and 6 bottoms” wardrobe. (I quickly found that one dressier/business outfit just didn’t cut it — especially when I was on a 3 or 4-day business trip!)

At first, this was really hard for me. I don’t like shopping. I don’t like messing with figuring out clothes and outfits. And it just felt stressful — especially when I would need to get something new because I’d be doing a video interview and they’d say I needed to wear a solid color top or dress that matched with this type of background and wasn’t in these colors.

I took some time to really evaluate and figure out what would work best for my current life season, allow me to have enough options to choose from for different occasions, and also not result in me having more than I need or use.

Instead of having a set wardrobe standard where I only have X number of outfits, I’ve arrived at a really great happy place with what a minimalist wardrobe looks like for me based upon principles, rather than specifics.

These are the principles that have helped me embrace a minimalist wardrobe while also feeling great about myself.

{Keep in mind that this is what works for me, and different things work best for different people. I encourage you to take from this what you can, and then adopt it to fit your lifestyle and individual preferences.}

1. Know Your Colors

If you pay attention to what I wear, you’ll notice I only wear a couple of colors — mostly greens and blues, with a few other colors thrown in. I have found the colors that I absolutely love, that make me feel great, complement my skin, and make my eyes pop.

Knowing my colors has also helped simplify shopping for me! When I walk into a store, I don’t feel overwhelmed by all of the choices. I go straight to my favorite colors that I know will make me feel great.

I highly recommend the helpful book Color Me Beautiful to help guide you through the process of figuring out what your best colors are. I also found the book, Help Me Jesus I Have Nothing to Wear to be helpful, too.

2. Know Your Style

There are different styles for different people, and there are different styles for different body types. The Dressing Your Truth course helped me figure out my style, completely changed the way I dressed, and made me feel much more confident about myself each day.

With the help of this course, I discovered that I like and look best in classic styles, tailored items, and straight lines (I’m a Type 4). Those beautiful, flow-y shirts that look SO gorgeous on some of my friends simply do not work on my body type. (Seriously, I look like I’m wearing a bag when I try on something like that. Plus, I just feel plain frumpy — despite how cute it looks on someone else!)

Parts of theDressing Your Truth course are a little “out there” and weird to me, but I found the core principles of this course to be truly life changing. You can read my review about it here.

Note: The course is a little bit pricey, so I recommend trying out the Dressing Your Truth eBook first to see if it’s really worth it for you. There are also a number of free videos online with more information that will give you a great peak into what the course is about. If you find these helpful, then you might want to try out the full Dressing Your Truth course.

3. Only Own What You Love

In The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, the author says it is important to constantly ask yourself, “Does this item spark joy?” Take a look at your wardrobe piece by piece and ask yourself this question. Don’t hang on to anything you don’t like anymore, doesn’t fit you, is worn out, might be the wrong size, or that you don’t absolutely love wearing.

Think, “Am I wearing this because it looks cute on someone else? Or is it because I really love it?” As with everything in life, comparison steals joy. Focus on what works for you, and what makes you feel amazing when you put it on.

Get rid of anything that does not make you feel great every time you put it on.

4. Shop Your Closet First

It’s so easy to feel discontent and think that you need more clothes or “don’t have anything to wear”. But when you feel like that, instead of running to the mall or to shop online, start by looking at what you already have in your closet.

It’s possible that you have a closet full of clothes that you aren’t wearing. Start there.

Go through what you already have and ask yourself, “Do I love this? Have I worn this recently? Could I pair this with something I already have to make a ‘new’ outfit?

Just by going through what you already have, you might discover some items you completely forgot about, put together some new looks, and realize you don’t even need to go shopping at all!

5. Only Buy What You Absolutely Love

This goes hand-in-hand with only owning what you love. There is no point in buying something that you don’t absolutely love.

When you’re in the dressing room, make sure you are 100% convinced that this item you are thinking of buying is your style and color, that it fits well, and that it pairs well with other pieces and accessories you already own.

If not, don’t buy it. Just don’t.

Otherwise, there’s a good chance you won’t wear it. You’ll keep it in your closet for the day when you find “the perfect shoes to match” or “the right pants to go with it” or for when you get back down to a size 8 again.

Save yourself the trouble, the clutter, and the money and just don’t buy it in the first place. I don’t care how good of a deal it is, it’s not a good deal for you if you don’t love it and aren’t going to wear it regularly!

6. Aim For Versatility

People usually think I have more clothes in my closet than I do, because most of my clothes are quite versatile. I aim to have most items in my closet be things I can mix & match and use to put together different looks and outfits.

For instance, I recently got three dresses from Stitch Fix (see my completely honest review of Stitch Fix here). I kept them not only because they fit so well, but also because I instantly realized I could wear them during both the summer or winter months. In the summer months, I can wear them as a sun dress with sandals. In the colder months, I can add leggings, a cardigan, and a scarf for a completely different look.

Note: Putting Me Together is an amazing blog that gives moms very practical and doable ideas for mix and matching clothing pieces to come up with an almost endless number of different cute and simple looks. I highly recommend checking it out!

What are your favorite tips, tricks, and resources for simplifying your wardrobe? Tell us in the comments!

Q&A: “How can I start a business even if I don’t have a lot of extra money to invest in it?”

In the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “Do what you can with what you have where you are.”

I’m a firm believer in avoiding debt, especially when starting a business. Pouring thousands of dollars of loans into a business before you can afford it is never a good idea.

This is why I’m a huge advocate of growing your income before you grow your expenses. For example, when I started my online business, we could not even afford Internet. I got creative and signed up for a 3-month trial for AOL dial-up Internet.

Every time I called to cancel my service before the trial was up, they wouldn’t let me. For over two years, they let me keep my slow Internet for free. I was SO excited when the day finally arrived that I could pay for Internet!

Sure, this means there will be sacrifices to make in the beginning, but it will be so worth it later on when you don’t have a huge pile of debt to face.

Looking for more tips & advice? Sign up for my FREE 5-day How I Make a Full-Time Income From Home course!

Our house plans: spending big to live small(ish)

Sounds so silly, doesn't it? Spending big to live small. That's my life at the moment - a bundle of contradictions! I feel so hypocritical talking about living more simply and with less stuff yet planning to spend a small fortune in order to extend our house! But to us it makes sense. We're realists. We know we can't do teeny tiny living - we plan to be here for a while and want our tweens and teenagers to have their own space. But we're not knocking our house down and building a McMansion and we're not adding on masses of extra rooms or installing luxury fittings or giving each child an ensuite or spaces that won't get used. We're working with the existing structure and attempting to make it look better, flow better and suit our family of six. It took us two years and many, many different versions, but we finally got a final plan together and submitted to council and I think we nailed it - for us. Want to take a peek?

Front and back in line-drawing form, above. The windows are still to be decided in terms of their exact looks (I'm thinking part of the centre upstairs windows will be louvres and the rest fixed. And probably not so many panels. The back is also going to be slightly different - the deck cover will just be pergola style, not a second roof or the hot west Summer sun will just cook us! My little illustration of the front and back of the house will be more like it (hopefully not as wonky in the structure's lines though!!)

Ground floor, above: So everything right of the dotted red line is our existing house. See? It's tiny! Since moving in we renovated the bathroom and painted the bedrooms. Then after playing with several floor plans we decided to rejig what we had already and eventually extend onto the back of the house only. So we knocked out several walls to open the living room side of the house all the way up front to back. It's like living in a fishbowl at times, but it's made a huge difference to light and my sanity. I love being able to supervise the kids when they're playing outside from pretty much anywhere on that side of the house. The good thing about our plan is, we now don't need to make any drastic changes to the existing structure - no bedrooms need to be converted to staircases or anything like that. All we want to do is slightly extend the dining room area as it's so tiny - we're hoping council lets us continue the floor at this height for one more metre as well as the laundry and storeroom. We have to increase the floor height due to living in a flood zone (the downside to living so close to the water!) so past the dining room will be a couple of stairs up to the new floor height family room. The wall dividing the family room from the laundry and storeroom will have a long built-in low shelf along it with a fireplace. The ceiling in this family room will be raked so it will be a huge open room with lots of light. The stairs will feature a large linen cupboard built under the highest steps; the middle and lower stairs will have a bar built in underneath them. French doors will open outwards onto a covered deck and there will be plenty of windows to keep it light and airy. The windows on the north wall in the family room will be high ones purely for light. The laundry will have an L-shaped bench with another linen cupboard and extra pantry - our kitchen is not huge so it'll be the go-to place for extra everything as well as the recycle bin. We'll be installing Ikea kitchen cabinetry for this room again and I want to cram as much storage into it as is physically possible! Next to the laundry will be a built-in tool/garden/bike/scooter/fishing kit storage room. Steve wants it to be all old-school and a bit beat up like a Grandad's shed at the back of the yard kind of room.

Top floor, above: Upstairs you'll come into a large open landing. The roof will literally slope down to the floor on either side of this landing area - the bigger side will be Steve's library looking out into the family room and the small side will maybe eventually be turned into a small study/bedroom for Annika. Above the laundry and store room will be a long narrow storage area built into the sloped roof - perfect for office paraphernalia if we ever start a business, which is a future goal. There will also be a laundry shute in there - yesssss. This excites more than it probably should. I mean, it's a laundry shute!?
Through the doors is our master bedroom suite. The ensuite will have a super-large shower - we'd like a walk-through one but I don't think the space is big enough. Bummer! Still, it will be nice to have a dedicated shower again! There will be no door to the ensuite - in fact, the walls on either side of the doorway will be low-height. Opposite the ensuite will be a wardrobe built into the eaves. The rest of that narrow storage area I'm thinking of using as my sewing/craft space. It should be just big enough to sit in comfortably. Our bed will sit alongside the knee wall under a roof window and there will be a small door or large window out onto a little balcony. Access to the other storage area will be from the small study/little bedroom area and I'm picturing it hidden in a cupboard and being a magical play space for the kids eventually. Both of these storage spaces at the front of the house will have large fixed windows in them and plenty of light, so I might as well make them useable!

So providing we get the all-ok from council (neighbours had until last Friday to object so we should hear something from them very soon), this is what our house should hopefully end up looking like. It's not too big, it's not too small, it's just right for us. There isn't anything too tricky or unique in the design, but it's not your bog-standard home extension either, which we like. The entire look and feel of the house will just start off pretty clean and simple and we'll see where we go from there. I don't want clutter or all surfaces filled with things. We just want to surround ourselves with pieces we love, that are comfortable, made from natural materials and hopefully pleasing to the eye too! With a fair bit of breathing space in-between it all with white walls and natural-stained timber floors. I'm calling it cosy simplicity - can that be a thing? I think it could be...

Just Beginning

I am a 47 year old single mom of a beautiful 7 year old daughter. I am just beginning my debt free journey and after reading the Total Money Makeover I am pretty certain I am the poster child for doing EVERYTHING stupid there is to do with money. As a result, I have $115,500 in debt and that does not include the house. I had found Dave many years ago and have even been to one of his shows. But, life kept happening and I never truly began the plan. I only kind of sort of did it. Well, that does not work! Either you do it or you don't. There is no half way doing it. However, When I read TMM agaiin this past September I was again so inspired by the stories in the book that I decided to learn from my past and not let it discourage me from becoming debt free. So just a few days prior to October 1, 2015, I logged onto EveryDollar and did a budget. I mean I really did a budget and accounted for every single dollar. There is was, my first REAL budget. It was staring at me on paper and wouldn't you know it, I was $100 short for the monthly expenses. I toyed with the idea of not giving to our church, but then decided, no the Lord has blessed us so much I am not going to cut out our giving. So that Sunday I dropped our check into the donation basket at church, thanked the Lord for all the blessing in our life and asked for his guidance as I begin my journey to debt freedom. Well, wouldn't you know it, about a week later my supervisor let me know that I would be receiving an award of excellence for a project I recently completed. The award was $100. Wow!!!! It gave me chills. I realized the Lord is watching over me as I begin this journey and will help me along hte way. I will continue to pray and ask for His guidance and I will continue to tithe. My goal is to be debt free by the time I turn 50 in 2.5 years. Lots of hard work is needed to accomplish that goal but I have no doubt I can do it with hard work, grit deterination, discipline and the Grace of God.

How I Juggle Homeschooling, Running a Business, & Life

Hi Crystal! I am new to your blog. I was wondering if you could explain how you handle homeschooling with all of your other responsibilities? I own my own business in addition to homeschooling, so I was hoping you could give me some tips on how you juggle it all. I feel like I’m drowning sometimes and just mediocre at everything, but not really excelling at my job or homeschooling. Thanks! -Sara

Hi, Sara!

This is one of the questions I am asked most often! I think people somehow think I’ve discovered some secret to “doing it all”!  Yes, I do juggle multiple balls, but I can I assure you I don’t have it all figured out.

I’m not superwoman. I struggle. I sometimes feel frazzled and frustrated. And I often drop balls on accident. So please keep this in mind.

Superwoman doesn’t have any clones — or at least none whom I’ve ever met before. We’re all learning, growing, and making mistakes in life. All of us have strengths and weaknesses and none of us have uncovered the magic pill for perfect execution of life.

Over time, I have discovered different tricks and tactics that help me be able to juggle more and have more of a healthy balance and I’ll happily share them with you in hopes that might inspire you. But remember that I’m often a hot mess and if you dropped by our home unexpectedly (or even expectedly!) on some days, you’d know this is definitely the truth!

1. I Try to Be Organized

Try is the key word here, because I am definitely not perfect with this. I’m not always as organized as I’d like to be, but I try really hard to keep everything in order to the best of my ability.

I’ve found that if you never let things get completely out of control, it makes such a difference in your ability to juggle multiple balls and wear multiple hats — without feeling completely overwhelmed.

A few specific strategies that help me:

• I use Google Calendar to brain dump and schedule tasks.
• I use time blocks to organize my to-do list each day.
• I aim to clean out my email inbox every single day.
• I also try to stay on top of clutter.

Setting up boundaries for different areas and responsibilities in my life helps me compartmentalize and stay focused. When I am focusing on one area, I want to be all there — not distracted in 10 different directions.

If I am working on business, I try to close down all other outside distractions so I can focus 100%. If I am spending time with my family or homeschooling, I leave the computer and phone in another room so that I can be 100% present.

In addition, I’ve found that clutter not only clutters my home, but also my life and my mind. Being really ruthless about getting rid of clutter helps me be more organized. We have systems for how we keep our house clean on a daily basis so that it rarely gets out of control and usually stays 15-45 Minutes to Company Ready.

These are just a few of the many ways I try to maintain an organized life and business. This organization allows me to be efficient and productive, stay on task, and knock out huge chunks of my to-do list each day.

2. I Say No a Lot

Almost every single day, I say no to an endorsement request, a speaking gig, a special project, an invite to be on a podcast, or some other opportunity.

I have to say no constantly. Not because I want to, but because I know that I can’t do it all. As a result, I have to be very careful about what I say yes to that is outside of my normal responsibilities.

A few examples:

I say no to many extracurricular stuff. For example, we’re not in a homeschool co-op. Right now, our children are each in one activity (Kathrynne is on swim team, Kaitlynn does ice skating, and Silas does baseball), and that’s what we set the limits at so that our family doesn’t have too many obligations each week.

I don’t have very many regular weekly commitments. Right now, I’m in a six-week Bible study, we have our Monday Group, and we are involved in a community group at church. Aside from those commitments and our kids’ activities, I know we don’t have any room in our schedule right not to add new regular weekly commitments. Not because we wouldn’t love to, but because we know we need white space in our schedule or we’ll start feeling harried and hurried.

I also say no to busyness. I am very intentional about carving out time each week for rest, because I know that it’s something I need. For example, I don’t blog on Sundays. I pre-schedule stuff on social media, but I’m usually not on email or my blog at all on Sundays. Sunday is my day to recharge and I carefully guard it. I sometimes even turn my phone off all day long just so that I can really unplug. As an introvert, I have to take time to recharge. I have to make time for rest. Otherwise, if I try to keep going and going and going, I will burn out.

When I say yes to one thing, that means I’m saying no to something else. I want to make sure every yes is carefully considered and fits into our priorities as a family.

3. I Have Help

This is really important and I want to be completely honest about the fact that, at this season of my life, I have a lot of help.

Because I’m a work-at-home mom, I have had to come to terms with the fact that I will not be able to do everything. Homeschooling, my marriage, time with family and friends, and rest are priorities in my life. In order for those to be a priority for me, I’ve had to delegate other things — without guilt.

There are many, many areas I have help in:

• My husband is amazing. I always say that I am not superwoman, but I am married to superman. He wasn’t this way when we got married, and he will really admit that as well. It’s been incredible to see how God has changed his heart and my heart in this regard. He does half of the homeschooling — math, science, and language arts. He loves cooking and planning healthy menus and trying new recipes, so he does almost all of the menu-planning, grocery shopping, and cooking for our family right now. He also takes care of all of our bill paying and anything to do with the finances. We sit down and discuss it together and we are on the same page with our goal planning and budgeting, but he’s the one who carries it out.
• We go out to eat once per week. We budget for this, and we love that it gives us a break as a family together once each week.

• My kids are a huge help. They help with laundry, cooking, some business stuff, and cleaning/picking up.

• We have cleaners that come once a week. This was hard for me at first. It seemed so extravagant and ridiculous, but I quickly realized that they were saving me at least 5 hours a week and the time I was “buying back” was so worth the money we paid each week. They dust the house, deep clean the floors, and clean all of the bathrooms, among other things. I’ve also found that it motivates me to keep my house more orderly and picked up for when they arrive on their cleaning day. {Yes, we clean up the house for the cleaners to come!!}

• I have a great team of people who help me with my business. There is NO way I could run this business without a great team of people. We are focusing as much as possible on getting me to a place where I am the community engager and content creator — writing posts, doing periscopes, responding to comments, etc. We’re not quite there yet, and I’m still involved in many more details than I need to be, but we’re slowly working toward that!

It’s not always easy juggling everything, and I have to give myself grace on those hard days. I can’t do it all! Instead, I want to focus on doing what I can do and not stressing about what I can’t do.

So bottom line is this: my best advice is to determine your few priorities worth focusing on, delegate or say no to everything else you possibly can, remember not to shoot for unattainable perfection, and give yourself grace.

For those of you who are juggling multiple responsibilities in life, what other advice and suggestions do you have for Sara? I’d love to hear!

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31 Gluten-Free Dairy-Free Crockpot Freezer Meals

Kelly from New Leaf Wellness has put together a list of 31 gluten-free, dairy-free crockpot freezer meals. You can download her free printable that includes all of the recipes and a grocery list.

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Edible Arrangements: Free Salted Caramel Banana Fruit Truffle Sample (today only!)

Stop by Edible Arrangements today to get a free Salted Caramel Banana Fruit Truffle sample.

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On the Road Again

A friend at my church told me about Dave Ramsey's radio show. I listened and was really hooked. I have been studying financial subjects since age 15. I loved Dave's program. I bought his book the total money makeover. I checked the library to see if they had any of his books and they had some. I read and read. The more I read the more I wanted to read. I got on my parents nerves talking about Dave Ramsey. I talked my parents into sponsoring me and my wife to go to our first FPU class. The FPU class was at another local church. For me it was great but for my wife it was torture. I drug her into doing it. That was 2012. Life continued to happen. In 2015 we attended our present class at the same church. We went for free because we were lifetime members. All the while I was researching on Dave's website. We had been having money fights and problems. We had been dealing with bills. School loans particularly. My school loan is huge. It was then 75,000 dollars but at last count it is now over 82,000 dollars. Me wife told me at first we don't need to attend FPU again because it's just going to be the same. But it was even better this time than last time. We meet new people and were encouraged even more this time. We found some of our fire that we lost after the first time. My wife and I planned that we will finish step one one month after we finish FPU. That's all we can do right now. My health is not the best and neither is hers. I am 43 with 5 preexisting conditions. Bipolar, Diabetes, Cholesterol, Blood Pressure and Thyroid. She has TMJ and lymphderma. And she is 38. She wants to have kids badly and I'm not sure we can afford right now. We are 240,000 in debt including our house. We have good days and bad days. She has put me in charge of the bills. I answer the bill letters and with God's help I do the best that I can to pay them all with what we have. I get tired but the stories of WE did it help to encourage us. Dave your ministry is just incredible. I watch the video clips on youtube. I listen to your podcasts. I want to be a millionaire. I'm not sure that my wife does. However she wants to spend a million dollars I know that. I go to sleep reading your materials. TMMO and Financial Peace. Sometimes I wake up and put on the Financial Peace CD's from 2008. I'm a huge fan. I'm always talking about you and what Dave says. I have to be really tired not to be motivated to talk about Dave and money. I am the nerd (Saver) in case you didn't know and my wife is the Free Spirit. (Spender). The only thing I really spend on is books. I love to read about finance. I am a preacher/ musician and wife is a teacher assistant. We don't make a lot of money. In a year we make about 40,000 dollars gross. So when you have stories that say you can make on any income that really helps us. From Dave Ramsey to Chris Hogan that really helps us. We have our times but overall I am glad that we are on the road again. Me and my wife are communicating on money and it's making our marriage better. I have made all types of plans, being the nerd, about how we will progress through the baby step from age 43 to 65. I could not afford to hire one of Dave's financial coaches so I tried to coach myself. I wrote up a plan for us. I did. I wanted to become a coach and fly down to Nashville and take the class. One I could not afford it right now and TWO my Bipolar scares me to death of taking a risk like that and trying to travel to a big city by myself. When I was first diagnosed with Bipolar I went to Charlotte NC by myself before I knew better and Had a good time bad time being a little out of my mind and not on medicine but it scares me now of thinking what could have happened. Now that I've been on medicine for the last 18 years it makes me afraid to take a chance on myself. I try not to travel without my wife. She is my caretaker. She drives for me a lot of the time. Although I can drive I don't try to drive out of town by myself usually. But I enjoy Dave Ramsey so much that I might take a chance if he was coming some where close like Raleigh, NC. I just wish I could become debt-free and then become a decamillionaire. My wife would be able to spend and help others. We could help our church. She could retire from her job and have kids. We could travel and vacation. I could do the things I read about in my books. I could sponsor my parents the way they have sponsored us. I could pay for mom and dad to go a hotel in a nice place to get away from the grind of ministry. Mom could order room service. Dad could explore the city. I would pay off my parents house and my brother's house. It would be a dream come true. Well we are truly at it again. We plan not to give up this time. We have hope that because others have done it and greater that we eventually will do it. Dave says that if you do poor people stuff long enough eventually you get to be poor. But if you do rich people stuff long enough eventually you get to be rich. Thank you

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DIY Tweed Back Tab Curtains for the Bedroom

After listening to me ramble on about tweed, let me just show you the new bedroom curtains!
(Spoiler alert: they're tweed!):

With my new wide angle lens, you can see our glass sliding closet doors and the new green curtains! Learning to handle my DSLR and wide angle lens is still a slow process, but I love that I can show you so much more of a room in one photo! (Ignore the blank canvases - a DIY art project I'm currently working on).

I was quite smitten with the last set of DIY back tab curtains my Mom and I made but, after I switched around the vintage Hungarian posters, the teal pattern no longer worked in the room.

This green tweed is utterly perfect - the exact shade of green I wanted, shot with aqua. When we moved to the lakehouse, I was on a mission to add more colour but I've realized that colour + pattern aren't necessarily what I want. I think that colour + texture or a low contrast pattern (and smaller doses of pattern), look best in the space. Then our beautiful artwork can take centre stage.

The fabric I chose is called Dapp Peacock and I purchased it from U-Fab, before they dropped their e-commerce site (you can still order by phone/email).

I'm so impressed by the sheen and weight of this fabric; it has a luxurious feel. The tweed relaxed a bit after we hung them up so they break a bit more than planned. We might re-hem them, but I'm waiting to see if the fabric relaxes more.

Head over to Hello Yellow for the how-to, including some tips for working with this tweed - which was a bit trickier than the outdoor fabric we used for the last set of drapes.

I still have a bolt of the same tweed in aqua, calling my name from where it's propped up in the corner of my office. I hope my Mom and I can carve out some time soon(ishly) to whip up some turquoise tweed curtains for the office, which will create a really nice cohesiveness and flow between the two bedrooms.