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“It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.” –Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Sweet, Simple Things was born out of the desire to recognize that living our best life is easier than we think. This doesn’t mean we have money to buy everything we want, rather it means that we use what we have been given to live a life that is purposeful and filled with joy.
I have a passion for trying to live the life that I want to within my means. I did not always do this, and we had the debt to show for it!
We used to be satisfied to mostly just pay minimums on the debt. But I was always struggling with wanting MORE. I wanted to do more, buy more, see more, be more…but we had this debt weighing us down.
When we realized that our way of accepting our debt as part of our life was impacting our future and the goals we had for our family, we realized we needed to get serious about changing our life.
And what was funny about the things that got us started, wanting more…well, we still want more, but what we want more OF has changed.
Who Am I?
I’m Holly and I live in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota with my husband and two young sons. We also have a welsh corgi named Ruby and an orange tabby cat named Gherkin. We are a Christian family just trying our best to do right by God and our community.
I am a middle school reading teacher, and I work primarily with students with learning disabilities like dyslexia and ADHD. I am lucky to be able to do this part-time right now so I can be home with my two young kids. Being at home more was like a dream come true–I missed my kids so much when I was at school, and I was struggling with the feeling like I was divided in my loyalties. I felt like I wasn’t giving enough of myself to either my students, or if I was, I felt like I wasn’t giving enough to my family.
I know many other working moms out there know exactly what I mean. Working part-time was a wonderful solution for me.
Why I Write
When starting this part-time schedule, I found I had a lot more creative energy that I wanted to utilize in something that was just for me. It would have been a plus if it could generate some money to help us pay off our student loans faster. In my research, I stumbled upon Wealthy Affiliate. Wealthy Affiliate showed me how to generate a site about my passions that is capable of generating income.
My first site was Rocking the Cloth– a blog about cloth diapers. I am passionate about using cloth diapers and am still maintaining this website. However, my youngest child is reaching potty training age. Knowing that this was about a stage of my life I may be leaving soon, this site, The Sweet, Simple Things, was born.
I’m so glad you are here. I can’t wait to share simple living & frugal living tips and ideas with all of you. Most importantly, I can’t wait to see what all of you are able to teach me!