How to Embrace Simplicity as a Family of Six

Embracing simplicity as a family is not always, well, simple! Caring for small human beings can be a hectic, busy operation.

My husband and I are familiar with the beautiful and messy juggle of child rearing young kids.

Our children are currently 6 years old, 4 years old, 2 years old, and 5 months old. As a result, we have had to be very intentional with our choice of lifestyle.

Our family has chosen to embrace simplicity in our home, our schedule, and our attitudes in an effort to enjoy and thrive in these years of young children.

Of course, we do not always keep things as simple and streamlined as we aspire! But we have found implementing seven principles into our life helpful for maintaining a simple approach.

We have worked up to these seven principles over time.

So if you feel overwhelmed, I would recommend starting with one of them. You don’t need to do all seven at once to begin to reap the benefits of embracing simplicity.

Why Should You Embrace Simplicity?

We experience rich benefits from embracing simplicity! One of the biggest benefits for us is a sense of presence and grounding in our life.

Although children still need to be fed, clothed, cleaned, taught, and otherwise cared for, our lifestyle allows us to be present in our moments with them.

Childhood is fleeting. We want to appreciate, value, and enjoy our children’s time in our home.

Another benefit I experience as I embrace simplicity is less decision making and mental work.

This probably contributes to how we feel present in our life. With clearly defined values, practices, and routines, I believe I free up mental space to focus on things that are truly important to me, not just mundane decisions of everyday life.

And perhaps my favorite reason why I embrace simplicity is more free time. With mental space freed up, I find I can focus and accomplish tasks I need to do efficiently, which frees up time.

Although I’m certainly not free of all time constraint and sense of rushing, I do feel that embracing simplicity allows me to shrug off stress and time pressure.

Principle #1: Build A Simple Schedule Around Your “Big Rocks”

In this season of life, I try to keep our family’s schedule very simple. This is inspired by my desire to get good sleep for both my kids and myself.

Well rested kids are (mostly) happy kids!

Since we have 4-5 naps happening in our home each day (between the infant, the toddler, and the preschooler), I prioritize maintaining regular nap times over scheduling things outside of the house that will disrupt naps.

Usually once or twice per week, I will venture out late morning to accomplish a few errands. My typical errands includes picking up groceries, picking up books at the library, and attending an appointment or dropping something off for someone.

Since these windows of not-nap-time aren’t very long, I try to be efficient with my time. I map my route through town to avoid zig-zagging all over. And I utilize conveniences like placing grocery orders online and reserving books online.

By keeping my time to leave the house to a clearly defined window each day, I simplify how many things I attempt to do when I do leave the house. That in turn helps to keep our schedule simple.

If I plan to run errands during my window on a given morning, I know I am not also available for a park hang out.

Being realistic about how much you can get done is absolutely essential!

This decision to embrace simplicity in my daily and weekly plans keeps a limit to how busy our schedule gets.

Principle #2: Create a Simple Meal Rotations to Embrace Simplicity in the Kitchen

I am a fan of using a meal rotation to simplify life and minimize time in the kitchen.

While I play around with meal rotations for our dinners (usually heavily influenced by the season), I’m very consistent with using meal rotations for our breakfasts and lunches.

We keep our first two meals of the day simplified by serving the same 3-5 meals regularly.

On Saturdays, we usually make Swedish Sheet Pan Pancakes. During the rest of the week, we cycle through greek yogurt parfaits with homemade granola, oatmeal with a variety of toppings, sourdough toast with sides (usually eggs or green smoothies), and sheet pan pancakes.

To keep from being bored, I adapt each of these breakfast options to be seasonal, and to keep things interesting.

Sometimes our parfaits have banana and pear cut up on top of them. Other times they have thawed blueberries.

Similarly, I mix up the other breakfast options utilizing what is in season or what I have on hand that needs to be consumed.

Lunch is a similarly simple, involving basic wraps, sandwiches, leftovers, and quesadillas. We make things more interesting by mixing up the sandwich and wrap filling, or experimenting with adding different things to our quesadillas.

But honestly, we do a lot of peanut butter and jam sandwiches and cheese quesadillas!

I think one benefit of repeating meals a lot is that our kids get used to eating all of these things. While certain of our kids prefer one breakfast or lunch choice over another, they have repeatedly been exposed to all the options we offer.

This is apparently important to helping kids who are picky eaters get over being picky. I think that has helped our children be fairly compliant with eating these meals, and that simplifies my life as well!

Principle #3: Establish Regular Rhythms of Daily Life

If you were to observe our home for a week, you would notice our days look pretty similar to each other. Although our life doesn’t happen on a strict time schedule, it does follow a predictable routine.

This is a key aspect of how we embrace simplicity. There is a lot of information available about the benefits of routines for kids.

I wholeheartedly agree from my own experience with our children in our home. When my kids know what comes first or when in the order of the day we are going to do something specific, it helps all of us manage our expectations!

I don’t get bombarded with as many questions. And I don’t have to helicopter-parent-direct them to do certain tasks.

Our kids know they will do chores every day, and what those chores will be.

They know what schoolwork they will do each day during the week.

They know what the expectations are for quiet rest time.

And they know what options are available to them for outdoor play.

The days when we get off track with our rhythms or we need to disrupt the rhythms for another purpose are the days that everything feels a bit more chaotic and stressful. For myself as well as our kids, embracing simplicity by sticking to the same general rhythms and routines each day make life easier.

And a quick note about doing something fun and unique: we do like to do new stuff! We just incorporate doing new things into our weekly rhythm.

That way, my adventurous kids know they have that particular day of the week to look forward to. And my more tentative kids know they won’t be having to brace for something wild and new all the time.

Principle #4: Prioritize Connection and Experiences over Stuff

Since our home is small, I feel like I need to be very intentional about the stuff that we bring into our home.

In general, I try to NOT bring much into our home.

This means that I am free to focus less on managing our things and more on making fun memories and connections. We do this in a couple different ways:

First, we choose to have fewer toys than what might be considered normal.

For birthdays and Christmas, rather than getting our children multiple toys each, we try to choose either one open-ended toy (magnatiles, duplo, puzzles, hot wheel cars, etc). Or we stick to stuff that needs to be upgraded or replaced (such as underwear in the larger size, new socks to replace ones that are worn out, replenishing colored pencils, etc).

Rather than playing with toys, we try to spend time outside playing in and with nature.

Second, we give ourselves visual limits for how many things we have.

For example, right now each child has a basket for their clothing tops and a basket for their clothing bottom. Once the basket is too full to easily keep organized and fitting neatly on the shelf, it is time to get rid of some things.

Our limits help us prioritize things more than our stuff.

And third, we try to spend money on making memories rather than buying things.

There is a cost investment in doing connection-building things, sometimes, but that is worth it for me. The gas to go on a hike or the cost of entry into a beautiful garden help me focus on valuing the time together while making memories.

Principle #5: Follow (my version of) the 80/20 rule in almost everything!

The 80/20 rule says something like 80 percent of your accomplishments come from 20 percent of your efforts.

I have my own version of the rule: focus on having and keeping what you need 80% of the time. Don’t keep things for the other 20%.

We apply this with our space and our furniture.

At least 80% of the time, 5 chairs at the dining table is enough (although we’ll be bumping that up to 6 soon for Thad!). So I don’t keep extra chairs at my table.

When we need them, we utilize other chairs and get creative.

We similarly have a living room set up that would only sit 4 adults (if they squeeze). But it’s adequate for our family.

Of course, it is tight when guests come. But we don’t have extra people here 80% of the time, so I don’t prioritize more seats.

Another way I apply this is in kitchen appliances and gadgets.

At least 80% of the time, my oven, stove top, microwave, tea kettle, and electric frying pan, along with my 3 sauce pans, 1 frying pan, 2 baking sheets, 2 casserole dishes, and one stock pot is enough.

I don’t need an air fryer, a bread maker, a kitchen aide, or a toaster oven the vast majority of the time. So I choose not to keep them.

And a third example is our stroller.

We opted for a small stroller that would fit in the back of our car and service our needs 80% of the time. Rather than buying something bulkier that would cover that 80% PLUS the 20% of the time we might want to go off roading.

Embrace simplicity by only keeping what you need 80% of the time.

Principle #6: Clarify Your Values and Priorities

This principle is less visible action-oriented and more internal. As a result, I have put it farther down the list than some of the more immediately actionable items.

But it is still an important step for sticking to simplicity over the long haul. Sometimes, looking backward is easier than looking inside.

So Gabe and I have had a handful of conversations where we look back on our time as parents and our lives as a couple and we think about WHY we made certain decisions along the way.

An example of how we clarified one of our values:
We avoided owning battery operated toys for our children, all the way back from when Mara was a baby.

Part of that was (initially) because Gabe and I didn’t want the overstimulation of flashing lights and recorded noise. But another part of that was because we didn’t want to overstimulate our kids.

That led us to realize that we didn’t want our children being dependent on external stimulation to keep them occupied. And that realization in turn led us to realize we value the ability to self entertain and imaginatively play with simple, open-ended items.

Because of that value, we have prioritized our home, our kids’ toys and our choices of entertainment. In fact, a lot of our life as a family prioritizes developing self entertainment and rich imaginations.

It took reflecting on why we had made an intuitive decision to help us uncover what the value was.

But once we did that, it has been easy to make decisions to prioritize that value in our everyday life.

Principle #7: Keeping Blinders On (Avoiding Comparison as Much as Possible)

One way I embrace simplicity in my own life, and therefore in my family’s life, is I try to intentionally keep some blinders on.

In previous generations, the ability to observe in detail the lives of perfect strangers was just not an option.

Seeing people’s homes, hearing people talk about what they have, those things were reserved for the people in one’s actual social circle. Such as their sisters, cousins, neighbors, and friends.

Today, we can have almost limitless access to the number of people we can look into their lives. With the use of the internet and specifically social media, we can see all kinds of stuff that people have and things they do with basically no limits.

Limitations and boundaries are important for us. We know kids need to know their boundaries, and I believe adults do as well.

For me, keeping blinders so I avoid being tempted to compare my life to other people’s lives looks a little different in different seasons.

But Gabe and I try to intentionally keep an eye on when we’re starting to feel discontent. Those are red flags for us to reevaluate our social media consumption and what ideas we are taking in and dwelling on.

As a practical tip, by setting goals and trying to keep myself productively occupied during my “work time” and then relationally connected during my “non work time,” I find it is a lot easier to just avoid consuming social media.

It’s always a more sustainable practice for me to pursue something rather than avoid something.

BONUS Principle: Cultivating Gratitude

Perhaps one of the most simple ways to embrace simplicity is to just practice gratitude.

Practicing gratitude slows me down – it slows down my head and my heart. I have to pause to consider what I have to be grateful for.

For myself, my faith finds an expression through this practice.

So when I wake up in the morning and go to scoop Baby Thad from his hammock, and starts beaming smiles at me, I thank God for the gift of this sweet little person in our home.

When I hang diapers and diaper covers on the laundry line, I thank God that my baby’s body works well, that we have running water and a washing machine, and that I have been able to breastfeed my baby.

When my older kids start negotiating for a certain breakfast, I coach them through what they can be grateful for about having ANY breakfast.

These habits help us to slow down our mental hurry, and take inventory of what we do have. When we do that, it inspires me to actually ENJOY what I have! Not just rush on to the next thing.

What about you? Have you found practices that help you embrace simplicity? In what ways are you intentionally cultivating simplicity in your home and family? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!