i was an early adopter of Nike Free back in 2004 when they first came out – a shoe designed to mimic the feel and effects of running barefoot, but they gave me blisters in the top of my arch.  i have tried many different solutions and have never been completely satisfied.  i love to run barefoot, but since most of my running is on trails, it often hurts… even with the soles of my feet hardened by my many years of martial arts.

i think i have found a solution!

i recently bought a pair of vibram five-finger KSOs (keep stuff out).  you’ve seen them im sure – the shoes with the individual toe pockets.  ive been told i look funny wearing them – but i love them!  while the average running shoe has 35-40mm of loft at the heel, the vibrams have merely 6mm.  so they feel exactly like running barefoot… but i am protected from the rocks, sticks, and pokey things that line every trail here in virginia.

so i can cheat at running barefoot – enjoying all the freedom, the joy, and the tactile advantage of barefoot running without paying the price of footpain.  i took them out yesterday in a really muddy bog… running in mud and water sometimes up to my ankles, and they never missed a beat.  i could grip with my toes, jump over creeks and logs, hop from rock to rock, and never slipped once.

The kitchen is probably my next favorite room in the home.  I love to prepare healthy and tasty food – I love to cook!  But it is also very easy to get the kitchen so cluttered it is unusable.  Here are some great tips for finding simplicity in the kitchen:

• Simplify the dishes – I buy and use inexpensive corelle brand dishes in plain white.  They are tough, easy to clean, and inexpensive to replace without having to worry about a pattern.  We also keep our dish count to a minimum – in our family of five we have 10 large and 10 small plates (enough for company), 8 coffee mugs, 8 bowls, and a corresponding number of silverware.  No need for huge amounts! (see dishwashing below)
• Simplify the dishwashing – a dishwasher came in the house we rented but I don’t use it, and don’t allow my sons to either.  Simply washing the dishes by hand as soon as the meal is over uses a lot less water and is much faster!  By the time I would load and empty the dishwasher (and clean up the spots the dishwasher missed), I could have washed the dishes by hand, put them away, had some great conversation with those helping, and brewed a cup of tea!
• Simplify the cooking utensils – we have a small number of pots, one frying pan, and regularly use the 4 Ps to declutter the kitchen tools (spatulas, tongs, etc)  The less you have, the fewer to clean, store, and maintain.  And the simpler it is to find what you need when you need it.
• Simplify the preparation - cook simple meals at home.  Eating out less improves your health and finances… besides eating at home is much more fun.  Take the time to plan your meals and shopping for a week – or use helpful services like E-Mealz to help you shop and meal plan.  Buy few packaged foods.  Eat and prepare more fruits and vegetables.  You don’t have to be Julia Childs – cook simple meals you and your loved ones will enjoy.  And slow down and savor the experience of preparation.  If you arrive home late, and are too tired to cook, then pre-cook several meals and heat them up when you get home.  With a little thought and preparation there is always an answer!
• Flylady your kitchen!  The flylady helped me when I was starting to investigate simplicity and minimalism.  Do the dishes before bed so you don’t wake up to a messy kitchen in the morning.  Shine the sink (a cool trick that actually works!).  Keep all horizontal surfaces (like counters and appliances) clear of stuff.  Everything has a place, and each thing should be in its place.

I am proud to say that we have divested ourselves of well over half of our possessions that we moved to Richmond with.  And we are enjoying it!  We are finding more peace in owning less.  Wanting less.  Buying less.  And I thought it might be good to examine how we are doing this room by room.  Let’s start in the bedroom.

The bedroom should be the inner sanctum of your home.  Your ultimate retreat and sanctuary.  But it often becomes cluttered with stuff… furniture, paper, piles, clothes, etc.  Then add the noise and light pollution of a TV and it can easily become hectic.  Here are a few things I have done to increase the peace in my bedroom:

• Simplify the warddrobe.  This deserves its own post, but I have given away about 80% of my clothing and shoes.  How much can you really wear at one time any way?  The less you have, the less you have to store.  Find the 10-20% of clothes you actually wear and donate the rest!
• Simplify the clutter.  Use the 4 Ps.  Take it one drawer, one closet, or one basket at a time.
• Simplify the furniture.  What do you really use?  I recently moved all of the furniture out of my bedroom, save the mattress, two chairs (for dressing), and two small nesting tables used as bedside tables.  This was a simple decision, since the dressers were almost completely empty (simplified wardrobe), and had decluttered the remaining drawers.  The room now feels much more peaceful without being crowded with too much furniture. I store my clothes in a footlocker, but you can use minimal wardrobes, bins, and attractive alternatives to big, bulky dressers.  IKEA always has good options.  And because it can be scary to just get rid of a bedroom set, I moved it into another room for a month experiment.  If I don’t like it, I can always move it back in!
• Simplify the laundry – this deserves its own post entirely.  But I do one load of laundry a week.  That’s it.
• Remove the TV.  There are all kinds of reasons to not have a TV in the bedroom.  Studies repeatedly show that couples with no TV in the bedroom have more sex (what more reason do you need?), get more rest, and sleep more soundly.   Plus… why do I want to bombard my brain with advertisements when I am sleepy and most open to suggestion?  Get it out of there!

But the process of simplifying can be daunting.  How do I declutter?  Where to I start?  Let me introduce you to your new best friend… the 4P’s.  And we’ll start small – say with decluttering a single drawer.  Go find your messiest drawer and…

1. Pile – take everything out of the drawer and make a big pile.  On the bed.  On the floor.  It doesn’t matter. But get it all out.  Don’t sort.  Just pile!

2. Pick – you really don’t use all this stuff do you?  I don’t mean the stuff you think about using… or the stuff you like the idea of using.  Do you actually use it?  Often?  (How many socks/jewelry/tshirts do you actually wear?) Pick out only those things that you use, you like, and are important to you and create a second, smaller pile.

3. Prune – just like a tree needs to be pruned to grow, so does your pile.  Anything that you didn’t PICK for the smaller pile, get rid of.  Sell it on ebay or craigslist.  Give it to a friend.  Donate it to the Salvation Army.  Flat out throw it away.  Don’t be emotional or sentimental.  Don’t be afraid.  If you haven’t used it in a while, you probably won’t use it!   Why keep piles of stuff because you “might need it”?

4. Place – place the essential things back in the drawer in an organized manner.  Neatly.  With plenty of space around each item.  This makes it look neater and simpler.  (Of course, clean the drawer if you need to.)

That’s it!  You now have a much cleaner drawer that you can use to find and store the items you actually value.  And you have either made a little money selling the extra stuff, or have been generous and donated to someone who CAN use it.

And you can do a whole room with this process… just one drawer, one horizontal surface (dressers, tables, etc) at a time.  Just take it a bit by a bit.  Enjoy the process.  And watch as you slowly declutter your whole living space!

Forgiveness is one of those things that everyone agrees is important, necessary, decent, etc… and everyone waits until they get around to it before digging into.  So we began what we are calling the UFC – The Ultimate Forgiveness Challenge.  You can listen to our discussion here.

It is important to not relegate forgiveness to an intellectual pursuit… we have to dig in and begin the real work of setting ourselves and others free.  And that work is often painfully challenging.  So we are taking this week to ask ourselves a series of questions – as part one of the challenge.

Journal these… talk about them with someone you respect.  And then do something about what you discover:

Forgiveness Self-Evaluation:

Is there any situation that you need to drop the jawbone?  Give up the right to revenge?

Regarding that situation in your life right now, what’s your next step of forgiveness?  What can you do TODAY to begin forgiving?

Is there any way you have been excusing your own bad behavior, citing “what they did”?

Is there any person, any situation that you need to entrust to God’s justice?  Even if you don’t see it?

Is there anyone you need to wish well?  To bless?  To serve?

Mind mapping is a graphical organization of ideas.  Consider it a circular outline.  I grab ideas, thoughts, my lesson plan and throw it into mindmap software. ( I use MindJet on my Macbook and iThoughtsHD on my iPad).  Don’t edit, don’t order… just collect.  Then with the software I can drag individual ideas, or whole thought branches, where I think they make sense.  As I work the talk/teaching over, I can add, delete, move, and edit effortlessly.

Then when it is time to present, i take the mindmap with me.  I use my iPad to read it off of (reading clockwise from 12oclock).  I keep my mindmaps vertical, so they are easy to manipulate in front of a crowd on the iPad.  There is more information than I need when actually speaking, but by practicing off of the same map as I present, I learn the material faster and am able to recal it more completely.  That means that as I present, I simply skim over the big points of the map, but have my notes there if I ever blank and need to dive deeper to make a point.

Here are examples of my maps from a recent series I did at The Ridge on suffering. Note that I sometimes use color as coding for visuals or emphasis.  Sometimes the notes are more intensive, sometimes less, as I need them.

110109 Choice 110116 – All and Nothing 110123 Harp Hangers and a Herd of Pigs 110130  The whole entire everything gets put back together

But in my recent quest for simplification I have realized I am hoarding that which I love.  I have read them all – some over a dozen times.  I hold on to them for memories (sentiment), incase I might “need them” again (fear), because I have a lot of money invested into them (greed), and – frankly – because I like the idea of a big library (pride).  Not a great list of motives…

If I release them into the wild again, someone else will glean the learning, insight, perspective, and enjoyment that I have gotten from them.  My library will live instead of sitting dormant!

I have taken boxes of books to the library and used book stores.  I have sold some on ebay and craigslist.  But I have recently found a much more elegant solution.  I mooch.

Book Mooch is a online community of bibliophiles who share books.  Got a book to share?  List it on the mooch.  If another reader sees it and wants it, they send a request to have it mailed to them (thank God for USPS media mail!).  Sending books earns credits that can be “spent” on new-to-you books.  A totally voluntary and collaborative online book sharing community!

I can even make a wishlist of books I would like to mooch… and if someone lists one of them to share, Book Mooch contacts me to let me know.

Simple.  Elegant.  Communal.  And totally free!

I can enjoy my books and then send them on – knowing they will be enjoyed again and again.  Why own when you can mooch?
And in case you were wondering, YES! I do have an RSS feed of my wishlist and available books.

• A new design!  Blew the dust off Chrisbellonline and refreshed it a bit.  Going for simple and minimal.  What do you think?
• Since I have last posted, I have continued down the road to simplicity and minimalism… in some pretty significant ways – including giving away almost half of my belongings and downsizing significantly!  I am very excited about this path of minimalism…
• The Ridge has moved off of our campus, and started meeting in a coffee shop and a local school.  We are moving toward a model of debt-free ministry – I don’t know that I would ever want to sign a mortgage again!  Bankers, moving, and organizational flux!  Many more posts on this later…
• Our family adopted a homeless 18 year old, took him in, helped him get on his feet and find a job, and are walking him through various legal issues.  More later…

An awful lot of religion is an excuse for not facing our fears, our self, and our doubts.  True religion is not denial of doubt but a transformation of it; and often, to be honest, a temporary deepening of our doubt and darkness to get us there.

God walks with us into our fears, to feel them, to own them, to let them teach us.  During that time we are often in darkness and cannot uphold ourselves.  It even feels like a loss of faith.  It is then that we slowly learn to let Someone Else hold us, and we come out enlarged and more hopeful.  As long as I have lived, I cannot explain the chemistry of this transformation, but those who have gone through know it to be true.

I have taken the next step toward that dream with the launching of Chris Bell International.

As many of you know, I have a background in tactics and training for law enforcement and civilians, and this business will accomplish just those things.  Firearms training, martial arts, security consulting for church and other NFP organizations… it is all a passion and former business focus of mine that I am restarting.

So if you know anyone who would like Cutting Edge tactical training… stop on by!