Category Archives: Simplified Living Solutions

These posts talk about my organizing ministry and various things that have to do with getting organized.

We’re Not Promised A Tomorrow

Posted on: July 9th, 2014 by Sue Anderson - Leave a comment

One of the biggest battles I had when it came to quitting my job was that I had already invested 26 year there and only had 3 1/2 years to go until I could retire with a great pension check coming in every month for the rest of my life. It seemed so foolish not to wait it out after sticking it out there as long as I already had. Nobody does that!

On top of that, I’ve always been a very responsible person that does what I need to do and what I am supposed to do without any regard to how I feel about it. I had two children that I had to support solely on my own and so there was no room for questioning whether to continue working there or not regardless of how miserable it made me. I considered myself a “lifer”, like a prison sentence.

But once I realized about 15 years ago that we were all put here for a reason, for a purpose that is much bigger than ourselves, I’ve had a different perception of life and what it is supposed to look like. And it’s made just doing life status quo much harder for me. For the first 25-30 years of my life I focused all of my energy on just merely surviving this thing they called life. I was so consumed by the hurt, pain and confusion from all of the injustices bestowed upon me in my early life that I couldn’t see or feel anything past that. I was doing life from a reactive place not a proactive place, from a victim mentality. I didn’t realize that we could create our own lives!

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As soon as I understood that we have the power to create the life we want to live, it was much harder to sit in a job that I detested. From the minute I opened the doors to my organizing business, Simplified Living Solutions, and the phone started ringing off the hook, I’ve battled with staying where I was. Every time I would remind myself how lucky I was to have such a great job with wonderful benefits and I only had 3 1/2 more years to go, those thoughts were quickly met with thoughts of how I want to live my life now, not later. What if I didn’t live long enough to do it after I retired? We’re not promised a tomorrow. I knew with such a strong gut feeling that I didn’t want to leave this life without feeling like I had lived it to its fullest. I didn’t want to take a chance that tomorrow may never come.

I don’t mind working at all, I actually like it. So I knew that if I had to, I could always go back to working a “real job”. But I knew I had to take this leap of faith because I loved the feelings that helping others get organized gave me (in addition to what it gave them). I loved the satisfaction of knowing that I had made a positive difference in someone’s life and I loved encouraging people and reminding them of their greatness. I loved knowing that I was making a positive difference in the world in which I live, rather than merely surviving it. Life wasn’t meant to just survive, we are meant to thrive in it! That’s what I’d like to help more people understand earlier in life than I did so they can get to work living their life to the fullest!

Make Someone Happy

No Need to Fear

Posted on: June 9th, 2014 by Sue Anderson - 2 Comments

Back in April, I blogged about my nest egg shrinking and shared that my natural inclination was to worry about that. I talked about how in those moments of fear, I have to remind myself that I should not worry about such things. He’s in control. Since I know with 100% certainty that I followed His direction for my life when I left my financial security behind, I just have to trust that everything will be OK. I also talked about the way that I combated my insecurities about my nest egg shrinking was to tithe 10% of my monthly income.

I ended the post by saying that I know that when you tithe faithfully, it all works out somehow. And I promised that I’d be blogging in the very near future about the way(s) in which He would blow my mind to provide me with very clear proof that tithing during times of fear was the right decision. I said that He would do that strictly so I would be encouraged, and so that I could share the story with you. I ended the blog post simply by saying “trust in Him” and honestly that is the bottom line in anything you’re dealing with.

So here’s the icing on the cake or the proof in the pudding as they say. It’s been almost exactly 2 months since that post and as I suspected when I originally wrote it, there have been so many “God Taps” to indicate He is in control and I have nothing to fear. Here are just a few of them:

The proof is in the pudding

#1: My organizing business, Simplified Living Solutions has been so busy since then that I have not even had any “free time” to blog on Modern Day Noah. From April 6th (when I tithed) to June 6th, Simplified Living Solutions sales represented 121 times more than what I tithed that one time. Yes, you’re reading that right – one hundred and twenty one times more! 

#2: Although there are very few people that even know about this blog, I received a call from a friend within 10 minutes of the post going live who said at the very moment she received the post, she was reading a book that said the very same thing – how important it is to contribute 10% of your income.

#3: Someone whom I had only met once before said that the post inspired her to help sponsor a local Christian radio station that is only on the air thanks to the generosity of their faithful monthly supporters.

#4: I wrote my first book over 2 years ago and it’s been lying on my desk ever since because I have felt stuck about what to do next. I’ve never written a book before, I’ve battled with my own insecurities about it. Is it good enough? Am I explaining things properly? Is it in the right order? And the list goes on and on. One morning when I woke up, I immediately got down on my knees and asked God to give me direction and the words I needed to tell the Modern Day Noah story the way He wanted it told. Without even connecting this prayer originally, I received an email the next day from my new friend, author and speaker Connie Cavanaugh. (How we came to know each other is a God story in itself. You can read more about that here.) She wanted to let me know that she was willing to read through my book and give me feedback and direction that would move me closer to finalizing the book so that I can get to work on the Modern Day Noah book! I never even asked her to do that! She said that she felt God’s prompting to help me and pay it forward like others had done for her when she was writing her first book! Tell me that wasn’t God’s hand in this situation!

The moral of this story is to always battle fear and insecurities with faith in action.

It’s Taken Me How Long?!

Posted on: June 6th, 2014 by Sue Anderson - Leave a comment

It’s amazing to me how long something can be growing within you before you act on it, or even realize it’s growing within you. I came across this blog post today that I wrote for my Simplified Living Solutions’ website from September 2009 where I talk about the fact that I realized even then that God wanted me to move in the direction of being a public speaker or a motivational speaker. It’s so hard to believe that I wrote that post 5 years ago and am still not much closer to doing that! At the time I wrote that blog post, I realized that the first time He prompted me to get up in front of people to motivate them was in 2002 when I was prompted to stand in front of my entire church to try to motivate them to get together with one another more often. That was 12 years ago!!! It seems that I’m constantly taking tiny steps in the direction that I feel He’s leading me, but it’s amazing when I look at the fact that I’m still not much closer to being where He has wanted me to be for at least 5 years!

Anyway, here’s the blog post. I hope you enjoy it. And, I still believe that I will overcome this fear!

I have been working really hard this last year to overcome my fear of public speaking. Part of being a professional organizer, and a successful business owner, is giving presentations on organizing. I have had to turn down so many great opportunities to speak to groups because of this fear. Since I seem to be a goal driven person, I do not let the fear stop me (though it has definitely slowed me down). I just look at it as a step that I must take in order to get to the goal of being a successful business owner.

Now here’s where the comical part comes in. I feel that God is heading me in the direction of becoming a motivational speaker. Hysterical, right? It all started when I heard Jack Canfield, author of the Chicken Soup book series, speak at a conference I was at in 2007. I realized that I knew, lived, and believed in, everything he was saying. Basically that I could have written and given that very presentation, and with as much passion as he said it with, if I didn’t have this public speaking fear holding me back. I believe that’s when the seed was planted and it’s been growing quietly inside me ever since.

I started this business because I realized that helping people with my gift of organization was what I was created for. I love, love, love helping people. During this journey, and really throughout my life, I have had so many people tell me how much I motivate and inspire them. They are touched by my courage, strength, resilience and my you can do anything you set your mind to doing attitude.

A big part of being a professional organizer is motivating clients to tackle their clutter and inefficient habits. I now realize that I have so much information within me that I can share, that I want to share, with people to help them ~ to motivate them. I have so much I want to say, and such a strong desire to overcome this obstacle, so that I can help others be all that they can be, all that they were created to be. And here’s the catch, here’s the key to success, I know that I will overcome this obstacle.

The Power of Planning

Posted on: February 18th, 2014 by Sue Anderson - Leave a comment

If there’s anyone that understand the value of being organized, it would be me. I’ve always been an organized person who found organizing to be both easy and therapeutic. And for the past 7+ years, I’ve worked as a certified professional organizer helping others get organized. I know how great it feels to know where to find things when you need them and where to put them when you’re finished with them. I also know how important it is to have systems in place for keeping things organized. I’ve had the pleasure of helping others get their home, office and lives organized so that they could enjoy the things in life that really matter.

I also know that planning and visualizing your goals plays a huge role in the process of getting organized. So much so that it’s the first thing we do when we meet with our clients. I’m a big planner but I’d have to say I’m an even bigger doer. Sometimes slowing down long enough to truly map every single thing out just doesn’t look as exciting to me as just doing it, so I just jump in.

Mental preparation

My struggle with organizing has been to try to organize all of the great business ideas and goals I have because there are so many of them. They are scribbled down here or there and repeated here or there. It can look and feel so overwhelming to try to map things out when there are an overabundance of tasks, ideas or stuff to organize. Another hurdle to getting them organized has been the distraction of my everyday life of running a business. Since the first day I started my organizing business, Simplified Living Solutions, I’ve worked 2 very full time jobs. Although I’ve been able to organize these thoughts, ideas and plans in a way that I could always find the information, I’ve never had enough time to capture them all in one place so that I could organize, prioritize and break them down into doable steps.

I have been working on doing just that for a while now, trying to block out any other nagging distractions that would normally pull me away from doing just that. Today, I am finally starting to see a sense of semblance after pulling together every little note I wrote down for the past 7+ years and beginning to organize them. It’s exciting and empowering!

It’s so funny to me that I’ve struggled with this because I spend my days teaching, empowering and coaching our clients to do this very thing. They often feel overwhelmed at the thought of it. They often don’t know where to start. And they often would prefer to just ignore it as much as they can. I have found myself feeling the very same way about this project because it all seems so big. YET, I know that getting started is the hardest part. AND, I know the wonderful feelings and structure that getting organized brings. It’s also very motivating and empowering to sort through everything, keeping only those things that you need, use or love and freeing yourself of all of the other “clutter” so you can focus on the things that really matter.

There’s a Monkey on my Back

Posted on: December 26th, 2013 by Sue Anderson - 2 Comments

When I started my professional organizing business, Simplified Living Solutions, I knew that it was extremely important to me that everything my team members or I did presented a very professional image. I wanted potential clients to know that we were a real company that they could take seriously and trust.

From the beginning, I made the decision that I would never tell anyone that I had another full time job. I was afraid that if people knew I worked another full time job, they might think that I was just sort of dabbling in professional organizing and that would not have projected the professional image that was so important to me.

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I consider myself to be an extremely authentic, genuine person and so from the beginning this decision has felt like a lie to me. In all reality though, in the 7 years that I’ve been in business, there have been very few people that directly asked me if I had another job. So in that sense, I really wasn’t lying per se, but rather I was withholding information about myself. Nonetheless, whatever you want to call it – lying or withholding information – it felt so yucky!

It’s funny how this innocent enough decision became a big monkey on my back. Even though my decision to withhold that information wasn’t really shared with any of our clients and didn’t really impact the level of service we provided them, it really impacted me. That one minute decision started decaying away at my true authentic self. Even though most people weren’t even aware that I was withholding this information since they never asked, I knew that I was lying – or that I had made a decision to lie.

That’s one thing that has been so freeing about leaving my “real job”, I can begin to confess, and let go of, these little white lies. In the end being able to do that will bring me closer to living a more authentic life which is truly what I desire. What I’ve learned from all of this is that even though the decision I made to tell a little fib didn’t really impact anyone else, it had a very strong impact on me. I found that this decision alone caused me to be a little more guarded in my interactions with clients than I wanted to be. I love nothing more than having real conversations, with real people about real stuff and you can’t do that 100% authentically if you’re not being 100% authentic.