It's The Simple Show. You've got episode 30.

Hey, I'm Tish Hawkson Rider, and you're listening to the show that explores the ideas of unconventional living.

I'm a family-oriented writer, traveler, and entrepreneur, and you can follow me on Twitter at Tish, that's Tsh, on Instagram at Tishawkson Rider, or find the blog at the art of simple.net.

Minimalism is a word used so much these days. It's

kind of easy to roll our eyes at it. But that's usually when we think of it as something like

no color in our houses or some sort of weird backwards race on who can survive with the least

amount of stuff. But when it's defined correctly, minimalism can actually be pretty great.

That's what my guest in this episode thinks anyway.

Joshua Becker is a dad of two and a writer who's a big fan of minimalism.

In fact, he's dedicated his work to it right now with his website becoming minimalist.

In this chat, we talk about what minimalism really is and what are some of its immediate benefits.

We talk about what to do when you just don't know how or where to start.

And we talk about why boredom is actually a really good thing for our kids.

He's the author of a new book, The More of Less, so he tells us a little bit about that as well.

Before you get going, I want to tell you about a

resource you might not know about. In the almost decade I've spent writing about Living Simpler,

I've done a fair amount of reading on the topic, so much so that I've now compiled my favorite

books on the topic all at one place, the art of simple.net slash reads. They're not all your obvious literal books on the subject.

Joshua's book, The More of Less, is there. But there's also a few I love about some of the benefits

to simplifying. For example, Last Child in the Woods is listed. That's one of my favorite books

on parenting, because it explains so well why our kids need to spend a ton of time outside, way more than they do these days.

Or simply Tuesday, that's a book about putting high value on the really ordinary stuff in our lives.

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