In a world of excess where we are always updating and upgrading Jen Hatmaker takes a stand. After taking hurricane victims into her home and being told that she was rich due to her upper middle class home and the things within it, Jen decided to rethink her values.
Jen and her family took 7 months, and 7 areas of excess in their lives and worked on them to take a stand against materialism, over excess, and greed that seeps into our lives to the point we do not even identify it as greed.
The seven areas they chose were:
Food
Clothes
Spending
Media
Possessions
Waste
Stress
Each area they spent 30 days on around the #7. When they worked on food,they allowed themselves 7 foods for the month.In clothes they allowed themselves 7 pieces of clothing to wear for the month (and donated much to charities), in spending they narrowed their spending to 7 places for a month….
I loved the idea of this book. As I looked around my home, while we do not live to extreme, we are comfortable. When I think of cell phones and e readers and television, and movies I enjoy…. much that I do not need to live, but enjoy.
Seven makes you think. It makes you reevaluate. It doesn’t make you feel bad, but it does make you want to join in the cause of cutting back, and learning that life is just as enjoyable, if not even more so – when a family decides to work together to make a difference in our world and gets creative on how to spend time together when it is not with video games or movie tickets, but instead with time – real-time, together.
Book Journey 
I’m all for cutting back on excess because we do live in a world of materialism. But only 7 foods for the month? I will disagree because I believe we need a variety of foods for overall good health. Cutting on junk food for the month is a better alternative for me.
Some of the book is a bit extreme and I liked some sections more than others. I liked the month they could only spend money at 7 places…. gas station, grocery store,… it really makes you think about what is important. Of course they made exceptions – if the kids needed something at school they would make it happen. But cutting out all spontaneous fast food places was interesting and made me motivated 🙂
I agree with Laura…the number of foods to cut out isn’t as important as eliminating unnecessary things like junk food. Interesting idea, though; we all could stand to cut some things out of our lives.
I read this a while back and just recently remembered I had never reviewed it so I do not recall the exact idea behind the 7 foods. 😀
It sounds to me like a lifestyle elimination diet! I love this sort of thing. The idea of only spending $ at 7 places feels very local and small town to me. Adding to my list!
I like these sort of things too… I like to be challenged to look at my own life. I think it would be interesting to take a month at a time and commit to… well, less. 🙂
I think it is admirable!
It is… in the end they as a family walk away with some good lessons.
This sounds interesting and – yes – extreme all at once.
Yes…. and YES. 😛