Our Prime Picks 2024
**Just a heads-up: this post may include some affiliate links, so if you make a purchase, we might earn a tiny commission at no extra cost to you. Rest assured, we only share items & resources that we personally use and love!
Disclaimer before you look at this list — Our goal in sharing these links is to provide a source of help if you’re interested in living more intentionally and more simply. Our goal is not to share links that distract you to buy something you didn’t even know you wanted simply because it might be part of a sale. Read more about our thoughts on this here.
Intentional, Simple Living
The following items have helped guide, inform, and shape our desire to create a more intentional and simple way of life.
Books
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer - This is one of our all-time favorite books and probably the first book we read that kickstarted our slower living journey. It encapsulated into words all the “hurry” we’d been feeling and gave us perspective and wisdom on where to start to make the changes we needed and wanted in our lives.
The More of Less by Joshua Becker - This was our entry into the concept of minimalism. It’s an easy read where Joshua Becker introduces his journey into minimalism and how he has applied it in his life ever since his “garage clean out” moment.
The Minimalist Home by Joshua Becker - This book gave us the practical tools to start looking around our home for areas we would simplify. We started in the kitchen and then eventually made our way to our closets and our bathrooms.
A Year with Less by Cate Flanders - This was a fascinating book (I did listen to this book instead of read it). It was a sort of extreme minimalism journey that this lady set upon one year to buy nothing new (with ground rules that she outlined ahead of time). For me, it opened up the possibility that we could live with less and be just as happy.
Margin by Richard Swenson - This book stands as an all time favorite. There are so many aspects of life today that are margin-less. Swenson brings to the reader all the ways in which we live without margin and what to do about it if we dare take the road of less and reintroduce space into our lives.
More Margin, More Intention, Less Clutter
The following are items we’ve viewed to be worth the cost to create more margin, more intention, or less clutter in our lives.
Home
RoboVac
We have the step down from this, without the mop, but that one isn’t on Prime Day Sale. Our roborock is hands down one of our favorite purchases of all time — especially with little kids or pets.
Digital Picture Frame
We wanted lots of pictures displayed in our home but didn’t want the visual clutter of frames everywhere or the cleaning time required to dust all the frames. This frame was a total success in our opinion. Plus, many of our extended family have this same brand frame so we use one app and remotely add pictures to our frame and theirs!
Aura Carver 10.1" WiFi Digital Picture Frame
Garden
Sprinkler Timers
We put a lot of time and effort into our garden and have greatly appreciated the time these programmable sprinklers have afforded us. They have also worked great for us when we’ve been out of town.
RAINPOINT Sprinkler Timer, Programmable Water Timer for Garden Hose (1 Outlet)
RAINPOINT Sprinkler Timer, Programmable Water Timer for Garden Hose (2 Outlets)
Drip Hoses
Another incredible garden time saver and worth the cost for us. We hook these drip hoses up to our water timers to consistently get an even watering keeping our garden alive in heat or in dry conditions!
Melnor 65159AMZ 50' Soaker Hose
Gilmour 1065290 Black Flat Weeper Soaker
Kids
TonieBox w/ Creative Tonie
Our oldest wakes up so early. I mean it. So early. It used to frustrate us because it provided very little time for us to have a “quiet time” in the morning. We stopped fighting it and instead have embraced it. Mark wakes up the earliest so he invites our oldest to have a “quiet time” with him. We recorded bible stories on the creative tonies for our oldest to listen to. It has been really special to have that time with her and let her see what it looks like to make time to spend with God each morning. *Both the box and creative tonie are required to record your own stories, songs, etc.
Books
Every Moment Holy by Douglas Kaine McKelvey- This book has been a great comfort in our lives. It contains liturgies to read for all sorts of times, some specific and some more general. We’ve read it for the first hearth fire of the season, for arriving at the ocean, for moments of emergency and so many other occasions. We have the first edition, linked above, which is for a wide range of moments, and we plan to get the second edition which is more specific to “Death, Grief, and Hope”
Praying the Scriptures for Your Children by Jodie Berndt - This book was transformative for me thinking about praying for our girls. It also gives tangible examples and prompts of prayers and scriptures to pray over them at the end of each chapter. The book doesn’t have to be read front to back as each chapter is a different theme of prayer you might pray for your children. You can read front to back (I did the first time), but it could also be used as a reference guide as you encounter different situations with your children.