Since we are a bit of a hybrid Family (like we fully believe every family is), it’s probably best you start here so you can learn a little bit about what we do here and familiarize yourself with our family.

To find out more about us, please click the About Us tab on our home page.

Once you have done that, come on back and let’s get started.

We are not a one-dimensional family as no one family is and so, true to that, we are putting all of our collaborative years of learning about simple solutions through all of our ups and downs and trials into one place in a hope and effort to bless yours as we long to encourage others.

My husband and I have been together for 20 years and married 18 and he truly is my best friend, but it wasn’t always the case. God brought us to our knees early on in our marriage and gave us the best gift He possibly could.

He humbled us beyond our wildest dreams and brought us to a place where

we had no where to go but look up to Him….and we are so glad He did.

During that time, He brought amazing Godly people into our lives who witnessed to us in ways we had never seen before (Grace which was maddening to us), and it honestly shook the foundations of what we had known or thought we knew in the past about how God worked.   Anyway, all that to say, God brought us through that but He first completely changed not only Todd, but also myself and we are so beyond thankful that He did.

We now long to mentor and encourage others who may be struggling through tough times.

He is gracious to us and we are so blessed to be able to say we truly are best friends, and are blessed with 2 beautiful children this side of heaven (4 in heaven through miscarriages).

We have both held a variety of jobs and lived in many different places. Once I moved out on my own, I lived 10 different places before I met and married Todd and then another 10 so far with him. Through the years we have walked through a lot together from early marriage struggles, to my moms cancer, to her car wreck Christmas Day years ago that left her a C1 Quadriplegic, to moving in to be her full time caregiver, to having 2 beautiful daughters,  to losing 4 babies (through miscarriage) we so desperately longed to hold and love and raise, to nearly dying from one of the miscarriages, to enduring much hell during the caregiving years, moving 10 times during our marriage, my mom dying, struggling with depression and anxiety.

Through it all one thing has remained constant….GOD has always been

and will always be faithful and true.

During all these times, I was desperate for the best ways to make life simpler and spend less money in the long run. Many of my efforts led to: smooth and consistent caregiver training, implementing systems for everyday routines for the caregivers and patient, remodeling our house, remodeling a large church with a friend, training for and completing half marathons and one full marathon, losing a bunch of weight while gaining my health back, finding unique activities for my girls to do wherever we lived, implementing systems for our family’s everyday life that improved our flow and gave us more time together.

Through it all, I have discovered many solutions that have remained helpful and even edifying in our walk wherever we have lived, and whatever we have gone through, during those times and they continue to be today.

Throughout the years, as I would meet people and talk to people (something I highly recommend), I was quite sure there was nothing unique about what I knew or had learned and would say, “oh you know about this right?” and my friend would be like “no, I didn’t, how do you know these things?”.

And while I am not convinced you will be surprised at everything I know or am learning, I think it is helpful to have these practical solutions in one place that really should work for you wherever you are living whether it 
be a dorm room or a trailer, an apartment or house, or motorhome or even a ranch or large spread, in your everyday life.

The reason we believe this is because it has been true for us and certainly we aren’t some anomaly because just like you, we are a family doing the best we can 365 days of the year with the best we can find to make life simpler (click here to see why simple solutions matter) so you can live more fully right where you are!

This blog is, in essence, a best of the best list from all of our years and experiences we know now that we wish we had known then, and we totally would have used or done these things during caregiving years or other times if we had known about them. It goes both ways as other things we learned during those hard years we still use today.

So, how about a great ideas list that you should be able to implement anywhere you are with whoever your family is now (read more about that here in our What Is Family? article).

Please feel free to email either Susan or Todd and let us know how we can help encourage you in your walk and what you may want us to look into. We should also say we refuse to recommend a product or idea unless it is something that has been rock solid for us in our everyday life for quite a bit of time, ok? We will not be bought off no matter the price as life isn’t worth that. We can’t take it with us, can we? You can rest assured here at The 365 Family, that if it is on our site, it is something we can fully say we use anytime or quite frequently for quite a while in our own family and hope that your family will find it to be useful and helpful in your journey to simplify your life!

Be Blessed,

Todd & Susan Brown

The 365 Family