Since airlines started applying checked baggage fees, air travelers are filling every nook and cranny of their carry-on bags to avoid extra travel costs.

We maneuver our bags into the overhead bins; some of us give a little shout of "Victory!" when the bin door closes around our bulged bag, and all of us learn a valuable lesson about traveling light.

In life, traveling light bestows fresh-air freedom as we exchange trunks overflowing with stuff and time-wasters for an overnight bag that only contains the bare-essentials of what's truly valuable in life.

Over the course of the past week I've met people who are traveling light and discovering pure joy in the freeing effects of simplicity. One friend and her husband who have the means to purchase a larger home in their move into a neighboring community are intentionally looking to scale back. A smaller home equates less time on yard work and home repairs and more time and energy to serve others.

Another friend has made a pact with a co-worker to not purchase any clothing, handbags, accessories, and even magazines that would tempt them to long for more things, for a full year. Coupled with the commitment to take less into their home, they're doing a clean-sweep of their closets, pantry and freezer. They're determined to be wise stewards of what is already theirs and are finding the experience freeing on their pocketbooks and calendars.

During a share time at a women's retreat, one lady confessed that one of the household chores she was trying to quickly complete before coming to the conference was putting her laundered towels into the bathroom drawers. When all the family's towels are washed, there's not room for them all, and in frustration she was wrestling and kicking the doors shut to get them closed. She lamented the overindulgence as she thought back to a mission trip she took to Haiti over a year ago.

"Even towels are a luxury," she said. "In Haiti if they don't have towels they jump up and down to drip dry." She was heading home with a renewed mission to give away the things their family doesn't need to families with deeper needs.

There was a time in our country's nation when we didn't have to learn to simplify, there simply wasn't any other way to do life. Even as a young girl I had that understanding as I read the Laura Ingalls Wilder series that I borrowed from my mom's friend, Jane. I never received most of the items that I circled in the J.C. Penney Christmas catalog that my brother, sister, and I would pour over sprawled out on the living room floor in front of the register. In comparison to Laura's corncob doll and long, flat stick peppermint candy in her stocking, I knew we were blessed.

Today's economy has ignited a new interest in how to live with empty pockets. There are a plethora of books, magazine articles, blogs, radio programs and TV shows that are teaching people to save big and spend little.

Here are just a few (and good) resources: "Making Life Rich Without Any Money - Stories of Finding Joy in What Really Matters" by Phil Callaway, "Healthy Meals for Less - Great-Tasting Simple Recipes Under $1 a Serving" by Jonni McCoy, who is also the best-selling author of "Miserly Moms," and "The Little Book of Big Savings - 351 Practical Ways to Save Money Now!" by Ellie Kay.

With all the resources available to a new generation that are learning to consume less and save more, may we not forget to look to those who walked before us. They are the ones who fixed what they had rather than buying new, hung their clothes on the line before it was a trendy "Go green!" motto, washed out and reused their sandwich bags instead of tossing them in the garbage, and ordered water instead of pop which I recently read costs 2,500 times as much as a glass of water when ordered in restaurants.

Although penny pinchers and bonafide cheapskates can drive people crazy, is not overindulgence a crazy way of life, too? Financial analyst M.P. Dunleavey wrote, "When I drive past those ugly, sprawling storage facilities, or even the bright cheery ones, I feel depressed. Someday these early years of the 21st century will be remembered as the Crazy Aughts ... and we are not richer, we are not happier, for all that getting and spending."

Callaway pens a simplicity that was true of the generation before us, and with intentional, travel-light choices, can be true of the generations yet to come: The best things in life are not really things after all. Surprisingly, they just may be in your own backyard.

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Lenae Bulthuis is a wife, mom and friend who muses from her back porch on a Minnesota grain and livestock farm.