Attached Mama
Simple Living




Simple living...when I say that to people who know me, they say "but it's not more simple! It's harder!" Well, maybe. Our society seems based on convenience..from 24-hour fast food to all night child care centers. So when I mention using cloth diapers or actually cooking meals from scratch, people think I'm a little nuts. They ask why this is called "simple living" when it's so obviously labor intensive. But that's not really what the "simple" refers to. Simple means living close to the earth, living on what you need instead of what you want, doing things yourself instead of having someone do them for you. And when you think about all the not-so-simple things you have to put up with in a 40 hour a week job in order to afford the "conveniences" of modern day living, you realize those conveniences are really quite inconvenient.
We started simplifying shortly after Maddie was born. It started with reading a few books along with the already growing feeling we had that there was more to life than working so much in a job you don't enjoy for a life you're not enjoying. We weren't happy, even with all the "things" we were led to believe brought happiness. So we downsized. As I mentioned earlier, we both work part time so our "voluntary" simplicity is not so voluntary anymore. We needed to live the simple life in order to save money. It's just a happy by-product that most of these things are earth friendly and good for us.
How did it start. Hmmm. I guess it started with the cloth diapers. I knew a few people who used them, and I was trying to save money and this looked like the way to do it. And to top it off I wasn't contributing to the approximately 500 pounds of waste (per baby!) put in landfills every year. That got me thinking about other ways to save money...
The next was cooking. When my husband and I both worked, we relied more heavily on convenience type foods. Not TV dinners or anything, just foods that were quick and easy to prepare, and that were usually more expensive. So I started cooking. Lo and behold I realized I actually enjoyed cooking. It feels good to look at a meal and know exactly what went into it and how cheaply it was made. Cooking from scratch is a good bit cheaper than buying pre-processed, pre-cooked foods (and better for you! See? I told you there were so many reasons to do these things!) We've also started gardening, very slowly, with my mom. She's an old hand at gardening, canning and freezing so I'm trying to learn more about this. Growing your own food if you can is a real money saver.
We cancelled our cable TV. We still have the basics, PBS and the Discovery channel, but not being able to veg in front of the TV with 60 channels at our disposal saved us money AND made us find better things to do. We've learned to do a lot of things ourselves. My husband painted the house, put parquet floors in our kitchen and built a deck on our home - never having done these things before! You can get videos or books at the library to research how-to do just about anything, and do it well.
Ah, and videos and books at the library. Now that's entertainment! We don't rent videos much at all anymore because they're free at the library. And there's no need to buy books as frequently because we can check them out first from the library. We still buy books, but we make sure we really want them first.
That's an important point - analyzing your purchases. You have to make sure, when you buy something, that you really need the item and that it's going to last and serve the purpose you want it to. You also have to ask yourself if there's anything else that will do the same thing cheaper? Case in point? A dishwasher!

~more to come~




Green Living
Environmental Issues / Natural Living

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