Category: Simple Living

Some of the best things are free

Things are pretty crazy here with the holidays and me trying to put the house in order after the move, but I just wanted to share a couple of old photos I came across while browsing through my files… these are our dining table and chairs, delivered to our house by my sister-in-law some 8 years back. Friends of hers got a new dining set and were giving the old one away, and she thought of us – at the time, we were using a table salvaged by my husband from a roadside a few days before our marriage, and some folding chairs. Getting this dining set was a very welcome gift and, all this time later, it’s still going strong.

The table opens to comfortably seat ten people, and has had twelve guests gathered around it on some occasions. I love its rounded corners – so much less painful for little children to bump into. And, because it’s a used table, I don’t get very worked up over every little scratch or nick. I actually find it hard to imagine the amount of stress that I would undergo with expensive new furniture and a bunch of kids who love to jump on sofas and do crafts on the dining table (which also serves, combined, as our craft corner, study corner, bread kneading station, ironing board, etc…)

I wish all my Jewish readers a very happy Sukkot, and hope to post more updates soon!

Making progress

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In between all the rush of unpacking and preparing for the High Holy Days, we are getting to know our new neighborhood.

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There are lots of beautiful green nooks and trees that are great for climbing.

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Now that I have actually made a dent in the boxes and have all the essentials on hand, I look forward to making progress on this weedy patch of land and seeing what we can grow and do there.

I will post more updates soon!

Creative conservation

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It’s been a long time, but I still love this article.

“I turn empty tissue boxes into space shoes for kids. I’m the one who thaws the frozen foods next to the boiling tea kettle, who warms my lunch on the hot dashboard of my car instead of in the microwave. I bucket brigade my bathwater to the rose bushes. I invented and patented a valve that allows one to irrigate gardens with used shower water. Like my father, I’m a toothpaste squeezer, brushing with the last dregs of elusive paste throttled from the very corners of the tube.”

Often, when I talk about our choices of frugal life, I’m asked, “and can’t you, indeed, afford this, that and the other thing..?” – it shows how much definitions of “can afford” and “can’t afford” vary. Some people will only make a major purchase if they can pay for it in cash. Others will consider taking a limited loan which they can return within a reasonable amount of time. And some will say they “can afford it” if their bank will allow a loan high enough to cover the cost of the purchase – without ever considering how they will pay their debt off.

So, when someone who just bought a nice big apartment in an expensive location, and signed up for being in debt for the next twenty years of their life asks us, “can’t you afford this?”, I think to myself – you’d say we can. We say we can’t.

Furthermore, even if we can afford something, it doesn’t mean we will buy it. We will consider how much we really need it (as silly as I feel for pointing this out, it wasn’t always obvious to me). Perhaps we’ll decide that, even though buying this or that wouldn’t put us under financial strain, we’d better direct our money elsewhere. It’s all a matter of priorities.

Image source: Leave Debt Behind

Can We Really Make A Difference?

 

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“Is the wave of sustainable living, local-centered economy and ecological awareness a marginal movement, or can it actually have a global impact? I’ve heard many people say that we won’t be able to make any difference, because for every conscientious consumer there are a million reckless spenders, and for every organic backyard garden there are a million plastic bags of junk food. Others say that the yearning to return to closer, more self-reliant communities is nothing but hopeless nostalgia of people who have failed to adjust to a modern world.”

Read more in my latest Mother Earth News post.

Goodbye, old home

95% of our things are packed, half of those have already been moved to the new place, and my husband is going off tomorrow to the old home to wrap some last things up and meet the moving van, while the kids and I are chilling for a few days at my mom’s .

It’s been such a time consuming project that I have hardly had time to stop and breathe, but we still took a little tour of the surrounding area to say a bittersweet goodbye to all the places we loved. I did love this home. Two of my children were brought here from the hospital. So many projects, meals, stories and games were shared under its roof . So many fun hours spent in the garden, weeding, planting, watching chickens scratch around. It’s hard to believe we’re really leaving… That actually, we’ve already left.

I look forward to posting more updates in days to come, as we settle in at our new home. Thank you for all your support as we travel along this journey!

 

On supporting local economy

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I’m passionate about supporting one’s local economy, in particular local farmers and artisans, but sometimes prohibitive prices make it difficult. Read more in my latest Mother Earth News post:

“When it’s possible and our finances allow, I’m usually willing to pay more for a locally made or grown product of superior quality. How much more? I’d say about 20% above what I’d pay in a chain store for a similar product of comparable quality. This, when I see a justifiable reason for the higher price – such as extra input of time, care or cost of materials.”

I’d say it goes both ways: customers ought to be willing to pay a little more, and farmers/artisans charge a little less, for this to work. I really struggle with myself when I find myself forced to support a large chain store rather than a small local business due to financial constraints.

The trouble with “measuring up”

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A huge stumbling block in the path of people who wish to simplify and live a quiet, slow and purposeful life, is being part of a social circle who all have bigger houses, more possessions, fancier gadgets, who take trips abroad every year, etc, etc.

An important thing to remember when you say to yourself, “how come they are able to afford it?!” is that you don’t really know whether they can. You don’t really know what goes on behind the closed doors of people’s homes, or in their bank accounts. Perhaps these people are living way beyond their means. Perhaps they are in debt. Or perhaps they afford their super-fancy, extra-packed lifestyle by maintaining two careers which leave hardly any family time at all.

And if you are a mother who stays home with her children, some people might deliberately or accidentally make you feel inferior, or this feeling might come across on its own when you’re reading about someone who “successfully” combined a career and family. And again, the true price of what it all entailed is seldom brought up.

Or perhaps you just walk into someone’s house and lament how this lady has it all together while you don’t, and seemingly never will, and forget that no one has our unique set of strengths, weaknesses, experience and family situation. I’m not saying we shouldn’t learn from one another. But this learning should be a thing of strength and growth, not just useless comparison that leads us to feel debilitating inferiority.

Maybe, when you were growing up, there was a child of your parents’ friends, or perhaps a cousin who was so much more accomplished than you, who spoke German and French and played the violin, and could do all the things you could never even dream of doing. Perhaps your parents spent your entire childhood and adolescence unfavorably comparing you with that “role model”, until you felt about that unfortunate unsuspecting child the same way Emma Woodhouse felt about Jane Fairfax – an almost unconscious grudge that is as unjustified as it is difficult to overcome.

G-d made us unique. He wants and expects us to improve, but not by striving to become the image of somebody else. His boundaries are wide enough so that within them, we can freely be just what we are.

Image: lovely oil painting by Trent Gudmundsen