The New Simple Living Fad

I think all this new talk of "Simple Living" is becoming just another fad for some folks,(disclaimer here, not talking about anyone in particular) just one more thing to keep up with. That requires you to buy a whole bunch of new things to replace the things that don't look like they belong in a "simple home". You might even have to re-decorate your house . And for some, a marketing bonanza. Just one more thing that if we are not doing, makes us less than in our own minds or according to another. It is so much more than just a lifestyle. Its a philosophy, a direction, a statement of what is important to us. It's not simple, not really. It's just living without buying into all the hype and for some, myself included, its a spiritual life. Not just a way to spend less money or to live "greener". If your life is emotionally complicated, putting on an apron will not make it simple.

For most folks that live the simple life, it works best when husband and wife are in one accord on the idea. Hard to live the simple life when one person has totally different goals or looks at this simple thing as just another passing phase.

Simple living is a concept with a very broad definition too. What is simple to one person is not the same to another. Some folks are leaping into homesteading life, thinking its the ultimate simple living in much the same fashion as the old television show Green Acres, not a clue as to what they are doing and that is costly, frustrating and many times disastrous and just maybe one person in the family is not interested at all in that way of living.

Maybe because we have lived this way so long, its hard to understand why some folks are making it so complicated.

I was raised in the city, no farm experience, but I did listen to my grandmother share stories of how things were done in the olden days. I was fortunate enough to be born in a time when no one had clothes dryers, dishwashers, dozens of exotic cookbooks, computers to pull you away from cleaning house and on and on. I knew how to cook, clean and take care of a baby. And I set out to marry a farm boy since I wanted a farm life. God gave me just the right man !

I read books about the pioneer days and decided their problems were not so bad as the new problems society was creating for itself. Such as the growing lack of ethics, the decaying of the moral code that most people had ascribed to in the past. I think that is what pulled me into wanting a life different from the suburban rat race, and I suspect that some of the desire to go back to the "simple life" is really just a desire to gain some of the moral ground we are loosing.

Hanging clothes doesn't make your life simple, but stepping back and thinking about what life was like when everyone did hang clothes might give us a feeling of peace. Rather than having your young children playing violent video games that make them think fighting is fun, you might have them outside with you, pulling on your apron strings and catching butterflies. Its not the clothes hanging that will change your life, its the kind of life you are giving yourself and your children. No children at home, well, then hanging clothes gives you a moment of peace in which to think and to learn to smell rain coming, or see a bird you need to look up in a book to identify.

Planting and working a garden is hard work, hours of work and gives you dirty fingernails, rough hands, and stiff knees at the end of the day. Not one simple thing about it. The blessing of it is in the satisfaction of putting on the table, fresh foods. Putting on an apron isn't going to give you a simple life. A simple life is in your heart, in your goals for life . I could live a simple life just about any place, even without goats or chickens. The homestead part of my simple living is just one application of it, just born of a desire to train our children to work when they don't feel like working, to be outside more than inside, to see the results of nurturing a sick animal back to health and to be too tired to get into trouble. And now that they are grown and gone from home, we have a second generation to share this kind of life with and we want to stay healthy. Keep strong bones and muscles from using them. To know we can live in the midst of a full blown depression with less impact on us than most folks. To be self sufficient in some small way. To keep ourselves away from the "must have" mindset. To sleep soundly at night because we are bone weary, to wake in the morning refreshed and clear headed.

But still, I think I could live a simple life in an apartment in Manhattan, because I am pretty much content to just walk down the road of life smelling the flowers, wherever they bloom. It might not be my ideal, but I think what is in my heart would not change.

The goats, chickens, wood stove and clothes line don't give me a simple life, my thoughts do. My desire to live humbly is the motivation for me and for Emery. This life is our joint goal. Its not just me wanting to take on the latest fad and have to buy a whole new set of props to make it all look right.

Simple living can become just another fad, just another set of rules to go by and they can be a huge burden if its not your real honest desire in life and harder yet, when those you live with are not on the same page.