Last year I spent some time trying to explain to a lovely American why I was happy not to have more money; this was clearly a very baffling concept for him to grapple with. Why on Earth would I not want more of what he considered to be a supreme blessing? I don’t suppose he’ll ever see excess money as a potential burden and a responsibility; “enough” is a bit of a nonconcept in a consumer economy and I will happily admit that most of the time I would like a little bit more money - but I suspect I don’t actually need it. What I do need is more time, to concentrate on the things that really matter, and the only way I can achieve that is by stripping out the umpteen unimportant claims on my time that modern life tries to impose.
What do I want to have time free for? Caring properly for my family, my friends, the animals under my care, my garden and the wider world. For helping my children grow strong & sound in spirit, body, mind, knowledge & wisdom. For finding, making & mending things that are both beautiful & useful; for growing & making good wholesome food, for becoming informed about the issues that make all this harder than it should be, and passing that information on to others who may need it.
I didn’t make a conscious decision to give up watching TV. We still have them in the house – only little ones, though; I was never willing to give up half my living space to a machine for conveying other people’s ideas directly into my children’s minds! – but I haven’t sat down to watch a programme for months, and when I did rarely managed to watch a programme all the way through without having to deal with some minor domestic emergency. But when people ask me enviously how I ever manage to make things, and claim they don’t have any free time, I sometimes have to bite my lip not to remind them that they’ve just told me they spent all last evening slumped in front of the TV…
Shopping? It’s a chore, not a recreational experience! Best done at our local market, chatting to traders who know me & mine, whose goods I trust. I have to make the best of the resources at my disposal, so I do spend time planning & researching, but given a spare afternoon, I’d far rather be in my garden, on an empty beach, or trotting through the woods than queueing up to park at a soulless mall and spending money I haven’t got on things I don’t need.
Horror of all horrors, I don’t do a lot of housework. It’s entirely possible that one reason I am seeking to “simplify” my household is sheer unadulterated laziness! I do try to do the minimum for hygiene, and keep parts of my home presentable and welcoming for visitors, but making my home looking like something from a glossy magazine simply isn’t important to me. I don’t much care if my furniture doesn’t match as long as I can sit on it and as far as I’m concerned, curtains are for keeping us warm in winter and providing a modicum of privacy, not for making a statement about the kind of person I am, how much I’m worth, or how much time I’m willing to spend cleaning the dratted things.
I took the decision many years ago that my children were far more important to me than my career, and have only worked part-time, in jobs that didn’t demand too much of my mental energy, since. I know I’ve been lucky that that was possible for me financially, but believe me, it has not been a particularly easy row to hoe for some of the time. I’m also well aware that there are people who believe that I have “wasted” my talents and my training, and “let the side down” but I had good reasons for taking the decision I did and I don’t regret it for one moment.
For many years, I’ve known that we were making a total pig’s ear of the world we live in. There didn’t seem to be much I personally could do about that; I joined a couple of environmental organisations for a while, but they only ever seemed to be interested in persuading me to part with money that I hadn’t got. And let’s face it, most greens have trouble even talking to someone who is responsible for their own private population explosion… So I just quietly got on with doing the things I could do in my own backyard. But that doesn’t seem to be enough any more; I need to do in my own life & say more to change the hearts & lives of anyone who will listen to me. How I can do that when I don’t have a shred of environmental street-cred, I don’t know, but let’s face it, it’s obvious - if I can do it, anyone can!
Tags: simplicity
