It's not easy being simple and green

Many people want to live simply but don’t know how, or where, to start, or even what simple living really is. The simple answer is that simplicity is about many small things that add up to become entire way of life. For me, simple living has been a mixture of personal growth, thrift, making do with what I have, resource conservation, a change in attitude about what is considered success and achievement, slowing down, expanding horizons, living well on less money and making deliberate choices about my life and how I live it. Of course, it encompasses much more than those elements but that’s it in a nutshell. It is a fine honest lifestyle and when you get a taste of it, nothing else will be good enough for you.

I have been trying to set out information in my blog about the practical aspects of a simple life. Things like how to:

• budget and shop mindfully
• store and preserve food
• grow some of your own food
• keep chickens and worms
• organise your home and declutter
• and how to make some of homemade cleaners

Many of these tasks are things that will help you live simply and generally they're all fairly easy to do. The difficult part of your simple living change will be to have a deep understanding of how you are personally responsibile for how you live your life, to develop simple values and consistently live according to them, and to change your mindset about spending and possessions.

We live in an increasingly artificial world. We can have anything our heart desires, for a price. If you’ve got the money, you can buy disposable mops, toothbrushes and underwear, robotic vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers, fake jewellery as well as authentic gems that may have cost someone their life, frozen dinners, fake finger nails and suntans, cigarettes that might kill you, clothes that look divine but hide their exploitative creation, and meat, fruit and vegetables that look perfect and healthy but often aren’t.

Many people have deliberately cut themselves off from the natural world. Some won’t eat a tomato that has had a bug on it but will happily eat vegetables that have been fed with artificial fertilisers, meat that comes from animals that are poorly treated and fed unnatural food, or fish and prawns that have lived their lives in polluted waters far from our shores. Even though an important part of simplicity is to have enough money to live, one thing is certain, simple living cannot be bought. No credit card has enough credit, no amount of dollars, euros or gold will deliver it to your door. It is one of those rare things of true and enduring value that you have to work for.

I'd be lying if I told you that simple living is easy. It is satisfying, rewarding, healthy, beautiful, it makes you feel happy and content, it's substantial and important and necessary, but it isn't easy, especially when you start. But it's a wonderful and significant way of life and I hope all of you decide that even if it isn't easy, it is how you want your life to be.

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