The magic element

I’ve been wondering lately about the differences between a house and a home. What turns a house, flat, caravan, farmhouse or apartment, into a home? What is the magic element that turns a mere building into a haven for all who live there? For me, that element is focusing on the work I do to run my home – all that work I used to ignore or find irritating. I came to it slowly. It started with me knowing I had to do a lot of things that I used to think were unimportant and trivial; now those things are part of my day-to-day world. To be happy here I had to accept the old ways of homemaking; I had to make do, try to get by on less, cook from scratch and keep a natural home. I know now that what I do in my home every day defines the sort of person I have come to be. When I let go of the modern spray and wipe ways of cleaning and all those convenience foods and started to do more with less, it made me over, it made me into a different kind of woman.

Housework, who knew! Who knew that something so private and ordinary would be so significant. Nevertheless, the work I do each day makes me focus on how I live, it slows down my very fast brain to a calmer level and it makes me happy I am able to live as I do and proud of how I fill my days. It was only when I took time with my tasks and did them with a sense of respect and diligence that I realised that the work, time and effort I put into my home is a gift to myself and my family. I didn’t know that before.

There is no simple formula for living like this. I’ve thought about it a lot and because we’re all so diverse and different in our goals and what satisfies us, the elements of simple living must be different for us all. We are all at different stages of life - some with children, some without, some working outside the home, some discovering themselves within the home. I would like to give you a magic formula that would help you start on the road to a simpler life, or keep you motivated and inspired enough to continue with it, even when your child is crying for the doll her best friend has, when a teenager says he won’t wear second-hand clothes or when you come home from work, tired, to do the laundry and make a nutritious meal for the family. But the truth is, the path we all take to this life and what it takes to satisfy us while we live it, is different for everyone of us, and it is something private that must be discovered in the living of it.

With the benefit of hindsight I can tell you that while you’re developing your new way of living you’ll probably go through a series of changes. Not only in the physical day-to-day aspects of living but also in what your priorities are and what you believe you want. I found that when I discovered new skills it opened doors for me that I didn’t know were even there. When I look back now though, it was those unexpected doors that revealed the best treasures.

One of the seasonal treasures I deal with each year is our rosella harvest. I picked the first of them yesterday and dried them to make rosella tea. It was a very simple process of separating the red sepals and discarding the seed pods, washing the dust and insects from the sepals and drying them in a very slow oven. It takes one teaspoon of redness to make a cup of rosella tea – if you’ve ever had a cup of Red Zinger tea, you’ll have tasted rosellas. There was a time when making something like rosella tea would have been the lowest of my ambitions, but now I know that every single one of these small steps has lead me away from the mass marketed culture I used to wallow in. I’m so glad I changed.

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