What does simple mean?

One of the ongoing comments I've had since I started writing my blog, and also in my real life, is that simple life isn't that simple. Many people tell me that spending hours growing and preparing food and cleaning products is much more complicated that buying mainstream from the supermarket. Many of them tell me that they're too busy to do those things and that buying what is needed every week simplifies their lives because it's easier.

That's fine by me. I'm not trying to convince anyone that this way of living is the grand panacea for all of life's complexities. I think that to live a simple life, at the very least, you need to cut out or cut back on a variety of things, but how you do that is up to you. I know what works for me and my family and that is how I live. We have cut our environmental footprint considerably over the past 12 - 13 years and we've done it consistently. If you're doing the same thing then you're on the right track. 

I've thought about this a lot and I know the following are simplified by doing them at home, from scratch:

• baking bread
• making preserves
• growing vegetables and some fruit
• keeping chickens for eggs
• making cleaning products and laundry liquid
• making soap
• cooking from scratch
• baking from scratch
• disposing of disposables
• mending
• knitting dishcloths, jumpers, cardigans, gloves, hats etc

That list could go on and on.

Let me explain my beliefs. When I bake bread at home, I buy bulk flour in a heavy paper bag, bulk yeast (or I make sour dough), and I add things I have on hand for other purposes - oats, butter, salt, sugar, nuts, seeds etc. So I buy two products specific to bread making, that I buy every couple of months, and I have the rest on hand. Making a loaf of bread takes me about 15 minutes in work time. I make the dough in the bread maker and then bake the dough in the oven. That way I get a delicious loaf without too much time given over to it.  My electricity comes form solar panels.

To buy a loaf of bread at the supermarket, I have to drive to the supermarket and buy the bread - every day if I want fresh bread every day. That bread will have been made in some far off factory that is staffed by people who probably all used fuel to get to the factory, it will be loaded with preservatives and other artificial additives. It will be packaged in plastic with a plastic clip to hold the bag closed.  All the ingredients for the bread will have been transported to the factory, the rolls of plastic or bread bags will have been transported to the factory as well. When the bread is made and wrapped, then it's transported to the supermarket, where I drive to buy it. That's a lot of fuel being used for something that can easily be made at home. It's a lot of artificial additives too - I'm sure you don't add preservatives and artificial flavourings to your bread at home, neither do I. It's not necessary when you make it yourself.

The same could be said for every product on that list. I buy the ingredients, yarn or fabrics a few times a year and they are stored in my home till they're needed. Of course it looks simpler when you think you're just going to the shop to buy those goods, but they're all come from somewhere, they all have a chain of production and delivery, and varying amounts of fossil fuels attached to them. That is not simple, in fact it's extremely complex and unsustainable.

Some tell me they frequently use disposable products - that they save time. I've turned my back on as many disposable products as I can and my housework takes the same amount of time as it did before. Disposables don't save time, they're more convenient, yes, less messy, yes, but also unsustainable and much more expensive. Making do with what we can produce here at home has cut down the amount of rubbish we send to the land fill as well. If I was shopping like I did all those years ago, I'd be sending full bins and not composting or recycling anything at home, and still working to pay for it all.

"Simple" shouldn't be confused with "more convenient" or "easy". Simple usually involves you doing some form of work - to bake the bread, milk the cow, make the cheese, kill the pig, harvest the tomatoes, peel the potatoes, cook the meat, pack the lunch, fill the water bottles, knit the cardigan, darn the socks or whatever. More convenient is getting someone else to do those things for you, or buying the same thing over and over again. It is easier, and it might seem more simple to drive to the shop to pick up all those things, but think about what's gone on to get all those products on the supermarket shelves, all the fuel used to deliver the raw ingredients to the factories, all the people and fuel needed to process the products and to get the people to the factories and the products from the factories to the shops.

There are many definitions of simple living but I think it means taking control of your own life and becoming self reliant in many different ways. Through that self reliance comes the opportunity to pay off debt, to live on less money, to connect with your family and friends and to have your home and family as the centre of your world. Home, family, friends and your community become your focus and the commercial world and the flimflammery of modern life take a back seat. But that's my view, how do you define simple life?