Celebrating 10 years of basic tasks and repeating patterns

14 May 2017

Happy Mother's Day to all the mums and grandmas who will read this message. I hope you have a beautiful day with your families. xx

As well as being Mother's Day, today is a celebration day for me for an entirely different reason. Today marks the tenth anniversary of this blog. Ten years ago today, I started tapping away on my keyboard and I composed a very simple post about Brandywine tomatoes. On that day I didn't have a plan, didn't know what to write about, didn't know if I should introduce myself or not and didn't have a clue that so many people like me were out there waiting, but as I dipped my toe into the unknown, it felt right. I had one true agenda. I'd written the beginnings of a book and submitted it to three publishing houses. All of them rejected me. So there I was, still wanting to tell a simple story and show that life in the slow lane could be satisfying, profound and rewarding. So I started writing here in my little neck of the woods, the words started flowing, readers started visiting and I kept going.

Now, ten years later, I've published 2,699 posts, enjoyed reading 79,311 comments, and made countless friends. I've welcomed over 15 million visitors who've read over 23 million pages. My blog brought me success in the outernet too. I've written three books published by Penguin, have been a monthly columnist for the Australian Womens' Weekly and Burke's Backyard and been a frequent guest on ABC radio. All that is behind me now and I officially retired earlier this year but I can't walk away from my blog yet. I still have things to say and although I'm not as prolific as I once was, I hope you don't get sick of me because I'll be here for a while yet.

I have been a writer most of my life but I had no idea when I started typing those first words on 14 May, 2007, that what I was doing would change my life. All I wanted to do was to show, by example, that a good life could be lived by cutting back, by being thoughtful and aware and by giving more and expecting less. When I started writing, blogs were more political and many bloggers were writing about peak oil and climate change. There were a few frugal living blogs but almost none writing about home life, the proud tradition of homemaking and how spending time on domestic tasks, getting back to basics and cooking from scratch could help liberate and enlighten us.

Who would have believed how radical it would be to write about making a bed, washing up and shopping for groceries. These things were part of most lives but were looked on as being trivial and pointless. However, over the years, thinking and writing about those ordinary, honest topics opened them up for discussion and showed us how these simple things were an important part of good homes and happier lives. We all started lifting the lids on our domestic lives, sharing how and what we do and it helped us realise that life is made up of basic tasks and repeating patterns.

Blogging is such a simple thing but look what it has done. It's opened up the world for all of us, it's helped connect us so we can talk to each other even though we're sometimes thousands of kilometres apart. By looking into each others lives, we've developed the confidence to leave the mainstream behind and live according to our values. Thank you for being here, for coming back, for commenting and for being part of my days and this blog. xx