Every morning at home

Every morning when I walk into my kitchen it looks tidy and ready for a day's work. Not so on this morning (above), I saw this when I walked in. Late the previous afternoon when I was looking for something, I came across my rolled up Zwilling vacuum bags and decided they had to be washed and dried. So I did that and although I usually put them outside on the verandah to dry it was dark by then. I turned the just-washed bags inside out and left them like this on a towel. It worked well and now the bags are ready to use when I bring home root vegetables, cabbages or whatever I buy that I want to last four or five weeks.

I love mornings here. It's still dark and quiet, I make a cup of tea and sit on the couch (Gracie's bed) and talk to her. I get a feeling that she enjoys it too. It gives me time to think about the work I'll do during the day. I go out into the world about three times a month. That suits me, I'm an (optimistic) introvert and I usually have more than enough to occupy my time every day at home.

The winter bed.

And now that the cooler months are here, it feels right to be here in my home, staying warm and cozy. Yesterday, I wore a cardigan for the first time this year. I've already had my first soup and there are beef bones and a ham hock in the freezer to make more stock and soup. Simple winter food, like casseroles, stews and soup, is usually suitable for freezing. In the summer, cooking and housework take more effort and there's all that sweating. Yuck. 😕

Soon enough I go back to the bedroom, make my bed and get dressed for the day. Just before I come out again, I wipe the bathroom sink then open the windows to let fresh air in. Often, on the way back to the kitchen, I'll put on a load of washing and let it sit there until I turn the machine on when the sun hits the solar panels. This is my morning routine and despite the changes over the years it's a part of me now. It's a good way to get ready for another busy day full of housework and whatever else I need to do to continue living simply. As the sun comes up, the quiet stillness slowly fades away, the kettle boils, toast cooks and a new day begins. This is how I've built my simple life - one day at a time and one morning at a time.

I'm still using this little wet mop. A few years ago Sunny, Kerry and Jamie brought it back from Korea and gave it to me as a much loved gift.  Gracie is still very wary of it and follows it around whenever it's cleaning.  Most of the time the floors here are steam cleaned, but this handy cleaner does a thorough clean and I don't even have to touch it.

I feel sure about myself today, it's my 77th birthday so I know I'll have visitors and phone calls and work in the garden; after breakfast I'll bake some muffins. When I walk into the back yard I often feel there is a transparent bubble gently lowering over me. I feel that bubble most days - it protects me and tells me that I'm safe here, I can do and be as I please. As long as I take it slow, I can move pots and benches, then move them back if I want to. I am rebuilding my back garden - I ripped the garden out soon after Hanno died, created a front garden in pots and almost straight away, I realised it wasn't what I wanted. Then I stewed over the work I put into that change. When I set the pots out in the back garden again it made me smile. Making mistakes is a great way of learning what you really need. Don't let a mistake paralyse you - learn from it. 

I do a lot of thinking in the back garden and know, with certainty, that it's my place. The birds recognise me, I know where the sun and shade will be during every season and I can sit and think or wander around and get creative. I've spent 27 of my 77 years in this place and I've been here long enough to know that on the bad days and the good ones, there is no other place in the entire world that I'd rather be.  🩵 💛 💚

You’ll save money by going back to basics

When I was doing the workshops and solo sessions, I had a couple of people whose main focus was on creating the fastest way to set up a simple life. You can't create a simple life fast, it's the opposite of that It's not one single thing either - it's a number of smaller, simpler activities that combine to create a life that reflects your values; and that takes a long to come together. When I first started living simply I took an entire year to work out our food - buying it, storing it, cooking it, preserving, baking, freezing, and growing it in the backyard. This is change that will transform how you live and it can't be rushed.

 

You have to work for a simple life and there are two main aspects to think about before you start. One is changing your mindset and your ideas of what success is. When you work on that, you can start thinking about practical things such as the work you can do that will make a difference in your daily life.  Decide what you want to change, that could be how you cook, reducing your debt, making simple cleaners, growing food in your backyard, not wasting food, decluttering, creating a strong family unit or a hundred other things that might be important to you. And while thinking about these things allows you to plan how to get what you want, it’s the work you do that makes it happen. If you scroll through Instagram or Facebook for hours every day you won't have the time you need to do it. This is life changing, so expect to make a lot of changes. If you're like me, the work you do will change you as well - for the better.

I make sure I have a good breakfast every morning. Sometimes it's eggs and tomatoes on toast, sometimes porridge, grilled cheese on toast or crumpets. When I finish breakfast I want to start work and I don't want to stop again until I cook my lunch.  BTW, this is a bread and butter plate, not a dinner plate.

Of course, your new life will grow according to the amount of work you can put into it. When I look back, we started changing our life around 2000 or a little before then. Our two sons were living with us then and I had to reduce our cost of living. I knew nothing about simple living back in 2000 so I returned to what I knew - cooking from scratch, eating leftovers and not wasting food. In that year I learned a lot about how to grow and store food, compost, chickens, baking bread and preserving. That worked well for us and we soon had a budget and stuck to it. We paid off our 20 year mortgage in eight years and that opened more doors for us.  I decided to close my technical writing business and work solely in our home. Hardly anyone was writing about housework or cooking from scratch then. There were a lot of permaculture people writing about growing food but very few of them wrote about the important connection between gardens and kitchens.

Cabbage rolls with pork and vegetable filling and tomato sauce. I added more sauce after I took this photo.

I started reading bits and pieces online about frugal living and worked at that for a while. Then I realised that most of the other people on that website were saving money so they could spend it on travel, cars, clothes etc. and that wasn't what I wanted.  All that was behind me, I could see how wasteful my old life had been and how absolutely wonderful I felt working in my home and taking control of our money. I  dived right in to do more and develop what we'd started. Then I started writing about it.

This is my work room, with sewing on the left and writing on the right. Gracie is pretending to be a guard dog under the desk, in reality she was watching the pigeons. 

You’ll save money by going back to basics.  Giving your time to your home saves the money you would pay to others to do that work for you. When you stop buying supermarket bread, cleaners, laundry products and start making those things yourself, as well as growing food in the backyard, sewing and mending, your living costs are less.  If you do that work instead of buying it ready made at the supermarket, you'll end up healthier, wiser and with more money in your pocket.

But it all depends on time. The time you give to work in your home will be determined by your current circumstances. If, like me, you've got all the time you want, you can create a wonderful life making your home your masterpiece, If you go out to work, your home time will be limited and you'll have to make choices on what you can do and when you can do it. Life is full of various stages, you may be in the stage of saving for a home deposit or paying off a home. But you can still do a few things that will help you save money and don't take a lot of time to do them. 

It takes ten minutes about every three months to make a batch of laundry liquid. The difference in price - the store bought laundry liquid will cost you about $90 for 10 litres and the homemade liquid will cost you about $4 for 10 litres. Imagine the savings that will add up over the years if you make your own. The bonus is no big plastic bottles brought home every week and thrown into landfill, and none of the strange looking ingredients listed on the commercial liquid. Homemade liquid contains three ingredients - soap, washing soda and borax. Making lunch for school kids and adult workers as well as a thermos of good coffee or tea will save money and give you healthier food to eat away from home.  Cooking from scratch will save you money and time if you have staples and back-up food in a stockpile cupboard. And don't make a single meal - make a batch and freeze some or make two meals instead of one and you've quickly cut your cooking time in half.  Cook once, eat twice. If you can freeze some of your extra meals, you could build up a very nice stockpile of frozen meals for the nights when you're just too tired to cook.  Cooking from scratch is cheaper and it won't contain all the preservatives and additives processed food has so it can sit on a supermarket shelf waiting for someone to buy it.

This is how I clean my cleaning cloths and rags.  I use commercial cloths, scrubbers and sponges in the kitchen. In the bathrooms and toilets, I use rags that I cut up from old towels and sheets. That way I never mix up the cleaning cloths and use a toilet rag in the kitchen. Ugh!  I start by collecting the clothes over  7 to 10 days, hanging them over the side of the bucket if they're still wet. When I have enough, I add a scoop of Vanish (ocyclean) to the bucket and fill it with hot water. I tend to leave it to remove stains and disinfect overnight and then the following morning, I wash them with my regular wash.  When they go back in the drawer, they're clean, stain-free and germ-free, and much cheaper than continuously buying commercial cloths.

At first glance, a simple life seems like an easy goal. There are images of peaceful mornings and slow days. However, living simply is far from easy and uncomplicated because it requires discipline, intentional choices and hard work. It is a process of continuing to enrich life, building family strength and being able to remain productive and creative. And of course, over the years it changes because you change. What I do in my home now is different to what I did 10 years ago. It's a process of reinvention and improvement while keeping daily life as simple as possible and always keeping your values in mind.

You can reinvent your life, you don't have to live how others live. Deciding to change will give you a better life as long as you're prepared to work for it.

SOME OF MY OLDER BLOG POSTS FOR FURTHER READING ON THIS SUBJECT

• Homemaking, the radical choice
• Setting yourself up for simple life
• Finding happiness
• Is homemaking different for men?
• Bloom where you are planted
• Work in progress
• Making the bed