We all work in different ways in our homes.  Some of us have babies, children or elders to care for, some produce fresh food in the backyard, there are readers with cows, goats, chooks, ducks, geese and bees, many of us make laundry liquid and soap, we have candle makers, quilt makers and producers who, for necessity or love, make all sorts of things. We also have people who go out to work and who are part-time homemakers, doing their chores after their paid work and on weekends. There is no doubt about it, there is always something to do in our homes and homemakers, both full time and part time, are the ones who get things done.

The idea that is sometimes floated in magazines, or gossiped about, that homemakers sit around drinking coffee with their friends or watching TV is laughable. I'm sure there are some women, and men, who do that but it is not the group defined as homemakers.  We're busy creating the life we want to live and we do that by working at a thousand different things in our homes.

Here at our place, Hanno has been busy harvesting and juicing oranges and lemons. I've been picking herbs so I can freeze them before they die off during winter. We look after grandchildren. Hanno has deep cleaned the chook house and tidied the yard. I made up a ten litre batch of laundry liquid a few days ago. I've sown seeds, cleaned cupboards and washed curtains with Hanno's help. I don't know what we'll do tomorrow, but it will be very similar to what we did today. And yes, we sit down to rest and drink tea, we have conversations about work and life and then we carry on.

As I was thinking about all this yesterday, it occurred to me that it is the traditional work that most of us love doing. It's the harvesting, the slow cooking of food, the jam making, fermenting, soap making, sewing, mending and reusing, over and over again, what we can. They are our pleasures. If we can do our work using a traditional method, that is what we do. I can't say I've ever thought how wonderful it is to use a tea bag but I love making tea in a pot so that I can pour that properly brewed tea into cups standing on saucers. I've never celebrated paying through the teeth for a bottle of laundry liquid at the supermarket but I adore opening my plastic bucket to scoop our a tiny portion of homemade laundry liquid. Do you know of anyone who looks forward to a store-bought frozen meal heated in the microwave?  I don't, but I know many who want to eat the food I cook from scratch. Beautiful handmade soap is such a tender treat and sleeping under a homemade family quilt surely brings the best sleep.  It's the keeping of old ways that make these tasks remarkable and significant.

I'm always motivated to work when I see or read about others working in their homes. I feel like I'm part of a big working bee and that if we all pull together, everything that needs doing will be done. Most of us aren't part of a community that takes part in barn raisings or working bees but we have one going here. You in your home making bread and biscuits this morning, me starting to prepare vegetables for our lunch at noon, Hanno out the back fixing a fence, Kate who has been knitting beanies and gloves, Jack who moved his bee hives yesterday, and I've seen those gorgeous photos of cakes and slices made by our local ladies for the recent show. No, we're not part of a real life community who does those things but we're doing them nonetheless and we're reaching around the world with our photos and words. Let's celebrate our work and what we do at home. We're keeping traditional skills alive and supporting each other in the work that others seem to have forgotten. And that's worth celebrating. ❤️

Homemaking attracts people from all walks of life, with differing wants, needs, philosophies and ambitions. I have a degree, a moderate amount of quiet success in small business and, regrettably, a personal history of waste and overspending. But I had an epiphany of sorts many years ago and since then my aim was to create a safe, comfortable and loving home for Hanno and I and everyone who visits us here. I'm glad I made the changes I did all those years ago because I have grandchildren now and the reason we live as we do is crystal clear to me now. 

I think my history focused me like a laser beam on my home because over spending, waste and living in a disordered home made me unhappy. We only have the pleasure of living in a beautiful and secure home if we put the time and effort in to create it. Nothing is handed to us on a silver platter and most of us have the opportunity to not only work for a living but to also create the kind of simple  life we want to live.  I want to be comfortable and content in my final years, I want an interesting life because I have more time to enjoy my days now and I want to die happy.  We all want that, don't we?

When I first came home, I wasn't really sure what to do, so I tried to do it all. I remembered how things were as I grew up and my days were full of home production, growing food, storing and preserving, mending, creating and serving delicious food in an atmosphere of fluffy, calm comfort. It was very self conscious and focused at first. I've mellowed a lot and relaxed into it now, everything flows and I have much more time to enjoy the process and breathe in the fresh air.  I smile a lot, especially when no one else is around.

I think I'm very fortunate to have had the upbringing I did, the family I have, the education I had and that I took advantage of most of the opportunities that came my way. All that made me the person I am today. But when I look back and see where I've been and where I am now, I am absolutely convinced that I'm here right now because I changed the way I think about money and possessions. And that is the opposite of what I grew up believing, which was that I, and everyone, were made happy by earning as much money as possible and then spending it on whatever we wanted.

I'm happier now than I've ever been and I'm grateful to have learned lessons that were often hidden and not talked about.  It takes a bit of digging and self belief, but the truth, your truth, is there. You just have to find it and believe it when you do, because it won't be the truth you expect and it won't be what everyone else is doing.

Is your story similar to mine? Do you think you're on that path now?

I was contacted by "Jenna" last week asking for help with a major life change. Jenna is a nurse, five months pregnant with her first child, who is in the process of simplifying.  She wants to take maternity leave and reduce her family's cost of living by 30 - 40 percent.  I'd like to help her if I can. Just as a side issue, when I was on my last book tour, this topic came up more than any other.  Some of the people I met wanted to tell me about their mostly successful changes to single income simple living, and others were about to do it and wanted reassurance.  I was very happy to give it because I think this way of living is a bold liberation from a life of continuing consumption.


This is part of what Jenna wrote:

No matter what you do, retain your own identity because it's easy to become lost in motherhood. If you raise your child with a strong sense of who you are while being tender, gentle and loving, you'll make a fine role model. This is going to be a big change but it's entirely possible if you're strong enough to walk your own path and be who you want to be.

You'll have to be self-reliant, go against what your friends and family are doing, be self assured, take risks, learn a lot, develop your skills, change in more ways than you expect to, build your confidence and self respect and in the end, you'll find yourself living the life you want to live. Not everything will go according to plan but I'm sure that won't put you off. Learn from the lows as much as you learn from the highs and keep your growing family close. Good luck with your changes, Jenna, and be kind to yourself.

I'm sure other readers will offer their take on this too.  There is a thread on the forum for this topic now, please click here to go there.

Yesterday Meg wrote a lovely and much appreciated comment: 

This post kind of sums it all up for me, this idea of simple living. Making what you can, finding better ways of doing things, giving back to community and recognising the beauty in the simplicity. Reading your book earlier this year set in motion a whole string of changes for me. I was raised to frugality and resourcefulness so was nodding in agreement with most of it, but your writing reminds me to take pride in what I do and to enjoy it. And I made my first batch of soap, which I have been wanting to do for years but have been too daunted by the caustic soda aspect. It was so easy and so much fun, thanks to your instructions. So really, this is my thankyou letter to you. Thank You!

When comments such as these arrive, I am delighted my work has helped someone and that they take the time to reach out and tell me that. I like to be appreciated, it gives me reasons to carry on. Meg's comment encouraged me to write today about how simple life is a multi-faceted diamond. It's making what you can, finding better ways of doing things, giving back to community and recognising the beauty in the simplicity. When lived well, this life isn't just about the physical work we do, although that is an important part of it, it's also about feeling valued and enjoying your productivity.

I think we should all be proud of the continuing stream of work we do in our homes. I'm not talking about the boastful pride you sometimes see. This is more a calm contentment that for you, for today, this work made a difference and it was enough. There is loneliness attached to our work sometimes, because often our days are spent alone or with small children, or out in the workforce, and there isn't anyone to say we're doing okay. Many of us also deal with families who don't express their appreciation. And some of us get so busy with the daily chores, or the combination of chores and paid work, we don't stop to think about our role in the family home. But there is a reason we are working as we do and while some of our motives are connected to thrift, health, sustainability, productivity, ethics and values, there is also generosity, acceptance, kindness, appreciation and pride in work well done. These things give our lives meaning.

Life isn't about working till you drop, we all have to find purpose in what we do. When we find that, it's the eureka moment - much like Meg's, when you feel the need to change and then continue that change every day in many ordinary and extraordinary ways. If you can see passed the work and always be mindful of the reason for it, you'll find it easier to continue. And I hope you feel proud of your achievements and enjoy what you do because how you see your work can make or break you.

A few readers have asked me to do a post about blogging, which I'm happy to do. I think the internet is one of the most powerful changes that ordinary people have had access to in my lifetime. The internet is one of those systems that is usually controlled by governments, and mere mortals like us don't often get anywhere near such influential and important technology. I'm pretty sure that if they'd known what it would develop into, there would have been government controls and we'd be paying through the nose to use it now. But here we are, able to Skype each other from one side of the world to the other, we can see how total strangers live by reading their blogs and just by writing what we want to write, we can publish those words to the world simply by pressing a button. It's the stuff revolutions are made of. It's truly remarkable.

If you've grown up in the age of Facebook and Skype, you probably take the ability to communicate freely all over the world in your stride. But I'm still in awe of it and probably will remain so till I stop tapping away on this keyboard. I grew up in a time when the only way you could have anything published in the newspaper was by taking a degree in journalism, and even then you had to brave the overabundance of editors and filters before your words were seen by a reading public.

Blogs changed everything. The filters disappeared and we got genuine free speech for the first time; although that has a down side too. All of a sudden there was an easy to use, free platform that anyone with a computer could use. It was too powerful a temptation for me and I started blogging in 2007, this will be my 2347th post. 

There are hundreds of websites with so called 'experts' who will tell you how to be a successful blogger but usually they equate 'success' with how to make money. I wanted to blog to get information out and to connect with people who understood what I was talking about. As a result, a diverse community has built up here. Some are quite vocal, some are silent, some email me with their news because they don't feel comfortable writing public comments. That's all fine by me.  

If you want to start a blog, I'd suggest you sign up to Blogger. It's a free site, owned by Google, so the site very rarely has any problems with downtime or hackers. You can start off with a very simple template, which gives your blog the look it displays to the world and as you learn more about blog technology, you can modify it to suit your own style. If you have an iphone or a digital camera, it's a simple process to take photos and videos and with a couple of clicks, they'll be published along with your words.

If you were to ask my advice about starting a blog, I'd tell you to write the truth in the best way you know how, to respect your readers, to be polite and interesting and to write about what you know. Decide straight away why you want to blog. Do you want to stay in touch with your family and friends? If so, you can have a private blog and invite those you know to join you. Do you want to develop your voice and an audience? You'll have a lot of competition, you'll have to write well, be interesting, write to your subject in an original and convincing way and in the beginning, you'll have to write every day, often with no audience.

Just to give you an idea of your competition and the work load: 

• according to Wikipedia, in 2014, there were around 172 million Tumblr blogs and 75.8 million Wordpress blogs. Blogger is the most popular blogging platform in use, however Blogger does not publish their statistics. I've seen an estimate of there being about half a billion blogs world-wide.
• bloggers who blog every day have five times more traffic than those who blog every few days or weekly.
• quality content and page design are the two main factors in building your audience.
• you'll get more links and readers if you use photos on your blog. Readers are more likely to connect to genuine bloggers and photos can be a way of telling your truth.

• Write well and often.
• Know your subject.
• Share what you know.
• Encourage others.
• Don't expect to build up a huge audience writing about your pet bird. Your subject matter needs to be fairly broad to attract readers.
• Don't expect overnight success.
• If you really think your blog is good but after a year you still have no audience, don't give up.
• Visit other blogs writing the same topic and leave comments. If they're interesting comments, other people may follow the link back to your blog.
• Don't steal words or photos from other blogs.
• Read a guide to internet copyright.

One of the best things, for me, about being a wife-mother-grandmother who cooks is providing good food for the people I love. It's not only the selection and cooking of food I love, it's also providing warm and comfortable situations when family connections are strengthened while food is being shared. Food brings people together and although it can become something mundane and uninteresting, if love is put into it as well as effort, it becomes more than just food prepared in a certain way. It becomes a significant and important part of daily life.

I've gone from being an ordinary housewife, using my food budget to provide as much as I can for the money I had, to being someone who looks for fresh food that's been produced locally and ethically. I almost never buy beef now, if I do, it's minced beef. Usually I buy pork, chicken or fish. Now it's always free range and if I can't get that, I'll go without and use something else. It's easily done. I always check labels, and never buy products from compromised locations such as China and Thailand. I only want to be a part of a food chain that considers kindness and quality of life along with nutritional values and profit.

Even though we're not growing as much in the garden as we used to, we still grow all our salads and herbs, some of our fruit, tomatoes, cucumber, chillis, kale and chard. We might still grow potatoes, let's just wait and see. If I didn't have the space to grow food, I'd spend some of my time looking for a suitable market where I could buy the best fresh food available.

It gives me a feeling of purpose to select, prepare and serve food for Hanno and me. I see it as an important part of my homemaking to provide food that will keep us healthy and supports our values. I love when our family gets together and we sit around the kitchen table and share a meal. That is the time when we catch up with each others news, use the time to forge strong connections and solidify our family ties.

And then Christmas comes along and the family gathers to celebrate. For me, this is one of the important times of the year. It's when simple food draws families together to celebrate their union and to remember that in addition to being a strong individual they're also part of a reliable and steadfast family. It is a time when we share what's happened to all of us during the year, when we pass on family stories and when we show our younger members, by example, that there is love and respect here. I always take the opportunity to provide food and drinks that my family and friends love and will remember. Food's like that - it helps us remember special days, people and occasions. All of us need to build good relationships with those in our family. We need those relationships to last a life time and luckily, good food, shared at a kitchen table, helps us do that.

Is food just food for you or do you think it's something more than that?

Hello everyone!  I'm still having problems with my computer and will probably have to take it back to the technician later today. I hope to carry on using Hanno's computer so my aim is to continue on tomorrow, as usual.

= = = ♥︎ = = = 

I read this very interesting article in the UK Telegraph recently. It tells us that young people are not as inclined to drink or take drugs now, less inclined to cause trouble when they go out, and more inclined to knit, cook, go to bed early and take care of themselves. The young tend to be more conservative and are more helpful than we are, "we" being those in our older years. I love that they are more helpful and hope they learned from our mistakes, although my guess is that common sense and economic reasons have more to do with it.

The other thing I found really interesting was that yellow line in the data. There are more over 65s drinking, more than the under 34s! The age group 45 - 64 has the highest percentage of sexually transmitted disease!  Good grief.

We're the elders, we're supposed to be guiding and encouraging. We should be the ones handing on the stories and family history. Authentic family history and stories must be truthful and really reflect the history of the family. Elder duties are best served sober with the ability to answer questions, motivate and, hopefully, inspire. I'm not saying everyone over 60 should be sitting around knitting on the verandah (although I will be) but we should be doing something to help those younger than us live well. We should be role models.


From the linked article: We are increasingly polite: one government survey found that those born in the early 1990s are less rude and noisy in public than previous cohorts at the same age. We’re more likely than the over-55s to give to charity or volunteer.

While there is an element of the pendulum swinging back to the 40s and 50s in all this, which was something I expected would eventually happen, I didn't expect to see it happen this soon.

As the article indicates, the young are rebelling against rebelling. I majored in rebelling when I was in my teens and 20s. I had a good few years of doing, saying and being what I chose to be, regardless of the consequences. But then my children changed me. Of all the things I'd ever been, I was never a hypocrit or a liar so when Shane and Kerry were born, I turned the leaf over and started my life as a decent parent and (I hope) a good role model.


I don't see a reason for that to change now. I have grandchildren who will look to me for guidance - maybe not so much of the verbal kind but I certainly want to be a grandma they're all proud of. I want them to see me living the life I have chosen and not just talking (or writing) about it. I want them to look back and remember me as a kind and generous person who taught them about gardening and cooking and how to carry eggs, and to not be afraid of spiders. I want teach them there are good bugs and bad bugs, just as there are good and bad people, and help them develop the ability to tell the difference.

Young adults have found the contentment of knitting, cooking and being comfortable in their homes very early when it took my age group much longer to find that simple type of happiness. Instead of us being role models, maybe we should be looking at our younger folk and start wondering why they see the value in the quiet and slow and we don't. I hope they lead the way to a new kind of modern life, one in which shopping and debt don't play such a big role.  I know I have a lot of young readers because I get a lot of emails from them telling me what they're doing and the dreams they have for themselves. Maybe some of them will comment here today and tell us why it was easier than it was for the rest of us for them to choose simplicity over consumerism.

My world is small. Many weeks of the year my world is happily contained within the boundaries of our property, and with the gate closed, I feel as close to satisfied with life as I am ever likely to be. Although we live alone, we have frequent visitors - family and friends, and, of course, we look after Jamie, one of our grandsons, three days a week. Our small world is busy and populated not only by people but also visiting wildlife such as birds, reptiles and many, many insects. There is a biodiversity here that I find pleasing. I think the visiting wild life see our place as a bit of an oasis where no poisons are used, there is fresh water to drink and places to take up residence, if they choose to. 

This is the wood stove in Tricia's home.

Inside our home there is busyness too. At the moment I'm going through things to see what I can take with me on my trip to Tricia's. One of the highlights of the trip will be reacquainting myself with Tricia's grandson, Johnathan, and meeting his sister, Alanna, for the first time.  Like many young couples, Danny and Laura work hard to provide for their children and I'd like to help them if I can. Tricia asked me to join her in teaching Laura a few of our family recipes as well as the tricks and tips younger homemakers often don't know about. Laura asked Tricia to help her with sewing so I've gone through my stash looking for fabrics she might be able to use, and yesterday I went through my cook books and found some to give to Laura.

There was a time when older women would do this sort of thing as a matter of course. They would share their recipes with the younger girls, swap cleaning tips, share resources such as fabrics, fabric scraps, buttons and such.  I'd like to give Laura her first button jar and I've been walking down memory lane here sorting through my buttons, making decisions about what to give her. They may just be buttons, but to me they're symbolic of my mother and the role mending and sewing played in our family.

There are many things available to young people now that weren't around when I was their age but the one thing they sometimes don't get now is this kind of practical support. I'm not talking about financial support, although I'd give that too if I could, I'm talking instead about unique and direct support, sharing family recipes, the shortcuts of basic housework and the encouragement to do it. It's often these sorts of conversations that help younger women transition into homemakers and creative, crafty mothers. It might all seem quite common place to us but for young women just starting out with their families, often they just need to understand how housework fits into this new life and to know they don't have to be perfect. 

What I hope to show is that life can be made better by doing what you can at home, taking control, making plans, working to routines and being an active participant in your own family life.  Sometimes we just need time and encouragement to work out where we are, where we want to go and how we fit into the scheme of things. I think sharing knowledge and showing support are core ingredients of stable family life. This is especially true when we welcome new people into our family. And it's not to make sure they do everything according to how it's already done in the family, it's to help them ease into the family unit; to not only say I love you, but to show it too. When that new family member is settled and feels a valued and important part of a strong family, they can take their time and stitch their own ideas and values into the family fabric. And then the whole family will be stronger for it.

What are your experiences with either being a new member of a family or of making that new person feel at ease?

I wear an apron almost every day. I have about 10 of them in the cupboard, waiting, but if the truth is told, I wear about five favourites and the rest sit in there. Waiting in vain. Aprons come easy to me. I grew up in a time when they were commonplace and I don't remember many women who didn't wear an apron when they worked in their homes. Wind the clock forward 20 years to the early 1970s, and there I was in an apron again, as a student nurse in one of Sydney's largest hospitals.

Those uniforms were a nightmare to care for so it was lucky we had our laundry done for us. I doubt I could have made starch thick enough to make my aprons stand up alone, but that is what they did. Those uniforms were meant to keep us clean and more than that, to make us look clean and starched and proper. I was proud to wear that uniform and all those that came after it, but that first starched  nurse's apron convinced me for a lifetime that aprons were my friend. I have a photo here somewhere of me in 1970 wearing my nurses uniform, with that stiff apron and collar. I'll find it one day and show it to you.

The photos above are just some of the many aprons I've made over the years. The one at the top was to help with local fundraising, these two check aprons were for apron swaps we had here at the blog.

I think aprons fell out of favour for many reasons. One was that our dresses weren't as precious when our mothers stopped making them and we bought them instead. And I guess those new dresses had to be seen, another reason to keep the apron in the cupboard.  But lately I've been thinking about aprons, reading a lot about them and looking at many, many photos of aprons.  I guess much of that is nostalgia creeping in but there is also a practical reason - I read on the forum about turmeric stains on a favourite cardigan.  I know too that some of you are still cleaning a few odds and ends with chlorine bleach and that can spell disaster when it comes in contact with any sort of clothing. It will bleach the colour right out, before you have the chance to try to save it with a quick rinse. Enter, the apron. It provides a barrier between clothing and stains. They also help carry eggs from the nest to the kitchen, a camera can sit in the pocket during the day incase a photo needs to be taken and how many times have I wiped wet hands on my apron.
I keep my aprons in the linen press. That's them on the left. I didn't realise until I saw this photo how untidy they look.

If I could encourage you to try two things that would help you in your home, I would choose wearing an apron when you start your house work and making your bed every morning. Both of them have more than one function. Wearing an apron will protect your clothes from the potential stains of cooking and cleaning but it also brings with the wearing of it a feeling of being in charge of your home. Making your bed will give you a clean and fresh place to sleep every night and once it's done, you have a starting point to your day.

Some of you will be thinking that aprons symbolise a certain time in our history, and maybe that memory is a negative one. But I think that aprons have served us well in the past and can again now. To me it's just common sense and practical but there is also a feeling of pride when I put on my apron. It signifies that I'll be cleaning or cooking in my home and that I've taken the right steps to equip myself for the work ahead. I think works defines us - both paid work and the work we choose to do in our homes. And as a working class woman, I guess I could call my apron my badge and a symbol of the work I do here in my home. Do you wear an apron?

How to make an apron

I've been thinking a lot about wabi-sabi this year. If you've never heard of the term, it's a Japanese concept about being comfortable with imperfection. I'm very close friends with imperfection and have been all my life but as I grow older, I see it in almost everything I do and in all the beauty that surrounds me - including my family and grand sons. Nothing is perfect and it seems to me that if you strive for perfection, you'll be disappointed more often than not. I don't want to spend time being disappointed when I can just as easily be accepting and even look for wabi-sabi and celebrate it, just like the Japanese do.

A friend of mine, Gerri, who lives in France and who I met through this blog, sent me a petit point tapestry of Carl Larsson's The Kitchen. Carl Larsson was a Swedish painter (1853 - 1919) and is a favourite of mine, has been since I discovered him when I lived in Germany many years ago. The Kitchen is the depiction of a young girl with a toddler, possibly her sister, in their Swedish kitchen. The older girl is churning butter and the little one is watching her, possibly knowing that one day it will be her job to do that for the family. On the sideline a wood stove holds simmering soup pots, a tiny white cat is almost out of sight, the washing up sits beside a wash bowl and the curtain blows softly in the breeze. And it is that curtain that gets me every time. Little things.

When Gerri sent it to me she said it had been sitting on the wall in her kitchen for many years and now she wanted me to have it. She explained she'd never finished it and if I wanted to, to go ahead. Well, I didn't want to finish it off because to me, it held the history of Gerri and her kitchen just the way it was. I wanted the tapestry to be what it was, not what it was supposed to be. It was more interesting to me as an artefact the way it was. It now hangs on my kitchen wall. Authenticity framed, captured under glass, a wabi-sabi masterpiece. A reminder.

Also in that frame I placed a letter from Gerri, in an envelop with French stamps, and a tiny note on the back of the frame asking: "do you know what this is? Blog 21 August 2014" I suspect that when I die, my family will go through all these things and I hope they'll discover what it is and keep it as their own reminder.  

In her wonderfully descriptive explanation of Wabi-sabi - the art of imperfection, Robyn Griggs Lawrence,  says: 

Broadly, wabi-sabi is everything that today’s sleek, mass-produced, technology-saturated culture isn’t. It’s flea markets, not shopping malls; aged wood, not swank floor coverings; one single morning glory, not a dozen red roses. Wabi-sabi understands the tender, raw beauty of a gray December landscape and the aching elegance of an abandoned building or shed. It celebrates cracks and crevices and rot and all the other marks that time and weather and use leave behind. To discover wabi-sabi is to see the singular beauty in something that may first look decrepit and ugly.

Wabi-sabi reminds us that we are all transient beings on this planet—that our bodies, as well as the material world around us, are in the process of returning to dust. Nature’s cycles of growth, decay, and erosion are embodied in frayed edges, rust, liver spots. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace both the glory and the melancholy found in these marks of passing time.

I guess that says it all and also reminds me why I've been thinking about it more as I age. I think that when I die I'll be a case study in wabi-sabi. And I have to tell you I'd rather go out as a frayed edged, grey haired, spectacled, wabi-sabi grandma than anything else. It comforts me knowing that the history of things, and of people,  plays an significant part in what we are and who we become.