In keeping with Rhonda at Down to Earth's challenge, I am writing a post that summarises our approach to simple living.
We LOVE the sustainable way of living in the 1940s. We often chat about how our families were 'self sufficient' without really knowing it because everybody was ! They had their own water supply, grew everything, raised their own meat. cooked everything from scratch and never had a garbage truck come to collect all their rubbish each week!
We believe that there is a lot to be learned from the old ways. By applying this philosophy we keep our lives simple and joyful. We have jumped off the treadmill of constantly acquiring stuff to make ourselves feel better and then constantly having to work to keep up. We have less income now but more savings because we don't need 'stuff'.
In practical terms this means the following:
4. Finding old 'sturdy' items second hand rather than a constant supply of cheap 'made in china' items that need replacing every 12 months
5. Spending quality family time together
6. Baking our own bread
7. Brewing our own beer
8. Fixing things ourselves
9. Growing what we can
10. Doing our own renovations
11. Using the town library as a resource
12. Buying local produce
13. Composting our food scraps
14. Minimising plastic packaging on foods
15. Avoiding petrochemicals in products
16. Work on a completely cash budget
17. Changing all lights to CFLs
18. Line dry the washing
19. Menu planning
20. Buying Australian grocery items where local not available
21. Stockpiling
29. Turn the TV off and read out loud to my children
30. Wear hand me downs
31. Avoiding food additives and chemicals
We also formulated our own family eco-challenge after watching the Carbon Cops series on the ABC last year. Here are the areas we focused on:
2. Water
a) shorter showers and water saving showerheads
3. Transport
a) Ride bikes to school and work
b) Limit trips to town – by planning and grouping trips
4. Garbage
5. Consumption
The whole basis of our lifestyle is captured in my blog tag " - Live Simply, Live Joyfully. Follow the old paths, they are tried and true". The 'Vision Splendid' is the ideal that my family and I are trying to move towards. We are far from it, but the journey is a lovely one.
There are four of us. Me, Hubbie, and two sons aged 6 and 9. I work outside the home 4 days per week and hubbie is now the stay at home Dad. Because we avoid commercial TV we find that we live in a parallel universe. We have no idea about trends, sales and gadgets! We think it is quite funny.
Our underlying philosophy comes from old fashioned living as we saw with our grandparents.
We LOVE the sustainable way of living in the 1940s. We often chat about how our families were 'self sufficient' without really knowing it because everybody was ! They had their own water supply, grew everything, raised their own meat. cooked everything from scratch and never had a garbage truck come to collect all their rubbish each week!
We believe that there is a lot to be learned from the old ways. By applying this philosophy we keep our lives simple and joyful. We have jumped off the treadmill of constantly acquiring stuff to make ourselves feel better and then constantly having to work to keep up. We have less income now but more savings because we don't need 'stuff'.
In practical terms this means the following:
1. Living within our means in a small house with no debt
2. No commercial TV
3. Cooking from scratch4. Finding old 'sturdy' items second hand rather than a constant supply of cheap 'made in china' items that need replacing every 12 months
5. Spending quality family time together
6. Baking our own bread
7. Brewing our own beer
8. Fixing things ourselves
9. Growing what we can
10. Doing our own renovations
11. Using the town library as a resource
12. Buying local produce
13. Composting our food scraps
14. Minimising plastic packaging on foods
15. Avoiding petrochemicals in products
16. Work on a completely cash budget
17. Changing all lights to CFLs
18. Line dry the washing
19. Menu planning
20. Buying Australian grocery items where local not available
21. Stockpiling
22. Managing my home in a single binder
23. Getting ahead by applying the 6P principle
24. Having a planning day once a week
25. Having a cooking day once a week
26. Work hard at 'saving' through the year for an annual holiday
27. Using old fashioned items and remedies - e.g. washup with sunlight soap, put eucalyptus oil on your hankie if you feel a cold coming.
28. Wear an apron to keep your clothes clean29. Turn the TV off and read out loud to my children
30. Wear hand me downs
31. Avoiding food additives and chemicals
We also formulated our own family eco-challenge after watching the Carbon Cops series on the ABC last year. Here are the areas we focused on:
1. Energy
a) Turn off lights when not in use
b) turn off appliances at the wall
c) Have shorter showers
d) install energy efficient light bulbs
e) use re-chargeable batteries
2. Water
b) catch cold water when waiting for hot to come through – use this to fill water bottle and kettle
c) wash up in the small sink
d) flush when necessary
e) install water tanks
3. Transport
b) Limit trips to town – by planning and grouping trips
c) Get Dad to ride motorbike to town for smaller items/ errands
d) Walk
e) Find cheaper fuel, drive more economically
4. Garbage
a) Compost Food Scraps
b) Stop Getting Plastic Bags
c) Buy items with less packaging
5. Consumption
a) Don’t buy unnecessary things
b) Work on a cash budget
c) Use things sparingly-
d) Do instead of buy – make it yourself.
This is an ever growing and changing list.