This Simple Living Thing is Hard

No one ever said it would be easy and I didn’t really expect it to be but deep down a bit of me did think that the term ‘simple living’ implied a certain simple-ness about it.

You can see the fuzzy-edged images in your mind of a family sitting in a wonderful lush garden on a weed free lawn wearing organic clothing in natural tones and the girls all wearing scarves to keep their long flowing, shiny hair out of their faces (shiny because they don’t have any chemical build up from using commercial dyes and shampoos).

They are eating a wonderful lunch with homemade bread, cordial and biscuits. Laughing and enjoying each other’s company. In the slightly out of focus background are some white sheets, gently blowing in the wind breeze and the pet dog is joyfully bounding around them, skilfully avoiding the lunch plates.

When you pry yourself away from this image, your mind wanders into an immaculate, country style home, void of any evidence of the homemade bread and lunch being consumed in the back yard. Even though the sheets are on the line, the beds are all made and the pillows are fluffed. The living areas have that lived in look about them and yet are dust free and tidy. When your mind’s eye wanders into the bathroom all the towels match and there isn’t a splatter of toothpaste on the mirror.

Yes, some would say I do think a bit too much but deep inside my over-active brain there was this picture when we first began the path to simple living. It wasn’t a conscious thought exactly and there was definitely no plan on how to accomplish any of those things but the picture was there – ready for printing on a hallmark card.

Obviously, my life and home is nothing like this. Simple living takes a lot of work. It isn’t necessarily hard work but it is constant. If you have made the decision to cook from scratch then that will mean you are in the kitchen more, which will then require more cleaning, as will the floor from all the flour you always seem to get everywhere (makes a good excuse for the scarves and aprons though). And then, to add insult to injury, the food you have lovingly cooked gets eaten and then the cycle is repeated the following day (hopefully with a different scarf and apron). You get the idea.

Perhaps it is the wonderful help that I receive from Miss Berry or perhaps it is because there is a hell of a lot of things that need doing when you are trying to get back to basics, but either way simple living sure does take a lot of time.

Would I go back to the ways thing were?

Not in a million years.