My partner and I have belonged to a Voluntary Simplicity community for 32 years. With 5 people we only had 1 car, 4 bikes, and good shoes. My honey is an architect specializing in sustainable/energy reduction (50% reduction) building and I am always so impressed with what he does…he incorporates what is outside to bring it in or make the space continuous and not separate…in our old house he put in at least 2 windows in every room that open so we get the breezes flowing through the house to cool and then the windows are placed in such a way that they are the framed “pictures” on the wall also.
There is a great romantic feeling towards simplicity but often it can mean more and specialized work…such as closing curtains and opening windows in different patterns to allow the world to move through. You also have to work on the inner you more in simplier space as there is no place to hide!

We have a wonderful fair trade store here and our fair trade food coop. is amazing.
It is so good to take on new ideas….and always to remove the clutter in life.
Although – I do love pen and paper and journals…I think computers and my writing speed are a better match…I do journals and poems with pen…

thank you for this good and interesting piece.

Patricias last blog post..Hats off to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Revising Committee

I agree with this completely. I am lucky in that my husband has a successful career which he loves, and it allows us to live comfortably on one main income. My writing earnings are for holidays and extras. Does this mean we are have the latest and greatest of technology and a fancy car? No. We could definitely have more toys if I did more copywriting, but personally buying things doesn’t make me happy. I would rather be with my son and be free to write my blog, my novel and have time for my own spiritual development and inner life than have more money and more stuff. I’m not saying this is what everyone should do, but it’s right for me. Luckily my husband agrees that with the demands of his work our family benefits from this.

So many people I know say they wish they could live like me, but the funny thing is many of them actually could. If they made some lifestyle changes and stopped buying so much STUFF. But they don’t want to and that’s fine, but I don’t get the whinging about it and pretending you don’t have a choice. It’s not as if we haven’t made compromises to live this way – we don’t have a flash car, we moved further along the coast from the inner city that I loved, and sometimes big bills come in and I scramble for work. But I’m happy with our choice and I highly recommend more people try to cut back a bit and see where their life can open up.

Kelly

PS> I also prefer simple holidays – small guest houses and eating with the local workers in countries such as Thailand are much more my thing than flashy hotels in Milan. Not that Milan isn’t nice

Kelly@SHE-POWERs last blog post..New Hope and The Ship of Life