How has simplicity impacted your life?

**homesteadmamma** · 04-20-2004, 07:06 PM

Has it made you more relaxed? Does it cause you heart ache because you can't seem to get it? Has it brought peace to your soul?

Share with us how its impacted your life....

**guest2** · 04-20-2004, 08:48 PM

Well...it has made my life fuller and more meaningful. I love not feeling like I have to "keep up with the Jones".

I love being able to homeschool my kids and not be at the mercy of the school and it's schedule (Driver's Ed thru the school was enough to drive me batty!). I love knowing that I can be here for my children and that I really know them and what is going on in their heads and hearts. I love having my hubby be able to come home to a wife that really loves him and wants to just sit down with him and is not in a rush to get dinner on the table (well, at least that is what I strive for

).

**forestdale** · 04-20-2004, 09:05 PM

You're a total cutie, Deb.

As usual, I'll go on and on to get to my point. LOL

When I was younger and working, running my own business, I was REALLY ambitious. I worked 12-14 hour days, often 6 or 7 days a week. I was successful and I loved doing what I did. When I went to sleep I could hardly wait to wake up the next morning so I could get up and do it all over again. Suddenly that love of life stopped and I came to detest what I did. I hated the travel, the people and the culture of greed that surrounded me. So I closed my business and sat sitting on my front verandah thinking about what had happened and "is this all there is?"

I'd already been living an organic life - growing vegies and such, but I was extremely wasteful. Looking around on the web one day I found the voluntary simplicity movement and read a lot about it. It seemed to offer a path for me to follow. The lifestyle appealed to me but I was having problems getting my life together enough to live the way I wanted to live. For instance, I was still spening big time and wasting a lot.

Then I found the village and it gave me the skills I needed to organise myself so I wasn't spending and wasting. It showed me that to live simply requires a commitment to the whole deal - frugality, recycling, saving, wise shopping, support for local community, decluttering, organising etc. Before FV I didn't realise it was the combination of these things that makes the whole thing work. Doing one or two things did not work - not for me, at least.

So for me, it's impacted in a positive, meaningful way. It's givien me new friends that understand what I'm doing and, more importantly, it's given me back that wonderful feeling of being desperate to wake up and face the new day.

**canadian gardener** · 04-20-2004, 11:05 PM

Peaceful days, lower stress, higher quality of life, but costing less. Able to help with the stuff that matters like helping my in laws over the last few years, being there for them, not telling them how busy I am, and how that means I can't be there for them.

I don't think I can quite put that one into words how important that was to me.

Being there with my kids,

getting healthy again. There is no way I could have kept up my life the way it was.

Being able to teach the tuesday morning ladies bible study

being able to just mooch around and notice my hosta's coming up in the garden

get a dog to kiss me, and notice when she rolls on her back and looks utterly cute

having time and ability to look across at my dh and feel happy that I've married him, and say so.

talk to my friends.

have a satisfying life. Instead of running around like a chicken with my head cut off, getting a paycheck, and wondering how to keep up the bills anyways.

Surprise! the bills are the same. I'm different.

**QuilterMom** · 10-26-2004, 05:32 PM

I do feel more relaxed. I don't care what anyone thinks of me or if they consider me 'odd.' I feel peace and tranquility. Like Debbie said...........

I love not feeling like I have to "keep up with the Jones".

**Ellise** · 10-26-2004, 06:27 PM

I'd have to say that at this juncture I am crossed with different feelings. I'm glad to be home and more relaxed but at the same time I feel like I just can't get it right. maybe because I was out of the loop/ swing of this for so long. Ask me again in 6 months and perhaps my feelings will be all in one direction.