Photo by Muffy Aldrich
The Modern Guide to The Thing Before Preppy

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Reader Question on Living Simply

Question From a Reader:

I see many examples of simple living on your blog - quality over quantity, enjoying the outdoors, slowing down and enjoying life to name a few. How do you and others in the SWNE community live simply in this hectic world?

Best,

E. in Texas

40 comments:

  1. Learn to say no, they'll get used to it.

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  2. Life feels complicated sometimes due to the pervasiveness of technology, 24 hour media, demands of the job(s), but it boils down to personal choices for us. Being outside, setting other things aside to read a book or magazine with longer-form articles, some vacations that are more about time with family than chock-full of travel or planned activities, even making time for the dog to take longer walks or run with other dogs on a field is mostly about setting priorities and following through. It's not easy sometimes.

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  3. Andrew (above) said it. And it helps to turn off the TV and limit daily screen time to essential &/or educational sites (like this one!).

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    1. Good advice. Everyone should take a news and technology hiatus from time to time. Enjoy the people and things that bring you joy and contentment.

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  4. It is very easy in this fast paced world to get caught up with the desire to consume more and more 'stuff'. You work longer and harder to afford the executive 5-bed or luxury automobile to park in the triple garage. SWNE reminds me of the importance of 'being' rather than consuming. Being in nature, being at the coast or at the lake. Spending time enjoying the natural world truly is the best way to remember what is important, and how very, very small we are in the bigger picture.

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  5. I ain't worried 'bout living simply, I'm just simply living.

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  6. We live right next to the forest and I enjoy the dog walks. That always brings me down. Otherwise I try to spend a lot of time on the water.

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    1. Water and fresh air, woods, family , friends and long walks with dogs.

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  7. I agree with those who think we should limit our time on the internet. It doesn't really complicate your life and in fact, it may simplify a few things. But it makes the world seem worse than it is. Don't believe everything you read and while you're at it, mind your own business.

    Don't confuse simple living with easy living. And don't imagine that it's necessarily a healthy life either, depending on what you might do for a living. You are already part of nature. You can't get any closer than that. But if you can, keep a garden, preferably a large one. There's something therapeutic about it. If nothing else, it will keep you closer to the earth.

    Don't worry so much about change or new technology. At one time, in my grandmother's younger days, a wood-burning kitchen stove was a modern convenience. Things will change no matter what.

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  8. I try to limit the noise in my life--in my wardrobe, the time I spend online, and working out of office hours, to start. I set app limits on my phone and remove my work email accounts from my phone after the day ends, which has been extremely helpful. And I try to get outside! We're lucky to live in an area with an abundance of open space, and I try to take a long walk at least once a week (and ideally more).

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  9. Set boundaries and stick to them! Focus on what matters most, the important things in life - family, friends, and faith! Oh, and put 250k miles on that European sports wagon/sedan! Enjoy life!

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  10. When you realize how much of what you see and hear everyday is designed to get you to buy things, it's simultaneously disconcerting and liberating.

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  11. I find getting offline unless necessary ie: no tech or devices, works wonders.

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  12. I decided long ago that my cell phone was for my convenience. It is usually off and taken along only for events like trips to the grocery or solitary walks (to identify who I was). I have trimmed my news consumption to things like the local news and weather, HuffPo, and a skim of Google headlines. I read my two magazines (The New Yorker and The Atlantic) and loads of books. I plunk myself in a chair to listen to a record. I take quiet pleasure in tasks like cleaning, ironing, and gardening. I love and savor everything I do in the kitchen, even things as mundane as doing dishes, feeding the starter, or checking the vinegar jugs. I make as many things as I can using time and my hands, be it making stock, baking, or making kimchi. I do things at church like helping serve the homeless and others in need. I enjoy long daily walks. I highly recommend Wisdom Distilled from the Daily by Joan Chittister..

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    1. I've had a copy of that book for years. I also enjoy the books of Catherine Doherty (up to the point it goes over my head), although I read and re-read Grimlaicus' "Rule for Solitaries." Frankly, I think I get more out of the journals of Dick Proenneke. The only book mentioned here that I enjoyed reading so much that I bought a copy is "The Outermost House."

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    2. Mille grazie, Bluetrain.

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  13. It has been said - you’re only as happy as your unhappiest child. Keep life simple by keeping your teenage children (especially girls) from looking at social media of the kind to which they cannot respond, without incurring another monthly fee. Social media bullying is rampant in our secondary schools, public and private.

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  14. Choose jobs that offer satisfaction and quality of life over large salaries and make sure you accept the lifestyle limitations. My husband and I chose working in public education - a state university for me and the public school system for my husband. We don't have a second home, designer clothes or first class travel, but we do sit down to dinner every night, turn off our phones when we leave the office and prioritize our health, well-being and relationships over the stress of 5-figure salaries.

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  15. Flaco says, "My life is much more complicated now, flying free and I'm loving it."

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  16. Taking that much need stroll through our neighboring woods, and tinkering with our old British cars! Thanks once again!

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  17. Apart from commenting infrequently on a few favourite blogs, I now avoid social media. I deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts over 12 years ago. I have never had an Instagram or Tik Tok account. The authoritarian censorship by Big Tech companies, encouraged by Governments and global institutions such as the UN and EU, is an assault on free speech and thinking. Leaving or refusing to use them (e.g. Google) deprives them of revenue and will hopefully lead to change or their eventual bankruptcy.

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    1. Agree with anon 2/22 10:48am. We work at a high school. Social media bullying is a major problem. How can this be prevented? Suicide rates among young girls are at an historic high. Unfettered negative commentary aimed at specific individuals, we have seen, can cause severe depression.

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    2. Wow for publishing Ken's wacko conspiracy comment.

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    3. Wow for living with your head in the sand. Suggest you take a gander at the Twitter files published by Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss.

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    4. Agree with Ken. Thank you for your comments and delighted to see them here. I too deleted my FB and twitter accounts years ago. Too much negativity there, people are so rude to others. What happened to civility and tolerance?

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    5. Thank you very much indeed Sartresky with your suggestion as to where to source my news from, the Twitter files of MT and BW.

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  18. We're in line with much of Melanie's response above although my wife's administration position at times encroaches upon our evenings/weekends as each new crisis emerges.

    Kind Regards,

    Heinz-Ulrich

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  19. Yes, Melanie is onto something. Going from being a partner in a large law firm to working in state government was a wonderful change. Working for an agency financing the development of affordable housing and administering poverty and homelessness programs was lagniappe. I am sure traveling extensively is wonderful. I did it growing up in a Navy family. However, truly enjoying our home is more enriching and tranquil to me. Travel brings with it both anxiety over details and never truly feeling at home.

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  20. As curious and fun as it is to read this now and again, "simple living" has no place here. Pics of Range Rovers and boats, links to sweaters from Scotland...both of which I might enjoy, but...Sure you can kick back with a good book by a fire, and sip tea or sherry, but let's be realistic. C'mon folks.
    David Allen

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    1. A very shrewd observation

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    2. I have my doubts on this point. People have too many different ideas of what simple living amounts to. Moreover, some of the examples usually given are contradictory. Gandhi, for instance, was a proponent of simple living if anyone was, and decidedly anti-materialistic. But he was anything but detached from worldly affairs. Dick Proenneke, who built a log cabin in Alaska in 1968 and lived there most of the next 30 years, certainly lived a simple life. He was very self-reliant but not as independent as is sometimes suggested. He, along with one of his brothers, even owned an airplane. Likewise, he was not especially materialistic, but hardly a minimalist. At least he did not lead a hectic life, but Gandhi may have. Thoreau was all of those things, at least for a while. He was proud of his up-to-date Rumford fireplace, although he otherwise complained about contemporary technology, from transatlantic cables to the railroad. But he never married or had children and only lived to be 44. What did he know? Marie Kondo discovered what children do to your life, not to mention finding out what sleeping like a baby really means.

      I like to think that my family lived a simple life when I was still in public school, although we usually had a housekeeper (my mother was an invalid). There was the big garden I mentioned but working in the garden was not for therapy. Later, after my mother died, my father remarried, and we eventually moved out of town. Life didn't become any simpler than it had been but it did become more basic. The garden was larger. None of this was ever hectic, although because my mother was an invalid, it probably wouldn't be accurate to say my father saw things the way I just described them. But he managed.

      Not everyone wants to lead a simple life, and perhaps not even a less hectic life. I imagine, just the same, that no one wants a more hectic life. Probably staying off the internet (except for here, of course) would probably make a difference, but it isn't as though people living on the frontier two hundred years ago had no interest in worldly affairs or were attempting to live a minimalist life. They were just living.

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    3. Yes. Spot on David. Have to keep that grain of salt nearby.

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    4. I agree that expensive cars, large sailboats, and many of the other talismans of life in coastal New England are suspect as badges of simplicity, but there are some regulars here who live what might be characterized as simple lives by current day standards. Those lives may even include some of those items like Scottish sweaters, only one or two lovingly maintained for ages rather than a closetful, or even a drawer full. Many of the same things that make old yawls special (and vexing) can be found in that five hundred dollar wooden sailing dinghy. The same cachet that a Rover or Benz carries is entertaining even to me in my fifteen year old car which is fun but hardly a status symbol. Those glorious getaways described by others sound delightful, but my getaways are trips to the grocer or the hardware store. My point is that modern simplicity exists among readers who also possess or admire the New England ethos. While my life is complicated compared to the lives of Thoreau or the protagonist in The River Why, it is far more simple than the lives of most people I know.

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  21. Reality check - have a look at all the pics of Range Rovers and plugs for sweaters from Scotland - great things, but please let's not talk about living simply in the same forum. Living simply and deriving joy from old pics of Elis and new ones of yawls on the Sound all have merit, but let's not get our wires crossed.

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  22. Ken, thank you for your comment, I absolutely do agree with every word. It’s not any conspiracy theory like someone suggested. Isabel

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  23. The UN and the EU censor your speech and thinking? Again WOW. And Ken's 'supposed' refusal to use Google will not bankrupt them I assure you. The topic is living simply, not magical thinking.

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  24. Wear loafers year round - no socks over 50 degrees, invest in productive assets - let the Jones’ followers make you wealthy, buy things you get tired of before they breakdown, eat hash browns - great for the soul! Lol

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  25. Don't shop for "stuff". Start the day listening to the birds (if they still exist where you are). Get outside as much as possible. Avoid most people. Read. Plant flowers. Talk to farmers at the local markets & learn to cook.

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  26. Try not to need an appointment to get your car washed.

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