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We recently acquired this tea infuser from my mom. My husband had a hankering for hot tea, but he didn’t want to use tea bags (even though we have them on hand all. the. time – we’re iced tea drinkers twelve months a year). He wanted to try out loose leaf tea. At Fred Meyer, where we do most of our grocery shopping, they have a bulk section with lots of varieties of loose tea. Neither of us had ever “done” loose leaf tea before, so we decided to give it a shot. Together with the kids, we chose a variety (Irish Breakfast) and then went off in search of a tea infuser. We had one criteria for the infuser we were willing to buy: it had to be made of steel. No plastic.
They didn’t have anything like that in the entire store. They had a couple of different infusers, but all we mostly plastic.
It so happened that Seahawk had a basketball game the next day, so while we were there, we told my mom about our woes (she came to every single one of his games). She said that she thought she had a steel tea ball that she’d never used. If she could find it, she would let us have it. Score!
She called later that day with the good news: the tea ball had been found and she would bring it over.
Because it had been over 24 hours at this point, Will wasn’t in the mood for hot tea anymore. Of course, right? But we were glad to have acquired the equipment we would need when the mood hit. It hit the week before last. We were all suffering from allergies. The whole nine yards: sneezing, watery eyes, runny noses, coughing … you get the picture. Even though it was allergies and not a cold, we decided that hot tea was just what we needed. So we pulled down our tea infuser and loose leaf tea and tried it out.
It was pretty cool.
I knew in my mind that it would work just like a tea bag, but it was still really cool to see it in action. It felt almost like a trip back in time (hence the title of this post). It took us back to a time when things weren’t so “packaged.” Tea bags weren’t an option. Plastic doohickeys weren’t an option. Loose leaf tea and steel tea infusers were the norm. Life was simpler then (or so I imagine … I’m not that old!).
I long for times like that – when things were slower and simpler.
I often wish I’d been born 50 years earlier.
But for now, loose leaf tea will have to do.
Blessings,
Wendy
You might recall that Friday was Valentine’s Day. Because it was a Friday, it was one of the days that my husband works out of the house, rather than from home, so we didn’t have much opportunity to do much. (His “work away from home days” are long – he’s out selling books from around 10 in the morning until 8 or 9 at night.) Just because we couldn’t really spend the day – or evening – together doesn’t mean we didn’t do something, though. Well, he did something for me (and the boys)…
He woke up early and wrote little notes to each of us. The kids’ were left in envelopes on the coffee table with their names on them. For me, he hid six notes all over the house for me to find throughout the day. He hid them in places he knew I’d come into contact with at various points during the day – the silverware drawer, the pots and pans cupboard, my sewing machine, my Bible, etc.
Just because it’s a holiday, that doesn’t mean we had to ditch everything we stand for. The thought behind the notes, and the fact that he took the time to hide them all over the house, was way more sentimental than a purchased card.
Because of the work schedule, we celebrated Valentine’s Day on Sunday the 16th instead. But that, too, was a super simple thing. The point of the holiday is to spend time with the ones you love, not to spend loads of money, so we just went for a drive out in the country roads near our town after church. We explored roads we’d never been on before (despite having lived in the area our entire lives…) and simply enjoyed being together.
How did you celebrate the Day of Love?
Blessings,
Wendy
I mentioned on Friday that we’ve had a crazy amount of snow. Of course, here in the Pacific Northwest, any amount of snow can be classified as “crazy,” but honestly, we’ve broken records for February snow in Oregon this weekend. In our front yard, we measured 9 3/4 inches. That’s a lot of snow! While the children love it (even ours, who didn’t get a single snow day completely off from school), it’s a bit harder for adults.
My husband works about half the time from home, half away. His main gig is selling comic books (ones that he writes), but he also does book layouts for up and coming self published authors (that’s fancy talk for “combining words and illustrations to prepare books for the printer”). The selling of the books is what takes him away from the house for work, while the layouts are done from his home office. He was scheduled to sell books last week from Wednesday through Saturday, but when the snow hit on Thursday morning, he had to come home early and cancel the Friday/Saturday event. Right now, we’re just waiting for the snow to melt so life can get back to normal.
You can’t always control the situations taking place around you, so it doesn’t do any good to dwell over them or stress about them. We could have freaked out when the book selling wasn’t able to happen, but we didn’t. Hubby focused on getting some of the layout projects done, and then took the rest of the unplanned long weekend off. We played with the kids in the snow. It was Small Fry’s first time experiencing it.
Without our focus on keeping our lives simple, we wouldn’t have taken the time to appreciate the beauty of the landscape around us. We would’ve been stressed out and angry at being put a whole week behind on our book-selling goals. Instead, we remembered our values and why we feel the way we do. We enjoyed the unusual weather, and allowed our children to do the same.
Life was very good.
Blessings,
Wendy
So. It’s not Monday. For two weeks in a row.
Maybe it’s better if I promise a simplicity post as my first of the week, whatever day it happens to be, rather than on Mondays. You guys copacetic with that?? Cool.
One aspect of simplicity that I really love is the fact that it’s drastically reduced the amount of stress in my life. Things are much calmer and more relaxed around here, partly due to the fact that through our exploration of simplicity (the becoming self-reliant part), we’ve started making our own detergents in addition to foods we used to buy processed. It’s very freeing knowing that when I run out of laundry soap or dishwasher detergent, I’m only minutes away from a huge batch that will last me a really long time. Especially in the case of the laundry soap. A single batch of that makes 5 gallons, which lasts our family about 4 months, and costs less than $5. You can’t get commercial detergent for that price, and the homemade stuff works just as well.
Similar story with dishwasher detergent. Using products I always have on hand anyway, I can make a nice big batch of it that will last 2-3 weeks (and we run the dishwasher a lot – at least once a day, sometimes twice). I love never having to worry about a) scrubbing my dishes with chemicals, and b) running out of dishwasher detergent and not being able to get more quickly enough. By making my own, it’s always a no-stress situation. And the method couldn’t be simpler.
Homemade Dishwasher Detergent
1 box baking soda (2 cups)
2 cups borax
1 cup salt
Lemon juice
There are two ways to make this. The first way is to mix your dry ingredients, then stir in about 4 tablespoons of lemon juice. The chemical reaction will cause quite a fizz, so make sure you’re working in a big bowl. When all the ingredients are well combined, divvy the mixture up into an old ice cube tray and leave it somewhere to dry for about 24 hours. Pop the cubes out and use them like you would the dishwasher tabs you buy from the grocery store. If they don’t fit in your detergent cup, just put one on the bottom of your dishwasher with each load.
The second option, and the one I use, is to combine the dry ingredients in a bowl with an airtight lid. When you run the dishwasher, put a small scoop (1-2 tablespoons) of the dry stuff into your detergent cup, add a few drops of lemon juice (you’ll still get that fizzing action), close your trap door, and run as usual. You go through more lemon juice this way, but I like it better anyway, because you don’t have to wait for the cubes to harden and the powder is easier to store than the cubes.
Blessings,
Wendy
Welcome back to my What Simplicity Means to Me series. I know I usually post these on Mondays, but our computer was out of commission for a few days, so I’m just able to get back on here today.
Today is my last post on what simplicity is not. Next week, I’ll dive in to what simplicity is.
Simplicity is not necessary for a fulfilling life. But I think it definitely helps. Remember that Scripture from Matthew that I shared last week? Here’s my paraphrased version, just for a refresher: Do the work of God, do not collect wages for doing so. Trust God to provide for you, and provide for you He will. How can you do God’s work without needing to collect wages? Live simply.
Easier said than done, I know. Especially in America (and other first world countries). We’re blessed – or cursed, depending on your point of view – with being affluent. Even the poorest among us is remarkably affluent in the grand scheme of the world. And the more money you earn, the easier it is to turn your back on simplicity. Especially (and I speak from experience here) if you spent any amount of time (as an adult) being “poor,” and now are better off. The “five years ago, I couldn’t buy anything, so now I’m going to buy whatever I want” trap is easy to fall into. But it’s important to keep Jesus’ commands in mind when we’re busy buying all that stuff. We must be willing – and more importantly, able – to leave at the drop of hat if when he calls us.
What about the non-material aspects of simplicity? There might be some of you reading this who thrive in the busy-ness of life. Sometimes I do. It’s nice to be needed. By your spouse. By your kids. By your neighbors. Maybe even by your siblings or your parents. As humans, we like to feel important, appreciated. But in all that busy-ness, do you ever feel stressed, even if you like the constant activity? Of course you do. It’s important (but not required) to take some time to slow down sometimes. Enjoy the simpler things in life. Take half an hour to play with your baby. Allow one-on-one time with each of your children. Make something. Go for a drive. Just slow down and enjoy life.
This week’s challenge: Take five minutes to just relax. Go for a walk, and enjoy the beautiful surroundings. Turn off your cell phone. Meditate. Whatever you want. But make time to just appreciate the quiet, simple things in your life.
Blessings,
Wendy
Welcome back to my exploration of what simplicity means to me. This week, and for the next couple of weeks, I want to explore a few aspects of what simplicity is not. Once we establish those parameters, we’ll dive into what it is.
The aspect I want to explore this week is that simplicity is not taking the easy way out.
In other words, simple is not synonymous with lazy.
The idea for this series came to me while I was rolling out some homemade flour tortillas the other day, and my brain started working, asking “does making tortillas meet your goal of living simply?”
In a word, yes. It does.
But Wendy, making homemade tortillas is way more complex than buying them. Isn’t it?
Again, yes. But that doesn’t mean it’s not an aspect of simplicity.
To me, simplicity means caring for my family in as wholesome, edifying a way as possible. It means providing my children with a non-rushed, well-rounded childhood, while imparting our values on them. It means offering food that is not only healthier, but tastes better, than the processed items. It means striving for self-sufficiency.
A couple of months ago, the kids and I read Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher for school. It’s a lovely novel, written in 1917, about a girl who is suddenly thrust from city life to country life with virtually no warning. It takes Elizabeth Ann (later called Betsy) a lot of adjustment to acclimate to life on the farm, but in the end (spoiler alert) she decides that she likes it better. When given the chance to go back to city life at the end of the book, she declines. Betsy learns that the simple things in life – the birth of kittens, churning butter, walking to school – make her happier than she was being coddled by her aunt in the city.
I think we can learn a lot from Betsy.
I don’t mean that we should all go and live on farms in order to find our own brand of happiness, because honestly, that probably wouldn’t make most of of happy. But we can find peace in the things of the past that are considered “lost arts.”
My challenge to you this week: Think of something you normally buy and try to make it instead. Tortillas, bread, butter, paper… the list is endless. But pick one thing and see if it brings you a sense of calmness while you’re creating something with your own hands.
–Wendy
I had a huge long post written out on this topic, and looking back at it, it’s very meandering and not very well organized, so I’ve decided instead to explore the topic a little bit at a time, with something new each week. Since it’s Monday now, that’ll be the day I post my simplicity entries.
Hopefully throughout the rest of the year, I’ll share tips, reasons, and other things as they come up on the topic. If you have questions, please leave them in the comments or fill out the contact me form, and I’ll do my best to answer them in future posts.
But for today, I think I’ll talk about my family’s journey to getting where we are now.
It started with hubby. He grew up with a mom who, though not a simplicity or minimalism person by any stretch of the imagination, had no problem whatsoever throwing away toys etc… when they weren’t picked up. I grew up with a mom who was always frustrated with me and my brother for not cleaning our rooms, but rarely did anything concrete to solve the problem. So, now that we’re adults, it was much easier for him to get on the “get rid of stuff” bandwagon than it was for me. It’s still hard for me sometimes, although I’m getting better.
He started reading blogs about minimalism, and the idea intrigued him, so he brought it up to me to find out what I thought of giving it a try. I was definitely skeptical at first. I definitely fell into the “what if we need {insert item here]?” category. A lot.
“We need dishes for 8, even though there are only 4 (at the time) of us. We need lots of clothes so we have options. We need the old silverware even though we just got new stuff for Christmas; what if we get rid of it and then run out during a dinner party?”
You can see how that particular game can go on forever.
Then, when I was pregnant with Small Fry, he got me this Kindle book.
(The “look inside” feature won’t work on my blog; I just grabbed the image from Amazon.)
I devoured the book. I started reading Rachel’s blog. I started reading the other blogs she recommended in the book. And I got used to the idea of getting rid of stuff. She even dared to suggest not automatically keeping all the gifts you receive at your baby shower (gasp!). At the time I read this, I didn’t expect that I’d have a baby shower this time around since Small Fry was baby #3, but my step-mother-in-law threw me a surprise shower. And guess what? By the time the shower came along, I’d read the book again, and had started getting rid of some of our stuff, and even though it was weird at the time, we returned some of the gifts from the baby shower. Not everything. Mostly just the duplicates. But stuff went back. And we got some much needed supplies that didn’t come in during the shower instead (mostly diapers; we didn’t get many of those at the shower because people knew our ultimate goal was gDiapers or cloth).
Fast forward 6 months. We moved out of our 1100 square foot, 2 bedroom apartment into a 2000+ square foot (I’m not sure exactly), 4 bedroom house. We wouldn’t have chosen the house on our own, but we prayed for a domicile closer to our church, and about a month later my brother’s father-in-law called me up and said his rental was available and would we be interested in renting it. When I asked him the price, he essentially said “you tell me.” Since it seemed clear to us that God had placed the house within our budget, and it was 25 miles closer to church, we took it. But I’ve digressed. When we moved, we took two truckloads of stuff to Goodwill. We were able to move in one of the small U-Hauls plus two pickups.
Twelve months later, here we are. Christmas just passed. And guess what? We didn’t keep all of those presents, either. Only the ones that were necessary and/or met our life goals (things like “reducing plastic” and “toys that last only, please”). And while it’s still a little weird returning gifts, it’s less so than it was the first time around.
Now, don’t think this series is going to be all about minimalism – it isn’t. But we had to embrace minimalism in order to get to simplicity. It may not be that way for you, but it was for us. So that was the right place to start.
I hope you continue to join me the rest of the year. Maybe you’ll start to embrace the simple things in life too!
Blessings,
Wendy
P.S. I can’t post on January 6th without sending a special wish to my hubby: Happy Anniversary!! The past 13 years have been the best of my life. I love you.