simply living life

As I was playing with my niece, eating an orange and trying to clean out our old PVR recordings I turned on an Oprah episode from Monday. It was about turning down the luxuries in life that we don't need but have grown to expect or to 'think' that we need. About how we've learned to be wasteful with the things we do have, how to stop consuming and how to start learning to live with just the basics and being happy cherishing everything you have in life - not material things, but your family, friends and valuing your own life.

I watched an incredibly inspiring and uplifting story about a mother of 2 who felt like she was living in a false life built on 'stuff' and 'money'. She discarded it all for a tiny cottage in the middle of nowhere with her 2 young children and found the deep down happiness in life she'd been longing for. See the article here.

Photo: Rob Howard

By no means do I feel that Noel and I are living a wasteful life, or that we take what we have for granted. But I do think that we could easily fall into a destructive path of wanting and buying without noticing that we'd gone too far. I've noticed that just recently we've been talking about all kinds of ways to make life simple and peaceful again in our busy non-stop working lives. Both of us come from very simple backgrounds (in some ways) and we both know that filling our lives with things and stuff isn't what we truly want or need, but that it's just so easy to do that it takes extra care to keep it from happening.

Noel has given up TV on weekdays for lent. I've given up working on the weekends and late evening hours. It's only been a few days and already life has changed. I don't watch a lot of TV in the first place, and watching is so much less enjoyable when there's no one to watch with. So we spend our meals in front of each other catching up. And instead of TV before bed, we talk or read a book. It's so quiet in this house now!! You can be deep in thought in all hours of the day because you don't have that constant 'noise' in the background.

Suddenly we have more time on our hands to do productive things, like practice our music or clean the house. We did a complete over-haul on our office this past weekend and came out with 3 garbage bags of paper and a trunk full of cardboard to recycle. I can't imagine how we lived with all that trash (in one room) for so long. It's got me aching to do the same for the guest room - there is a pile of wedding stuff that I haven't touched for a year and a half...ooh and how about getting rid of the clothes in the back of our closet that I haven't even looked at since we moved in...

We're also taking it easy on big purchases - especially considering the economic crisis and our amazing trip to NY this summer! So we're thinking (a lot) before buying...like couches and SUV's. I think we're realizing that if it's not something we need right now, we shouldn't purchase, even if it's affordable...although being able to sit 2 of us comfortably on a couch right now is really tempting.

Anyway, there is a lot more to simple living than you might think. I plan on getting to know how to incorporate it into our lives over the next few months as summer approaches, it'll do a world of good for our home and our life.