You can’t buy the experience of living well, the sense of being happy and safe or the inclination towards satisfaction. These are all handmade treasures.
I love living in a prosperous, multicultural country, with all the advantages that offers. I’m grateful that our country has a sound financial base, a thriving business community and a compassionate welfare system. I don’t want that to change. I want us to. I want us to stop believing the message that one size fits all, and to see for ourselves the value of stepping outside what is considered normal. I want us to grow up.
We should stop listening to outside advice about what makes us happy and fulfilled and find out for ourselves. Take your life by the throat and give it a good shaking. Step away from what you are expected to do and instead do what you wish to do. My heart’s desire is to live well, to be happy and safe and to feel satisfied by what I do each day. For me, happiness is realised every day by being at home and working to give my family and myself a quieter, safer, healthier life. I grew up the day I discovered that work at home is satisfying and significant. I felt stronger and smarter when I started learning how to look after myself and realised I did not need to shop to have what I need. I feel like I’m really living now and that what I do is important and has purpose. And that has made all the difference. If you know what you’re doing is meaningful and helps you live as you wish, it gives you the courage, strength and every reason to keep going.
Since I started living as I do, I have achieved all my desires. I have never seen any of them advertised on TV or in the slickest magazine. It’s obvious you can’t buy the experience of living well, the sense of being happy and safe or the inclination towards satisfaction. These, my friends, are all handmade treasures; you have to make them all yourself. And you do it at home.
Starting small
I want you to find happiness too. I can’t say what will make you happy – only you know that. I can tell you that happiness isn’t one thing. It’s a whole lot of tiny fragments you find every day that add up to a deep feeling of contentment.
I encourage you to develop your skill base. Learn as much as you can about doing the things you want to do. Start small, with one thing at a time, and you’ll probably find it will lead you on to other things. You could start by making your own laundry powder (there is a recipe for it in the next chapter) or baking bread (check the Recipes chapter for instructions). Maybe you could start stockpiling so you don’t have to shop as frequently as you do now. Cook a meal from scratch or start cleaning with non-chemical cleaners. It could be anything. Your start might be to make your bed each morning so you can look forward to a lovely warm and cosy bed when you go to sleep each night. Maybe you could start by making up a roster of chores for the children so everyone helps at home and you start teaching them how to look after themselves. You might start walking to work or making sure you take twenty minutes out of an otherwise busy day to make a cup of tea and sit quietly to relax. You might turn off the TV or the lights more often, or start monitoring your usage of electricity or water. Maybe you’ll mend a ripped shirt instead of throwing it away, or cut up old towels for rags. Or maybe you’ll just read this book and let it all percolate for a while, before getting started. There are so many small ways to start, but once you have, it’s easy to add another small thing, then another.
You will find that as you do this, your focus will be on your home. Do your tasks slowly and that will help slow your mind too. See the work you do at home with respect. It’s not an annoyance; it will make your home, and your experience of living there, better. You’re building a new way of life. As you work towards what you want for yourself, you will see that each thing you learn makes you stronger and less reliant on what you find in the shops. And once you discover the joy of doing for yourself, when you’re capable of providing for many of your own needs, nothing else will be good enough for you.
Be the friend you want to find
It is tough, no one is denying that. We are battling hard economic times and trying to stick to our budgets while food and fuel prices are increasing. Some homemakers, also in the paid workforce, wonder if they are missing important milestones in their children’s lives but the need for an income keeps them working. Stay-at-home mums are raising children and running their homes – some are doing it easily and gracefully, others feel guilty that they aren’t contributing to the family’s income, or are suffering the criticism of ‘friends’ who say they should get a job. It’s tough and confusing, whether you stay at home or go to work.
But we can make it better by supporting other homemakers. Be proactive. Invite a new neighbour in for coffee and celebrate ordinary domestic life together. Take a magazine and flowers to your sick neighbour. Encourage others in their work. Share recipes and tactics. Take the washing off your neighbour’s line if it starts raining while they’re out. Show younger homemakers that while this job is difficult, never-ending and unpaid, it is also incredibly satisfying, enriching and wonderful. Lead by example, guide others with your strengths and accept assistance when you need it. Be the friend you want to find.
I was born in a time when, like all our friends and neighbours, we did most things in a similar way to how they’d always been done. We grew vegetables in the backyard, made most of what we ate from scratch, made our own clothes and knitted woollies to keep us warm in winter. We soaked our grains before eating them, drank nonhomogenised milk and homemade ginger beer, spread our bread with butter and ate what today is seen by some as an unhealthy diet. In those days most food was unprocessed and there was no such thing as ‘low-fat’ foods. It was also commonplace for people not to have cars, home telephones, TVs or a lot of clothes.
In the fifties and sixties, men worked and brought home their wages and most women worked in the home, looking after the children, cooking, budgeting, gardening and sewing. I don’t want to go back to those days – I found that era particularly repressive and I think many people who romanticise the fifties housewife were probably not there to experience what it was like. I love living in an age when we have an enlightened view, the internet and democracy. However, now it seems that many modern lives are geared around a large mortgage and two incomes, and having less time at home means we pay someone else to make most of what we need. We have been deskilled and dumbed down because we don’t use the life skills that used to be common.
When new products came onto the market in the 1950s, there was a genuine belief that many of them would make life easier. Of course, there was the ever-present profit motive too but now a new element had been added to the equation: dependence. Producers want us to be dependent on their products and they use fear to achieve this. I doubt scaring us was originally their strategy, but it is now. When I see advertising for cleaners that promise to kill bacteria that harm our families; when I hear that people throw out perfectly good food because it happened to be out of the fridge for a few hours; when homemakers doubt their capabilities and don’t think they can handle soap-making, well, I just shake my head and wonder why.
We’ve set ourselves apart from the natural world and we’ve traded our independence for convenience. I think we’ve lost out on that trade.
All that convenience has robbed us of our knowledge and skills. We don’t know how to cook for ourselves. We don’t see the need to garden when we can buy what looks like fresh fruit and vegetables at the shops. We don’t know our cuts of meat because we prefer to buy them pre-sliced and unrecognisable on a plastic tray, so we forget that for every bite of tender beef, lamb, pork or chicken, an animal has died. We don’t preserve our excess food because we’re scared of that word, ‘botulism’ – and because we never learnt how. We clean everything in our homes with chemicals that give us an environment so clean, our babies are failing to develop resistance to everyday bugs. In a nutshell, my friends, we’ve set ourselves apart from the natural world and we’ve traded our independence for convenience. I think we’ve lost out on that trade.
Short of time?
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sp; Retired people, parents who stay at home to raise their children and those who establish a home business might find they have plenty of time to do things for themselves instead of utilising all of life’s modern conveniences, but what of the many more people who work for a living outside the home? How do they fit in here?
I am convinced these same skills would be as effective for people who work for wages and don’t have the amount of time Hanno and I have. Once-a-month cooking, where you take some weekend time to cook up batches of several dishes that will freeze well, is one way of being able to put nutritious home-cooked food on the table every night when you come home from work. Another way is to develop a series of recipes for the slow cooker and load it in the morning so you come home to a fully cooked meal just waiting to be dished up. Planning your menus in advance also helps save time.
Making soap takes about thirty minutes and one batch will last, depending on the size of your family, for one to three months. A batch of laundry liquid takes about thirty minutes to make and will last many months. Laundry powder is even quicker: two minutes and it’s finished. A large stockpot of dog food will take about fifteen minutes to prepare and will cook, with no input from you, for an hour. Then you just place it in containers for freezing and you have dog food for at least a week.
You can buy the supplies for your stockpile when you do your weekly grocery shopping, and when you’ve built the stockpile to a reasonable size you can cut back on the grocery shopping, going once a month or bi-monthly, saving you lots of time. Sewing and mending can be taken up any night after dinner or on the weekend. Knitting will pass the time well if you take public transport to work, or during lunchtime when you’re socialising with colleagues. You and your partner can discuss and set up a budget on a weekend morning, then work at cutting back, saving and recording your spending as you both go about your normal week.
If you’re short of time, it always helps to make things easy for yourself. Many house chores are gentle tasks but they can seem like hard work, especially at the beginning. Set your home up to help you work in this new way. For example, if you want to make compost, have a covered bin in the kitchen to hold all the kitchen waste you’ll use in the compost. If you want to make your own laundry liquid, buy washing soda, borax and soap the next time you shop so that when you have time, the ingredients will be there, waiting. If you want to cook from scratch, buy a good cookbook you can rely on. I recommend The Thrifty Kitchen to you. An Australian book, written by Suzanne Gibbs and Kate Gibbs, it’s a most delightful and encouraging introduction to good cooking in the home kitchen that fits well within our simple framework.
There are very few commercial enterprises that offer to teach traditional skills like sewing, knitting, crochet, leather or metal work, jam making, preserving, food storage or wine making. A large proportion of businesses have little interest in raw materials or ingredients; they’re more interested in providing products that are ready for us to use. We’ve been more interested in that in the past fifty years too. But now it’s time to get back to our roots, learn traditional crafts, and help these crafts, and ourselves, live on in this modern world. Don’t think of this as being old-fashioned or lowering your standards by going backwards. If anything, you’ll be better off.
There is no doubt that the best way to learn most things is to have someone beside you showing you how to do it and how to fix mistakes. I am sure you’ll be surprised at how generous and friendly older people are when asked about a skill. But because most of us have never been taught traditional skills, finding someone with the skills to pass on may be difficult. If you have no one close by to ask, you can do your research about various products and ways of tending to your housework online. YouTube (youtube.com) has thousands of videos that show you how to start knitting and crocheting, how to sew a seam, how to cook and make soap and butter, as well as many other old skills. Books and blogs are also an excellent way of learning various skills.
And don’t forget to think! You can work things out, even if you’ve learnt that you shouldn’t – that you should rely on others to do the thinking. Gathering the skills of life will teach you that being self-reliant is a fine way to live. We’re not talking about rocket science here – this is the everyday work of women and men that has been part of our lives forever. Don’t let it slip away from you and your children. Learning, and then teaching, will open up a rich life that will allow you to live well.
It’s time to get back to our roots, learn traditional crafts, and help these crafts, and ourselves, live on in this modern world.
You don’t have to learn every skill, but try to learn a lot about the skills you do take on. If the only part of a simple life you have the time or inclination for is cooking, then learn every aspect of it, so that in addition to being able to do it, you understand it, can modify what you do and pass that skill on. For instance, baking bread isn’t just about the ingredients and method, it’s also about understanding the chemical processes of baking so that you can improve the bread you make and fix problems that occur.
Sewing
Making aprons, shopping totes, napkins, tablecloths and tea towels is really easy if you have a good pair of scissors and a sewing machine. Even without a sewing machine, you could make all of these simple household items with a bit of hand stitching.
If you need a few ideas and some encouragement, and you have access to the internet, there is a very good site called Free Needle (freeneedle.com), which features sewing project tutorials, repurposing projects, free patterns, toy making, sewing for babies and the basics of learning how to sew.
Start off by making the things you need in your own home: tablecloths, quilts, table napkins, or any number of items you could use. If you have small children, making or modifying clothes will be on your agenda. After you become more confident, you might then move on to making your own clothes.
Nightgowns and pyjamas are quite easy to make and perfect for a beginner, as they don’t have to fit the figure well. If you manage to get it right, that’s great, but if you don’t, no one will know and you’ll be improving your sewing skills with each garment you make.
Mending
I feel real shame when I think of all the clothes I threw away because they needed minor repairs. Now I love mending. It’s very rewarding to be able to mend something so it continues to be of service to us. I commonly patch bed sheets, repair hems, sew on buttons and clips, darn holes and generally keep things going as long as I can.
Collect items that need mending in one place until you have enough to make a mending session. If you’ve never mended anything before, you’ll need a guide, and you’ll find a good one in the resources at the back of the book. You’ll also need a sewing kit with needles, cotton, scissors and a thimble and, if you’re sewing on buttons or clips, you’ll need the originals or replacements. Then it’s just a matter of finding a comfortable chair to sit on and about thirty minutes.
Knitting
I have been a knitter for a few years now and it’s one of the needlecrafts I really enjoy. I love the idea of making something in such tiny increments – one stitch at a time – and out of it comes something beautiful and useful.
One of my favourite knitting projects is the ordinary kitchen dishcloth. Made with either light- or medium-weight pure cotton, they’re efficient for washing dishes, can be added to clothes in a regular wash cycle and will last for years. I haven’t bought wipes or dishcloths for years and happily use these homemade dishcloths and recycled rags. If you want to learn how to knit, making a dishcloth is an easy first project that will produce something functional.
DEB’S WAFFLE WEAVE DISHCLOTH
This is a lovely pattern for a dishcloth from Deb at the Homespun Living blog (homespunliving.blogspot.com). You’ll find many other patterns on the websites listed in there sources at the back of the book.
Materials
1 ball 8-ply cotton yarn; additional yarn for coloured stripe (if desired)
Needles size 6 (US)
or 8 (UK)
Abbreviations
K: knit, P: purl
Directions
Cast on 38 stitches
K 3 rows for border
Row 1 (right side): K
Row 2: K 3, P to last 3 stitches, K 3
Row 3: K 3, (P 2, K 1) 10 times, P 2, K 3
Row 4: K 3, (K 2, P 1) 10 times, K 5. Repeat these 4 rows, 6 times
If a coloured centre stripe is desired, change yarn now and work rows 1–4 in desired colour 2 times. Change back to main colour and work the 4-row pattern, 6 times
Rows 61–75: K
Bind off and weave ends in
ASCOT SCARF PATTERN
This is a nice little scarf pattern of plain, purl, knit two together and yarn over. It is one of my favourites – quite simple and a good practice exercise. It makes an excellent gift.
Materials
1½ balls 8-ply pure wool
Needles size 10 (US) or 4 (UK)
Abbreviations
K: knit, P: purl, YO: yarn over, K2tog: knit two together
Directions
Cast on 34 stitches
Rows 1–8: K
Row 9: K 1, YO, K2tog and repeat these 3 stitches until the last stitch, ending with a K
Row 10: P
Repeat rows 1–10 until the scarf is the length you want
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