When I was a young mum, I spent time with my family, worked full-time, studied for a degree, was on school committees, had to drive three hours each way to reach the shops, spent time with friends and generally had a good time. I was certainly busy, but I always took time to sit and talk to my sons and my friends, and if anyone asked me to do something I could usually fit it in. I don’t remember feeling rushed, or stressed. And I’m sure other people were the same. Now I hear so many people say they’re busy and you see and hear this message all the time in the media too: ‘Everyone is busy.’
Slow down, think about what you’re doing, experience it fully, and get something out of it.
Now, it’s quite possible I’m wrong, but family life seems to be pretty similar to how we experienced it all those years ago, and people don’t actually seem to fit more into their lives than they used to. I know many mothers didn’t work outside the home, but plenty did. So what is it about life now that makes people stressed? I wonder if it’s the pressures of keeping a job, worrying about the mortgage or how to pay the rent, rushing to get things done and not taking time out when it’s needed. Does that add up to people being overwhelmed and feeling as if they don’t have a spare minute?
Whatever it is, if you feel you are busy or rushed all the time, I encourage you to slow down, and take more time to do your work. It may surprise you when you get more done and feel better for it. When I closed down my business to return to my home, initially I rushed through my housework to make sure I got it all done. I never did, so I felt anxious and inadequate. Then I had one of my Eureka! moments, realising that housework never ends, and I slowed down, took whatever time it took and concentrated on my work, and came out better for it. And I got more work done. Rushing doesn’t facilitate work; it blurs it, making you feel you’re constantly behind and you have to hurry. Remember that fable, ‘The Hare and the Tortoise’? The tortoise, slow and steady, came first.
This minute is all you have. Yesterday has gone, tomorrow hasn’t happened; you only have now. If you constantly rush through what you’re doing, thinking of what you’ll do next, you don’t truly experience your minutes or your hours. Slow down, think about what you’re doing, experience it fully, and get something out of it. Everything you do is part of your life. Make your minutes memorable.
When you’re more relaxed you’ll feel more capable, you’ll be able to do what you have to do and you won’t get into bed at night exhausted and wondering what you did all day. If you’ve made a commitment to yourself to live a more simple life and you know that it will be better for your family, start by slowing down and looking at your work as being productive and creative, not just as chores to be rushed.
Home management journals
There is no doubt about it, simple life is easier when everything is organised. Quite a bit of the information we use in our simple homes is freely available, but you need to actively gather it and keep it in one place.
A few years ago I started a home management journal that turned into a kind of all-purpose encyclopaedia of the practical things we do here. When I started making soap I collected recipes from the web, from people I know and from books – they all went in the journal. I experimented with those recipes and now that I have my favourite soap recipes, only they remain in the journal. Bread was the same – I collected a lot of recipes and info about technique and ingredients and placed it in my journal. I worked with them all and chose what suited us, then got rid of the rest. Launching the household into a more natural cleaning regime added yet more information to the journal. Then came vegetable garden plans and planting times, seed catalogues, harvests, egg numbers, the dates we bought new chooks, the chooks’ names, how to knit mittens, weather and rain records, telephone numbers and email addresses. It’s an ever-evolving thing – now I’m collecting knitting and sewing patterns for babies and finding information about working effectively with solar panels. As I collect what I want to keep as reference materials, it is all added to the journal.
I would like you to make your own home management journal. It can be like mine: a ring binder with some hole-punched hand-written pages, some printed pages, and some plastic sheet protectors to hold things like business cards, seed catalogues, your budget, to-do lists, school schedules, your calendar, water and electricity meter readings, menu plans and grocery lists. Or it can be something else. It can be as fancy or plain as you care to make it; it can be anything you want it to be. Whatever it looks like, it should hold all those loose pieces of household and garden information that need to be in one place. You will build it up over the years, and it’s important to review it every six months or so to keep it as current as possible. I transfer everything I’m not currently using into a second folder. I guess that’s my history folder – an archive that shows my journey as much as this book does. Look around the house for an old folder you can use, or buy one when you’re out shopping, so that you can start adding those vital pieces of information to your own home management journal.
Opening up your home and your life
One of the most liberating and symbolic things you can do on your journey to simplified living is to declutter your home. It’s liberating because you don’t have to look after all that junk any more, and it’s symbolic because it opens up your home and your mind while rejecting a more materialistic past life. It’s amazing how energised you feel after getting rid of the items you no longer need or want. Clear your cupboards out so you can let more life in.
We all have ‘stuff’ in our lives: junk that we keep because we think it’s important, or because we haven’t thought to throw it out or because we believe we might need it someday. Get tough with yourself and your possessions; they are holding you down under the weight of a hundred Saturday shopping trips and all those unwanted birthday and Christmas gifts. How many times have you ‘needed’ something, tried looking for it in your home and given up before you found it? How many times have you bought a replacement for that item, then found the old one a week later? Those days are over.
When you’ve decluttered your home you’ll be surprised at just how much expensive junk you’ve paid money for and kept over the years. Keep only those things that you really need or those that give you pleasure. If something is kept in a cupboard and you don’t see it for months or years, get rid of it. When you finish your first decluttering session, look at what you have left and enjoy it.
Clear your cupboards out so you can let more life in.
Decluttering is a major investment in your future wellbeing. Don’t try to declutter your entire house in one purging frenzy. Do it properly; it’s not a race. This is a readjustment to your life and it needs to be done with care and consideration. Concentrate on one room or one area at a time. Do one room a week until you’ve finished, then revisit every room and make sure you got everything.
ACTION PLAN: Decluttering
There are hundreds of ways to declutter. This is how I do it
* Get four large boxes or garbage bags and mark them: ‘Put away’, ‘Give away’, ‘Sell’ and ‘Rubbish’.
* Start at the door of the room and work in one direction around the room.
* When you pick something up, don’t put it down anywhere except in one of the bags or boxes. If you’re not sure about an item, ask yourself these questions:
Is this important to me or my family?
Would I be sad if I didn’t have this?
Have I used this in the past year?
* Don’t leave the room to put things away until you’ve finished, or you’ll take too long. If the ‘Put away’ box is full before you’ve finished, put those things in their rightful places, then continue.
* Never skip an area, even if it seems overwhelming – just take more time with it. Just starting is the biggest step for some areas. Keep that in mind and if it looks like too big a job, tell yourself that you’ll work on it for fifteen minutes. Set a timer and when fifteen minutes is up, stop. Often you’ll find that this will be enough to m
ake a big dent in a problem area. You can go back and finish it later, even if you do it fifteen minutes at a time.
* When the boxes/bags are full, everything in the ‘Put away’ box should be put away in the appropriate place in your home, and everything in the ‘Give away’ box can be given to charity, family, friends or neighbours. Take your ‘Sell’ box to the garage and keep it with other things you want to sell on eBay or at a big garage sale you could organise at the end of your decluttering. When you make money by selling those items, don’t waste it. Put it towards the mortgage or in your emergency or savings account. It’s not extra money; it’s money you’ve earned. The ‘Rubbish’ items can be put into the rubbish bin or recycle bin.
* As you work through your rooms, resist the temptation to clean while you go. Leave things tidy but save your cleaning and organising for another day. When all your decluttering is finished and you have moved all the boxes to their appropriate places, go back to each room and assess what needs to be done next. Now that you’ve removed all the excess items you can really clean and organise your rooms into functional areas that support the way you want to live.
How a routine helped me
Establishing a housekeeping routine that suits you can be a daunting task. When I took up the broom and pegs as my tools of trade, I started with a little list of jobs I would do within a certain amount of time. For instance, I would shower, write my blog, feed the animals and chooks, make breakfast, make the bed and make bread all before my self-imposed time limit of 9 a.m. By twelve o’clock I had to have swept the floor, cleaned the kitchen benches and stove, and done any laundry that needed doing. Keeping a list of tasks within a flexible timeframe helped and I was surprised that, in the space of about a month, I had established a routine for myself that felt comfortable and easy to work with – and it got my housework done.
When I had that rhythm, I slowed down and started thinking about what I was doing. Sweeping the floor, making the bed, washing up, cooking from scratch, growing vegetables, collecting eggs and baking bread all connected me to my female ancestors. Hanno’s grandparents had a very productive garden that he often talks about. I have no doubt he feels connected to them when he’s planting and harvesting. When I made that ancestral connection, I started liking most of what I did, because I saw it all in a different light. I was taking control and making the house exactly how I wanted it to be, rather than cooking and cleaning up after everyone. I looked for new things to learn, I started making a lot of what we were using, I began to live more generously and I settled into my home. At last, I felt truly comfortable living and working there.
When I look back on it, I know that getting into the rhythm of doing chores each day, understanding what I was doing and not rushing through my work changed my habits and established positive new ones.
Establishing your own routine
I’d like to share with you five things you can do every day to help establish your own routine. As you can see, they are very common tasks that most of us need to do each day.
Make the beds and tidy the bedrooms. When they are old enough, teach your children to make their own beds. This should be one of their chores so they contribute to the running of the home and learn how to look after themselves. Don’t expect perfection from them but expect them to do it every day.
Sweep the floor.
Wash up or run the dishwasher.
Organise and tidy one area a day. This might be the laundry, kids’ rooms, the family room or your finances, snail mail or email.
Make sure you know what you’ll eat today and tomorrow.
If the list helps you, expand on it with a second list of five. This second list will be specific to you and your circumstances – whether you have children or not, whether you work outside the home or not, and it would possibly change according to where you live. For example, if you live in an apartment, your chores would be different from those you would need to do in a house with a garden and chooks.
If you can make a realistic list, with times on certain activities, it will probably help you get through your work. Earlier in the book I wrote about how housework never ends and I always keep that in mind, especially when I’m very busy.
As I’ve mentioned, the best way for me to work is to divide my work into time periods – this, for me, is usually morning and afternoon, but it could be any time that you’re prepared to do the work, such as early morning and the evening.
ACTION PLAN: Daily routine
* Let’s say I had the following chores to do on one day: bake bread, clean kitchen, make bed, tend garden, check worm farm, feed worms and chooks, pick and blanch vegetables, make tomato sauce and process it in water bath, do laundry, sweep floor, wash up, make dinner, write, answer emails, mend and knit.
* First I would decide which I would do in the morning and which in the afternoon.
Morning
make bed
feed chooks
load washing machine
make bread and set to rise
make tomato sauce and process – leave jars to cool
bake bread
clean kitchen
wash up
hang out washing
collect eggs
sweep floor
write until lunch (this last one is restricted by the amount of time I have)
* Then I would have lunch and relax for a while.
Afternoon
feed worms
tend garden and pick vegetables
blanch vegetables, set to cool, then freeze
two hours of writing
knit for thirty minutes or so
bring laundry in and fold
make dinner, answer emails while it’s cooking
eat dinner, clean up kitchen and wash up
* If I felt like it, I could mend after dinner, but usually I’m tired by then, so it could wait till tomorrow. If I was falling behind, or feeling tired, I could leave the tomato sauce or blanching until tomorrow as well. I could spend more time writing and not knit.
As you can see, I do a fair bit of juggling and I think that gives me some leeway. The important thing is to do the work in blocks of time. Don’t toil for hours on one thing. Do a bit, do something else, then come back to your longer job. It does make it easier.
And I always remember:
I can move chores around.
I can put things off till tomorrow.
I don’t have to finish everything.
It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be the best I can do on that day.
I’m not living in a showroom; this is my home.
Sometimes I don’t do any work at all. If I’ve had a really busy time at work and at home, I give myself a day off to recover. That day off is a powerful thing. I want to look after myself and I want to enjoy my work. I’m in this for the long haul; I don’t want my housework to become a burden. I’m sure many of you think it’s an absolute luxury to have a day off but I am at the stage of life when it is possible and necessary. If you can’t give yourself an entire day, make sure you take an hour. It’s important; it will make a difference. Remember, whether you’re the breadwinner and doing housework, the mother of young children or a new baby, working at a small home business while being a full-time housekeeper, or struggling in any way to keep up with things, take time out. It might sound like the wrong thing to do because it takes more time, but if you get sick, it will be worse for everyone. Give yourself as much care as you give everyone else and take time out to regenerate when you need it. Doing that is a strength, not a weakness.
Some household tasks need to be done only once a week. These commonly include menu planning, grocery shopping, changing the sheets and towels, ironing, vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom and kitchen, dusting, mending, paying bills and gardening. Write your weekly list, then you can plan what you will do on which day. For example, in my daily routine on the previous page, I could replace the tomato-sauce making or doing the washing with any of these weekly
chores. Add something from your weekly list as often as you can. This will help you get through your weekly tasks as well as the daily ones.
Give yourself as much care as you give everyone else and take time out to regenerate when you need it.
One routine might not cover all you need to do at home, so you could break down your routines into smaller sets that relate to different tasks and times. The most important thing is that you have a routine that works for you. If you’re working to a fairly loose time frame, tell yourself you have to have finished a certain set of chores before a certain time. If you’re on a stricter schedule, put times next to each task. This is supposed to help you, not stress you. If the routine doesn’t work, modify it to suit your needs.
I know there are many of you who struggle to get everything done. I know there are some who don’t do much at all and feel guilty about it, but can’t seem to find the motivation to do what you feel you should. I hope that sharing how I work, and how I feel about it, may help you with your work. Try to work with an open heart. You are your own boss in your home; be kind to yourself and take the pressure off – you don’t need to be perfect. If you have trouble starting, set the timer for fifteen minutes and make yourself get up and work solidly for that quarter of an hour. Anyone can do that. When fifteen minutes is up, rest, then set your timer again. You’ll be surprised how much you can achieve like this.
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