Less Is More

Enough is all you need.

Half a trash can full of wasted food and I really have to let this out:

Buy less stuff.  Plant less stuff.  Eat less.  Have a smaller house, smaller garden.

That's right.  I said plant less stuff.

This is a complicated post brought on by the tomatoes I am still picking from the vines I hung up in the coat closet.  And all the food I threw away when my family came for the holidays with their own food and ideas of what we should eat.  There was too much food.

Every person who has ever hosted a Thanksgiving or Bunco knows...
what I'm talking about.  Too much.  We are inundated with marketing and it is really beautiful stuff. It's all so convincing that we try to do it all, but we can't. 

One of my loves is the small house movement.  I have a dream of one day planning a community of small houses surrounding a large common area of fruiting trees that are watered by an underground system to recycle grey water.  But having tiny houses means having less stuff.  Less stuff means less housework, more time.

What would you do with more time?  A lot more time?  And more money from not buying so much stuff?

Having too much and working tirelessly on the upkeep of it all was not enough.  Now you must keep chickens - one of God's filthiest animals - in the yard.  You must grow your own food and the garden must be as clean as the house.  You will need a smart phone to make updates about the chickens, the food, the house you are building from the lumber you harvested in the forest you are homesteading.  Then you will need to decorate with fabric you wove from the thread you spun out of the cotton you grew. Organicly.

Nobody should feel pressure to grow their own food, homeschool their children, sew their own clothes, build their own log cabin, start their own wine label, churn their own butter and then press it into monogrammed butter molds.  But I can absolutely promise you I have been asked about these things by women who have jobs and should be spending their tiny amount of free time with their children that outgrow them so so quickly. 

But the Christmas pictures looked good.

Take time to watch the baby seedlings you already have flower and ripen into Natures' Bounty.  And snuggle your babies.