Live Simply

What does simple living mean? Is it getting back to the basics of life? Moving to the country in mass exodus? Quitting your job and living the life of Diogenes? Sounds good to me! Actually, for the purpose of this small blog I felt that simple living could best be defined as a rethinking plan for myself and you too, if you like. I have had one philosophy for the entirety of my life, “Live Simply to Simply Live”. Sounds corny, I know. But the truth is that I grew up with a Depression Era grandmother (Mammy), who believed in the lessons she learned as a child in rural Tennessee. Life had been hard for her growing up. She never forgot and she made sure that her grandchildren knew the frugal virtues she embraced. It must have worked. As an adult I still carry those hard learned lessons of frugality.

I have thoroughly embraced the idea that nearly anything that can be purchased in a store could be generated on a farm. This is not always an easy task, as I now work in an office in Nashville and only make it out to the farm on weekends. Still, there is much that can be done in my suburban home to exercise my simple living philosophies. I had a notion to see how far my husband (Chris) and I could take the simple living principle of generating our own home-grown food supply, as well as tackling some other tasks which seem to fall along the same lines.

We have plans to keep a garden this year and to preserve the produce. We have purchased a small piece of the original family compound where I grew up, and plan to repair an old living structure, with the intent of making a move back to the farm someday in the near future. I am an amateur spinner, therefore I would love to have either a herd of sheep or angora goats, or possibly angora rabbits to shear and spin the wool as a means of producing some clothing items, or possibly to sell. We have plenty of plans besides these and thought this would make a great experiment to see how far we get on our simple living journey. Oh, and did I mention that we are doing all of this out of pocket? No banks or loans. It will take longer to get where we want to be, but one of our goals is to also remain as free of debt as possible.

Okay, to recap: this blog is about living simply, being self sustaining, self reliant, and self sufficient, getting away from consumerism, living more naturally. We plan to thoroughly embrace the old adage, “Use it up, Wear it out, Make it do, Or do without”. Sounds like an adventure to me!