A Simpler Life 2018

Primrose

Perhaps a paperback of some kind for your trainee?

LameWolf

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

It's astonishing (horrifying) how things havent totally equalised yet. I've got a new motto - which goes "Would a man say that? Have that said to him? Do it?" and if the answer is "No" - then I aint going to either.

My ex-h was of the opinion that "a woman's place is in the kitchen". He was frightfully Victorian in his outlook, I have no idea how I stood it for 20 years before doing the sensible thing. I wasn't allowed to even drink pints of ale, only half-pints (he drank pints of course); whereas Mr LW always assumes, if I ask for ale, that I want a pint.

Wednesday2000

I just read a book called Break the Twitch (quite a quick read) and it is about how you buy things mindlessly, rather than trying to be mindful in your life.

I have bought too many things from Am*zon this year and next year I want to just order the stuff we need like pet food rather than buying random carp.

I deleted all the stuff off my Am*zon wishlist after reading it.

It was written by Anthony Ongaro and I had heard about him and his wife on Mr Money Mustache, I think.
No couch, one car: How these Minnesotans are living with less - StarTribune.com

Primrose

I think a motto for us all to adopt in 2018 is

“DO I HAVE ENOUGH?”

maryb

I've just remembered, someone started a thread about a year ago, Not Buying Any Clothes 2017. It fizzled out after a while because if you stick to it, there's not a lot to post about!

I haven't done too badly re clothes buying this year but Goodbye Valentino has just announced another Ready To Wear fast for 2018 on her blog and I think this might be the year I really give it a go. I'd like to really up my game with my sewing even though eyesight problems mean I haven't been able to do as much as I like. But I think giving up sewing, which I've been tempted to do, is a simplification too far - or too soon. So less but higher quality

I will not sew gentle into that good night, as it were!

YORKSHIRELASS

OK, I already feel a little daunted by how much some of you do already in a quest for simpler life!

I have struggled for years with my confidence and the thought that if I have the right "stuff" I will be more likeable, more popular and as a result happier. Goes back to a difficult time in my childhood. This need to have the right "stuff" extends to my home and my kids.

I did read the Kon-Mari book a couple of years ago and loved it. This resulted a huge clearout but the temptation to buy new things is always there. I work silly hours and if I could spend less money I could in theory work less. Sounds simple.

I also hate waste and worry about the effects of our consumerism on the environment so a simpler life appeals from this point of view too.

GreyQueen

I can relate to YORKSHIRELASS's post above. I have struggled with low confidence (still do, occasionally, although age is smoothing most of that out) and thought if I had the right gear I would be one of the cool, popular kids.

Popularity doesn't seem to work like that, does it?! After a while, you twig that a certain outfit or a certain accessory doesn't buy you acceptance. And, even if it did, all it would be buying you is the acceptance of shallow, silly people and who, to be brutally frank, wants to be the darling of a bunch of nitwits?:rotfl:

Really cool people could walk into a formal event full of evening dresses and suits and make fifty well-dressed strangers feel excruciatingly embarrassed that they were not in jeans and a tee like The Cool One. To be so cool as to be positively Siberian.

I'm not the slightest bit cool and, if I have been fashionable, it was probably an accidental event lasting a nano-second and no one noticed, not even me.

Best to just get on with one's own life. As a wiser person that me once remarked; It's none of our business what other people think of us.

YORKSHIRELASS

GQ the trouble is it never ends because you are constantly searching for the right things, ditching the old things that didnt make you Mrs Popular and looking for something else. Social media is the devil for perpetuating this idea of perfect lives.

I took up a new sport last year and joined a club hoping to make friends. Everyone has the right (expensive) kit and it takes some bravery to turn up in the "wrong" gear. It shouldnt matter should it? I am working on being my own person but have got a way to go.

Prinzessilein

Oh wow! Do I ever 'get' the striving for popularity thing!....

I was always 'different'...disability meant that when I was at school I was excused PE/Game which really puts the kibosh on hopes of 'fitting in'!...so I tried other ways of finding 'my place', I tried fashion - well when you are a good 6 inches shorter than average, and dumpy at best, then you are never going to be able to wear the 'right' clothes - I did try a pair of platform shoes, but couldn't balance in them, cue more ribald laughter as I fell ....well fine, I'll join with the swots! Some subjects at school were easy enough- German (hey it's my second language any way!), Maths (numbers make sense to me in a way that people just don't!) - unfortunately there were things like History and Geography that I managed to scrape a pass in, but would never excel in, and some science was excused too due to disability (no practical chemistry for example), sadly I was not smart enough to be a swot!...there were the 'bad' girls, but I lived in too much righteous fear of my Mum to consider approaching them!

But I found my 'own' path through school...I excelled in my own subjects and scraped by in others...I found a safe haven in the library...I joined upon occasion with the group of other 'losers' and we would sit together at lunchtime making our fruitless plans to somehow get 'accepted' in a 'real' group. (And once in a while someone would succeed...something unexplainable would happen, and one day they didn't come and sit with us, but totally ignored our group as they made their way into a new circle.)

Adult life hasn't really been that much different!...I still don't fit any established norms...but I am my own unique person!

With the 'simple life'...I have never read Kon-Mari!....I am unable to do gardening/allotmenting...I live in tiny flat, so exciting storage is no option (no wardrobe...on large hall cupboard, and a cupboard in the kitchen just big enough for my mop and vacuum)...BUT, I can cook from scratch (some days)..I can knit and embroider...I can make one penny do the work of two...I am happy with no pay-per-view, love to sit and read.

Yes, sometimes a thread like this can be intimidating...but unlike school, people here are welcoming to the outsider!

Hard_Up_Hester

I find living on a boat very good for concentrating the mind, I was looking wistfully at some yarn cakes, variegated colours that make beautiful shawls and scarves.
Then I realised that I have nowhere to put any more yarn, I already have a scarf, I like shawls but they aren't practical to wear when humping coal.
So. No yarn cakes for me.
I have also never fitted in with the incrowd any of you who have read my wittering about work will know this.
So this year, having retired there is no Christmas meal where I'm expected to sit on a separate table to the rest of my team, no workmates moaning because I let down the team by not being able to afford this year's Christmas jumper, what bliss!!