A Simpler Life 2018

Wednesday2000 · 15 January 2018 at 1:09PM

Cottage_Economy wrote: »

Over the last year I've started replacing things that are worn out with better quality items but I find it really tough! I was brought up on charity shops and car boot sales, but I'm changing my mindset on these.

I try to do it with clothing, but I do love a bargain.:p £1 charity shops are dangerous for me.:D

Hopefully now I'm trying to have this year not buying clothes I can start to be more picky when I do buy clothes.

SimpleLiving · 15 January 2018 at 1:39PM

So I had 3 casserole dishes:o I only need 1, so 2 are now in the charity pile. In theory, I could break my remaining dish and then have to buy another one but a) hopefully this will never happen and b) I would rather have the space and pay for another one if need be in the future. I find too many items stashed away a burden in many ways.....cluttered cupboards, difficult to find things, dust collecters, etc

fuddle · 15 January 2018 at 2:20PM

For me Simple Living is about need not want. Anything that I need I try, after years of making do with cheap, to invest in longevity, value for money and being able to avoid consumerism.

It's also about organisation for peace of mind. Once I'm organised I avoid faff. There's no place in my Simple Life for faff.

Simple Living for me is also about trying to be as self reliant as possible while not using 'stuff' and being mindful of my environment.

We all have our own ethos and I find other people's ways fascinating but if I could sum up my ethos it probably would surround the issue of 'less faff'.

SimpleLiving · 15 January 2018 at 2:28PM

fuddle wrote: »

For me Simple Living is about need not want. Anything that I need I try, after years of making do with cheap, to invest in longevity, value for money and being able to avoid consumerism.

It's also about organisation for peace of mind. Once I'm organised I avoid faff. There's no place in my Simple Life for faff.

Simple Living for me is also about trying to be as self reliant as possible while not using 'stuff' and being mindful of my environment.

We all have our own ethos and I find other people's ways fascinating but if I could sum up my ethos it probably would surround the issue of 'less faff'.

Exactly how I feel. Less fripperies!!

PipneyJane · 15 January 2018 at 3:45PM

dietdemon wrote: »

How did you manage this? Sounds like my dream?

This thread is great it is really getting me to think about what is important.

I currently work full time with 3 hour commute each day. I need to be able to free up time and lower my outgoing so I can work fewer hours.

Although I try be organised it is sometimes difficult because of lack of free time. I try to plan on my commute!

Have already picked up some great tips on here but grateful for more. Anyone in similar situation? I have also recently moved so DH and I also renovating house.

I am going to start by making sure I get rid off all clutter, starting with kitchen. I will get rid of all unnecessary gadgets!

Have a great Sunday all. I love this thread.:)

Hello. I'm normally just a lurker on this thread but as a fellow commuter, I have some ideas for surviving life with a long commute that you might appreciate. Do you commute by car or by public transport? I've done both. In fact, at one point, when I lived in South East London and worked in West London, I actually gave up travelling on public transport because it became too stressful. Seriously, it was far less stress sitting in my car for two hours each way, than getting to Charing Cross Station to find out that I'd either missed my train by two minutes or it had been cancelled (yet again), resulting in a 40 minute wait for the next one. At least in the car, I'd know I'd get home eventually.

My work day is been built around being out of the house for 11+hours a day (7am to 7pm) so here are my strategies:-

Utilise your commute

Commuting by train:

The one thing I miss about regularly commuting by train is the reading time. It was a bit of "me" time when I couldn't be disturbed. I used to have to carry two novels because I was bound to finish one of them. This was pre-Kindle. Nowadays, when I have to travel into London for work, I use the Kindle App on my phone.
I'm a knitter/crocheter, so if I manage to get a seat, I'll dig a small project out of my bag (usually a sock) and knit while listening to podcasts or audio books on my phone. Otherwise, I'll strap-hang and read as above or, if completely packed like sardines, listen to podcasts.
Studying. Again, only possible if you get a seat. I did my professional qualifications at night school and used to read through my notes on the way home after class, to help fix things in my mind. (Also, it meant that I could annotate my notes so that they'd make sense later on.)

Commuting by car:

Podcasts. My current job routinely involves a 63 mile commute each way. Getting home usually takes 1.5 hours. To keep me entertained on the journey, I listen to a huge range of podcasts (Kermode & Mayo, History Hit, Knit British, Serial, multiple different BBC money ones including Lunch Money Martin:money: ). They're all queued up on my phone and play in sequence. I use Google maps as my SatNav - which is live - so don't need to listen to live radio to hear about the traffic.
Audiobooks, ditto.
One thing I learned in a previous job is that leaving 5 or 10 minutes earlier can really make a big difference to how long it takes to get home. If I left the office before 5.15pm, I'd be home by 6pm. If I waited until 5.30pm, I might as well stay working until 6.15 because I'd get home at the same time (after 7pm). Can you negotiate some flexibility into your start/finishing times?

Life around your commute

The 10 minute rule. From a time management book, I learned to set a timer for 10 minutes and work at a set task for that time period. I use it for housekeeping. You may not get everything done today, but you can make a big dent in 10 minutes and it'll make tomorrow's session much easier.
Have you kitchen cooking-ready. Historically, I'm the woman who gets home after 7pm and then cooks a curry from scratch. If you want to go home and cook after work, then your kitchen must be in a cooking-ready state when you get there. I tidy mine in the mornings.
Food wise: Keep a list of quick-to-cook meals. also, having things pre-prepared can help (frozen veg). When I have time, I batch cook "base" which is the starter for almost all our meals. The recipe for base is simple: fry a large, chopped onion with 1-2 cloves crushed garlic, add a 100g-200g sliced mushrooms and fry until the mushroom water evaporates.
Get your work kit ready the night before. This extends to lunchboxes. It'll only take 2 minutes and the less you have to think about in the morning, the better.
Exercise. When you don't have much time, you have to up the intensity to get the same effect. There are High Intensity Interval Training workouts on YouTube that last for 15 minutes or less. I have an app on my phone for a 7 minute total body workout, which I follow most mornings. (There are free ones available in the AppStore.) I work out first thing in the morning, before my shower, when I'm still a zombie. Once it became routine, I missed it if I didn't.
Hygiene. Showers are quicker than baths. The 10 minute rule also applies to my shower. I have curly hair and wash it and condition it every day. The one thing I don't do is blow dry it. It dries naturally.
Laundry. Do a load every few days; don't have a "laundry day". I don't have to be home when the washing machine is running (or the dishwasher). I just set the timer so that it'll finish when I'm due to get home and then hang the load up (we have an airer that hangs from the ceiling in our kitchen). My husband taught me that if you put a freshly washed man's shirt onto a proper clothes hanger, it won't need ironing. (He was right.)
"Don't put it down; put it away" is a mantra I learned from one of the ladies on MSE. It works.

HTH

- Pip

elmer · 15 January 2018 at 7:59PM

AJ Scotland, rather further south than that, I moved from London to Aberdeen overnight on the sleeper in the 80s (with one bag, those were the days!!), Oh my the granite city, that was an eyeopener and an earstretcher fit like.

Ive gradually moved further south each decade since, and Im now almost in sniffing distance of England, I have the Tweed at the bottom of my garden, but as my children are Scottish, Im staying here for now

nannygladys · 16 January 2018 at 1:27AM

Hi everyone, Ive not been well today caught it off DGD3 last week when I sat her for the day, so my simple living involved eating lo dinner and already made soup out of the fridge, not going out so not spending anything. Been sleeping a lot today, hence not that tired at the moment but I will be going upstairs in a couple of minutes.
Nannyg

ani*fan · 16 January 2018 at 7:09AM

SimpleLiving wrote: »

Yes exactly! At the moment I am decluttering the kitchen. In a couple of weeks we are having a new kitchen installed:eek: It will be much simpler than the current one. Fewer wall cupboards and a much simpler layout. Obviously this is not a frugal option (lots of old wiring, pipes to be sorted etc) but the old units are falling to bits and the result is that I hate the kitchen and hate being in it! But once it is done I will have a much simpler kitchen and one that will not be a cause of stress!
I have a big pile of stuff for the charity shop.....
Simple living does not automatically mean frugal, a lot of the time it does though

I have also simplified my kitchen and that involved taking down all the wall units and reducing the amount of stuff I had. Our dinner table seats 6, so we kept 6 of everything, plates, cutlery, whatever. The space you have with no wall units is amazing, and it's not a small kitchen at all. I still have 2 cupboards though that have not been minimised. Thanks for the reminder, I'll get onto it this weekend.

Hope your new kitchen looks simple and fabulous!

moneyistooshorttomention · 16 January 2018 at 7:23AM

Admits that's a simplification too far for me - to only keep enough plates, etc, for my dining table size. That would mean me keeping 4 sets of everything - but I bet the next thing I know I'd be feeding a meal to 4 or more other people and that would mean 5+ of us sitting down to eat and only 4 plates to eat from.

Then there's plates to serve from - eg one for any loaf of bread I'd decided to put out on the table and so on....

One does have to be aware of how much of something might be needed - even if not very often. For instance - one of the reasons I wonder whether I can stay with my own parents if I need to is I know my mother is such a "chucker-outer" that there might not be enough bedding to go on the spare beds. Visions of being expected to manage with just one or two blankets/duvets - and being too cold....

With the area I live in now being a more remote one (ie poor public transport) - I've got visions of having to put a friend or two up for the night sometimes (as the buses basically don't go on Sundays or evenings and it's easily possible to get stuck not being able to catch a bus home). So I know I have enough spare bedding to cover one friend staying, probably two.

ani*fan · 16 January 2018 at 7:44AM

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

One does have to be aware of how much of something might be needed - even if not very often.

This is an excellent point about simplifying things and something that we all need to decide on for ourselves. How much stuff will I keep 'just in case'? My sister bought a 5 bedroom house with her partner, there's just the two of them, 'just in case' the family all come to visit at the same time. We never have done, she lives very far away, and she has been saddled with a massive mortgage that will never be paid off, 'just in case'. That looks like madness to me, plus we all work and can afford a hotel when we visit so what's the point? I think when we hoard things, we end up paying to store all our stuff over a lifetime.

Regarding kitchen stuff, I have found that side plates and bowls can double up to serve things like garlic bread or salad in, a loaf can be served on a chopping board, and none of my guests have cared that I do a quick wash up between courses. There's less washing up at the end! And if I was seating 8 or more for a more formal thing, I could easily borrow a couple of plates. No big deal. There is always a way, and I love my simplified cupboards and that everything gets used, nothing is kept for good.

Totally agree that being cold at night is a no-no. Maybe you could say to your mum that you need loads of blankets at night (make it sound like it's you!) and check that she has enough before you go? If not, take your own? I have a baby duvet my mum gave me years ago that folds up into a little bag for transporting. It's invaluable.

Anyway, thanks for getting me thinking at this time of the morning!

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A Simpler Life 2018

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