Note: I am not the author of this text. This post was originally submitted to /r/simpleliving on Reddit by /u/penartist, who has given me permission to repost it here.
Someone asked me the other day what simple living meant to me. The title was my response. Simple living is “crafting a life I don’t need a vacation from, that allows me to live in alignment with my values.”
I find a lot of people have this notion that you need to minimize how much you work in order to live a simple life. My personal experience has been that crafting a life you don’t need a vacation from can happen even when you work 40 hours a week. It is a mater of prioritizing how you spend your time outside of work.
Exercising and getting enough sleep are important as these two things can set your mood for everything else. Not overscheduling yourself and leaving lots of room for downtime. It is ok to have nothing to do. I also found that removing things that were time sinks was most helpful. It’s easy to spend a few hours in front of a tv screen, scrolling the internet, watching YouTube videos etc., and feel like you didn’t do anything.
My husband and I have always found a way to live a simple life right where we are. We were careful to not over extend our obligations outside of work so that we have lots of down time and don’t feel like we need a vacation or too escape our day to day lives. We “right sized” our home to a small apartment to remove the need for yard work, home maintenance and upkeep. This freed up a huge amount of our time and our energy for things that we want to do. We removed tv from our home as well as it was a time sink and limit screen time.
We go to the farmers market on Saturday mornings and purchase produce for the week. We shop small and local and we cook from scratch. We spent time biking the rail trail and hiking in the state park or the forest near our apartment on the weekends when the weather is good. We read or play cards in the evenings, and we enjoy attending art openings and exhibitions, and live theater performances done by our local theater company on occasion. We listen to LPs and podcasts while creating art and I also enjoy knitting.
I tend to be one of those people who wants to say yes to everything. That’s partially because I’m a people pleaser and don’t want to disappoint. But I’m trying to be better about protecting my time. If something doesn’t get a “hell yeah” gut reaction from me, it’s probably best that I decline. “Present me” tends to overestimate how excited “future me” will be about some commitment.
Having said that though, it should be a healthy balance I think. Some of the better experiences I’ve had have been ones where I was initially reluctant about them but ended up being glad I did them.
So… Balance. Protect your time. But it’s also okay to occasionally step out of the comfort zone.
I have definitely struggled with this over the years as well. I used to agree to every single volunteer event I was approached about, and at its peak that meant two events a week. I got very socially exhausted from it, and had to learn how to set healthy boundaries.