Changing The Way You Think About Simple Living

Simple Living  is a popular concept these days, if a sometimes confusing one. We may wish to strive for a simple life but think it conflicts with a frugal life.Then we find ourselves thinking that we cannot have both a simple and a frugal life.
There came a time when Simple living transcended to a different level for me. It was not about saving time, It became a way of looking at life, a way of thinking. It became about having less to think about, less to worry about, and less to do. Leaving more space in my mind and my life, for things in life that really mattered to me.
I read somewhere that we as a culture have become more and more busy and stressed, with every timesaving gadget we invent, then purchase and add to our lives. We look at them as a way to save time but only so we can cram more into our already too busy day;more convenience, in order to do more in the course of our day, is simply not the goal of simple living.
Simple living was not so much about making more time, so we can do more, but in learning to slow down, and accept our limitations as human beings. It has everything to do with the amount of sensory input going into our minds in the course of a given day. How much time we spend worrying about bills, dishes, dinner, cleaning the house, dusting the 5000 knick knacks and then finding 30 minutes at the end of the day to work on that project that we really do not want to do, but feel like we must because we paid good money for it, and will feel guilty if we do not do it.
Our brains can only take in so much and if we replace doing dishes by hand, for the dishwasher, so that we can have more time to do 2 other things, that we really did not want to have to do anyway, then we have really defeated the purpose of simple living. Which is to reduce the amount going into our brains, so now instead of one task we now have 3 to worry about and process.
How does it tie into frugality? Well really true simple living IS Frugal,because when you think frugal, you also need to think about your time and energy reserves, you only have so much, and the more you try to live a simple life the more defined those resources become. You realize you have only so much time in a day, so much physical and mental energy, and much like you want to spend your dollar wisely you need to spend your time and reserves wisely as well. So you have these clothes you think you could use for something else,that is the frugal thing to do right?…. but how much of your mental energy will you spend thinking about it, worrying about making time to do it, how you will do it,etc. How much of your physical time will you spend on it? is it worth hanging on to?? A lot of times I find that my time is much more valuable spent elsewhere on other projects, and find that the most frugal move is to declutter that particular object, to leave some open space in my brain and in my life,for projects that are worth  my time. I am not suggesting that you go thru your home and throw away everything, you are not currently using, I am instead suggesting that you weigh the value of your time, and how you choose to spend it,rather than living in guilt because you did not squeeze the last frugal drop out of your resources.
Realize that the more that you declutter not only your house, the more you declutter your life, and your brain, and the more productive you become. Because you have more energy to focus on that which is important to you. Now that really is frugal!!!
So stop feeling guilty, and start living, Frugal living and Simple Living are all about having the power to choose, and being in control of your life.

This Article is by Patty Getz
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