How convenient is convenience, really?

"Convenience items are designed to be lifestyle addictive. They're designed, not to make your life easier, but to make you consume them over and over again. They give you the illusion of ease while sapping you of yet another lifeskill. Think microwave food - you don't have to cook! Some rob you of honest human interaction. Think bank ATM - no need to ever meet the person you are entrusting all your money to! Others remove the need to perform even a little bit of exercise. Think Swiffer - you never have to bend over to deal with a dust pan, just throw that nasty cloth right in the trash when you're done! The more convenience items we rely on the more consumption we become addicted to and we're getting more and more tired every day trying to keep up with it all."

You can read the rest of this inspirational post here, at Rabbit Hill Farm. I highly recommend paying this blog a visit and reading the rest of the post. The solution? Slow down! Pick one thing, just one thing, that you can do simply, the old fashioned way, the not-out-of-a-tin way. Then do it! And love doing it. When you're ready, choose something else.

Here's a random thought: ever since switching to all wooden pegs, I find I love hanging out the laundry! Some of my pegs are dolly pegs, which make me think of my grandmother. All the other pegs are hand oiled wood which are easy to mend if the spring comes off, and which seem to me to be able to.....breathe.

The storm over the tv

There wasn't actually that much of a storm, just a few grumblings and thundery type rumblings and the threat of rain. Mr11 wrote a note back to the antenna asking it to please come back home, and that he promised not to watch too much tv, but to no avail!

What a feeling of freedom. I love it. No more having to be ready or we'll miss the beginning of a show, no more having to change the channel quickly but not quickly enough because the ads are indecent even with the volume down, no more hedonistic consumer fest paraded before our eyes constantly. What bliss to see the box in its box (wooden furniture piece with doors that close), and two young boys sitting in the lounge room reading books instead of vegging out in front of the box. Mr 10 is reading the Alex Rider series, and Mr 11-nearly-12 is a third of the way through The Return of The King.

Our TV antenna has gone on holiday!

The storm has not yet broken, but it will! Our tv antenna has gone on holiday: it even left a farewell note in an appropriate digital style script. We can still watch DVDs and videos, but the tv part of tv with all its awful ads and consumer worship of stuff, is finally deactivated. Yay!!

Arr and Ess are fine with this idea, and I think that Lor won't mind too much, but Jae and Sea are not going to like it one bit. How, precisely, can a nearly 12 year old and a 10 year old be expected to grow up whole, sane, and above all accepted by their peers, without tv?! Saturday mornings will never be the same, and I'm looking forward to that. We shall weather the storm and be better people for it. Stay tuned to hear how it goes, and wish me well!

The only thing that may bring the antenna and cabling back from holiday may just be..... Doctor Who. Can I live without seeing Doctor Who on tv? I've watched the show almost ever since we got a B&W box when I was 8 (I had to help pay for it to convince my parents we should have one), and loved it, talked about it, bit my nails in front of it, laughed at it, enjoyed it, ever since.
Ah well, I tell myself, there's always youtube.

I've banned ads when my children were watching tv for some time now; if I heard an ad from another room the kids knew I'd be in there asap to turn off the box. So they've become fast at either changing channels so quickly that the sound doesn't register for a bit, or at muting the ads before I get to the room. When the ads for things or other shows were on, it really felt like manipulation and often like filth; definitely like something I did not want in my house.

Such a lot of RUBBISH has come through that box into our home even with all my efforts to reduce that, and it's such a lot of bother to try and police it, I feel really at peace about the idea of not having it at all. My sister did this some time back when hers broke, but now that she has a new screen she also has no desire to bring commercialism back into her home. Honestly folks, we are SO much better off without it.

A simple and frugal Christmas

A friend of mine commented to me recently that her young children have such high expectations as Christmas approaches, they take it as a sign that Santa doesn't like them or that they have bad parents, if the gifts received on the 25th do not meet the exacting standards of their juvenile approval. My friend can hardly wait for the Christmas season to be over, and I can relate to what she is saying.
I felt like that year after year, dreading the Christmas season and looking forward instead to that magical break between the 26th and the New Year: a time when I do not have to work, and when the days drift by and blend together in blissful harmony. Usually.


I think that this year something in my and my husband's minds snapped when we realised this sacred celebration was being looked at to a smaller or greater degree as a mail-order catalog for consuming THINGS.
You know, THINGS: plastic, cosmetic, metal, and electronic bits all stuck together in various combinatins and formations with amazing promises of fun, beauty, prestige, and exhorbitant price tags to boot.

And so R and I, as monarchs of our little realm, set out to make things CHANGE.


Basically our family is trying to consume less in all areas, not just at this time of year. To walk more gently upon the earth. So the children can see there is a reason for what we're doing...I hope. At least they'll be able to see that we're trying to be consistent.
We're putting effort into reducing our consumption of electricity and water (not as much effort as we could, but baby steps are ok too), I've switched to cloth for things (like hankies) we used to buy as disposables, and we recycle and repurpose as many things we can. This is our hanky box, which has replaced the tissue box much to the disgust of some family members. That's ok I tell them, they'll get over it. If they really want disposable tissues I won't stop them buying some with their own money. I'm very kind like that, hee hee!


In fact I am so efficient (tongue in cheek here) that the junk mail catalogs tend to end up in the bin without ever coming into the house, as many times as I can get away with it!

We explained to the younger children that even Santa Claus / Father Christmas has to work with what the parents say and what they can afford. Yes, even the big man in red himself has rules to work under; that's why kids in poor countries and those whose parents don't have enough to make ends meet might not receive more than a hug this festive season - some kids won't even get that.


So what will happen next week? There will be a shop gift under the tree for each child. Something inexpensive, something they will hopefully get good use from in the year ahead. There will also be something hand made for each of them.

But most importantly, and this is what I'm looking forward to above all else, we will spend time together as a family and share in the joy of remembering the precious gift God gave us two millennia ago: even the Lord Jesus Christ.