My wife and I lead a pretty simple life. I work from home at a low-stress job. She is a stay-at-home mom. We have a small house, a garden, and some chickens. But we have a 3-month-old and a two-year-old. Nothing about our life feels slow or simple. On top of watching the kids there’s always tons cleaning to do and house repairs and upkeep. How do you balance things that aren’t optional like vehicle/house maintenance, upkeep, and raising kids? Is simple living just a luxury of those who don’t have kids?
Or are we already living simply and it just doesn’t FEEL simple?
With some difficulty :)
There is quite a bit of overlap between all of these simple living/financial independence communities and the child free (or even regretful parents) lifestyle, simply because they’re damn near mutually exclusive. If you try to imagine the “opposite of simple”, it probably looks something like managing a huge ranch and having five kids, depending on your exact approach. I’m not saying that you should go drop your kids off at the adoption centre, but just that you need to be realistic about what you can do when you have two kids, especially young kids.
With that said, I think the best angle you can take is the adoption of habits that you also want to pass on to your kids. It depends what your take on “simple” is, but you could try the following:
Scenario 1: It’s almost dinner time. Your kid has just raided the oreos in the cupboard. Ugh fuck, we don’t have any food in the house. The kids start begging for fast food, because they’re five years old and already hooked. SO you load up the volvo, drive to the House of Ronald McDonald, and your kids eat cheeseburgers and play with whatever toy they got on the way home. You’ve just spent $50 on dinner instead of like $10, and you still have no food in the house. Not one person has eaten a single vegetable all day.
Scenario 2: It’s almost dinner time. Your kid is HUNGRY, as you’ve been told about 20 times now. They’re climbing into the cupboard and “helping” you by stacking cans of black beans, their current favorite food, on the floor. Alright, you can probably whip up some shakshuka in 15 minutes. You prop them up on the counter and open the cans, and they get to dump them into the big bowl. At the kitchen table, your wife is sitting with kid #2, talking to them about the different colors of the vegetables. The shakshuka sizzles in the pan, your kids set the table (well, sorta), and you sit down and eat. Kid #2 will eat anything, kid #1 just picks out the black beans. You’ve spent $10, built a relationship with your kids, and they build an emotional connection to those foods and experiences from an early age.
Try to strip down routines like laundry, as well as your physical space. Periodically go through and declutter, or at least keep clutter in one “zone”. If there’s a toy your kid hasn’t played with that’s just been pushed around the living room for a year, snap a picture and post it on facebook for someone to pick up. Kids clothes don’t need to be separated if you don’t have time. The dishwasher doesn’t need to be full before you run it. Not everything needs to be purchased on sale, sometimes you just have to pay the extra 25 cents for pasta. If you wear makeup, see if you’re ok with just some concealer and mascara.
Think long term to get rid of decision fatigue. Don’t repeatedly do something that you could do once and forget. You know toilet paper? Yeah, you’re going to be needing that for a while, so go buy as many rolls of toilet paper as you can stuff under the stairs and just cross that off your list for the next year. If you eat canned beans, don’t buy one single can. Go buy a few cases. Get that non-perishable almond milk instead of the perishable stuff. If you’re making a meal, put in more ingredients and freeze the extra portions so that you can stop making lunches altogether. Kids need socks? Buy one size bigger as well so that next time kid needs new socks, you don’t have to go to the store. At the gas station? For the love of god, FILL UP YO DAMN TANK. There is no rule saying that you must go to the grocery store every week, or that you must not buy more than one bottle of shampoo at a time. It’s a free country.
Try to retain one hobby, or connection to your own identity. If you like coffee, then sign up for a coffee subscription. If you like gardening, then maintain a small garden. Just anything that acts as a release valve and connects you to your sense of self.