Growing your own fresh produce is such a healthy and satisfying way to simplify your life, and save thousands a year. I typically grow so much that I need to give much of it away – mostly as cuttings at the workshops I give, to help other people’s gardens become more abundant.

By simplifying my life and avoiding unnecessary daily purchases, I am easily saving over $23,000 a year in just a few areas of my life.

What this means is that:

1. I don’t need to earn that amount (and can spend that time with my family, volunteering in my community, developing new skills, writing, riding, being in nature…) or
2. I have more freedom to spend the money on more interesting things, or things that will last…. or
3. Perhaps go on a journey and worldschool our kids.

I’ve found that reducing our daily cost of living can be a simple, yet powerful series of actions that can help us live a more sustainable, low-impact and relaxed way of life.

I feel happier like this – more connected to myself, my community, the place I live, the planet and global society. I feel better too knowing that I have not contributed so much waste and pollution, or impacted so much on other communities. This is important to me.

Slowing down and exploring our own backyard – finding dragonflies, turtles, waterbirds, waterlily and other interesting plants, insects and animals.

So how do I simply save over $23,000 a year:

Go Shopping With a List – save $5000

I find it’s too easy to fill shopping baskets with spontaneous buys especially when I don’t take my list or I shop when I’m hungry. I’ve noticed my register bill almost doubles. I also avoid shopping at big stores that encourage over-purchasing. Even shopping at small ethical stores, I have found this saves me around $5000 a year.

Eat a Simple Dinner at Home – save $5000

I love to cook and kindly my kids say my meals are really good  – they even go so far to say they prefer my food to meals out (phew!). We eat simple, tasty and healthy meals together at home and enjoy the laid-back vibe. Eating out with a 3yo can be ‘not-so-relaxing’.  Some days (for no particular reason) we set the table really nicely, put on some music and make it a special meal. Taking a family out for dinner weekly can be costly. I think we easily save over $5000 a year by eating at home, and taking food with us.

Maia loves creating colourful little table decorations from garden flowers, old jars, socks and fabrics scraps. Delightful!

Pack Lunch and Snacks when we go out – save $3000

Go on picnics and local outings – save $3000

A favourite local outing is a picnic at the river. It is even something we do on special occasions. We pack up our little basket with little goodies and a thermos, sometimes even a bag of potatoes to through in a riverside campfire – yumm!  By reducing the number of expensive outings and choosing to entertain ourselves in our local environment I estimate saves us over $3000 a year.

We all love heading to the river, exploring, having a picnic and cooking potatoes in the fire.

Make a Coffee Thermos at home – save $4000

We love coffee and I think we still spend way too much on coffee when we’re out.  By taking our coffee thermos from home I estimate we could save around $4000 a year  – wow, oh dear, that’s huge.  Perhaps I should just drink my herb infused waters instead – which I already carry everywhere!

Grow fresh greens – $3000

By cultivating some super-easy home-grown food –  fresh salads leaves, bunches of greens, a range of culinary herbs, bundles of cherry tomatoes and delicious snow peas, not only is your food far fresher and more nutrient dense, I’ve worked out that we easily save over $3000 a year. If we took into account all the food we grow and the eggs, it would be much more.

I grow at least 20 different types of greens for teas, salads, stir-fries, soups, curries and other meals. This is super spicy red mustard spinach and one of the open-hearted oak-leaf lettuces behind.

The self-seeding tomatoes are so delicious and abundant. I don’t have to do anything and there are many many kilograms every year.

Other ways to save money by living simply

• Assess needs against wants – check in with yourself. I find I can often easily put things back on the shop shelf if I stop to think about it. Stepping out of the consumer lifestyle can be very liberating. It helps to avoid big shopping centres too. It’s hard to come out having bought just what you needed, and quite often items are not as good as expected.
• Choose good quality items that last – It’s better to spend money on something that will last a long time and is fixable, rather than on cheap disposable versions.
• Choose good quality second hand things – there is so much scope here! Furniture, cars, bikes, computers, musical instruments, clothes…
• Declutter – finding a clarity of mind in clear spaces, spaces not filled with ‘stuff’ we own.

Voluntary simplicity

Choosing to live more simply, moving away from the work-spend cycle and finding a broader definition of richness and wealth, is often known as downshifting or voluntary simplicity. This way of thinking and living embraces the notions such as:

• bigger is not always better,
• focus on quality rather than quantity,
• see that accumulating more stuff does not make us happier, and
• a simpler life creates far less impact on the environment and society.

Did you know that every year, the average Australian family produces enough rubbish to fill a three-bedroom house, producing about 2.25 kg of waste each per day. Cool Australia 

I also strongly believe that we do need to “Live simply so that others may simply live“ as Gandhi said.

By embracing voluntary simplicity ideals, it is embracing an ethical life, that values other people, other communities, other species, other ecological communities… This is certainly connected to the third ethic of permaculture.

The three ethics at the core of permaculture are:

1. earth care
2. people care
3. fair share

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We spent today playing in the rain at Lake Cootharaba – rock hopping, tree climbing, splashing about, paddling, snorkling, cloud watching and exploring.

I agree with the experts, but I don’t really need to see the research to confirm this. I see it everyday as a mother of three active young children. When my children play outside, and particularly in nature, they are happiest. I notice how they are so much calmer and relaxed in themselves, and they are engaged, focussed and positively creative. 

Outside, particularly where there is physical challenge and mental stimulation, they cooperate with one another, help each other and fight far less than when they are confined indoors and ‘bored’.  They solve problems, build useful things, and ask intensely interesting questions which I love to explore with with them.

I actually saw my children beginning to switch off by spending too much time indoors. Before they went to school they were full of questions about life and living. But after a few years into school and with their busy schedule of organised classes (even with a lot of outdoor time and living in an ecovillage) these questions nearly stopped. 

 I thought I was doing the right thing as a parent, but I began to sense an underlying sadness and a level of discontent and uneasiness in my 2 school-age children.  It deeply troubled me. So when they each independently asked to be homeschooled I agreed. 

Since then we have been spending so much more time outdoors just playing. Most of their learning is directly connected to their interests, explorations, projects and adventures. When we need to do ‘lessons’ our classroom is the verandah where we can look across water to a national park and are surrounded by permaculture gardens and wildlife. They fly through their tasks so they can get back to playing. Overall their learning seems more connected, holistic, contextual and meaningful.  

Going outside is the most inexpensive thing you can do for your children’s mental and physical health

Studies show that children who play on rocky, uneven, tree-filled areas have better balance and agility.

Stepping back as much as possible to let children explore is so important. Being able to take risks and problem-solve helps build self-esteem.

“The healthiest, non-sedentary activities are those in unstructured, natural spaces – the ones without carefully painted lines and adults with whistles.” 

Richard Louv,  Author of ‘Last Child in the Woods’

“Across the industrialised world, children’s freedom to play and get around their neighbourhoods are in long-term decline. Children are in effect reared in captivity, thanks to traffic growth, academic pressures, the lure of screens and ever-growing adult anxieties. It should be no surprise that childhood obesity and adolescent mental health problems are major public health issues.”

Tim Gill, Author of ‘No Fear; Growing Up in a Risk Adverse Society’

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When I first came across these quotes from Gandhi as a teenager, they had a huge impact on me.

I have always considered the first saying to include other species, and the earth itself – that in order for other people and other species to live well and for life on earth to flourish, we all need to live more simply – to embrace voluntary simplicity.  The second quote compelled me to take responsibility for what changes I wanted to see – to live it, not just talk about.

Mahatma Gandhi – ‘my life is my message’

Permaculture appeals to me because it is practical, about living simply and about designing with nature – aiming to create low-impact resilient communities that are in harmony with the natural world. However, in order to live with nature and design with nature, we need to understand how nature sustains life.

To explore how nature actually does sustain life, over the years I have explored Fritjof Capra’s systems view of life. He has recently co-authored a text book on the subject and is now offering a 12 week online program which I have enrolled in to develop a deeper understanding of how life works. I am enthralled.

Fritjof Carpa –  scientist, educator, activist, and author. The focus of his education and activism is to to help build and nurture sustainable communities.  His thinking has been extremely influential on mine over the years –  I studied with him in 1992 and 2000 at Schumacher College in England.

Last night I listened to Fritjof Capra explain the systems view of evolution in part 4 of his course.  It changed my understanding of how life evolved – from what I had learned at school, from what is still taught in most schools of biology.

The first big change he highlighted, brought about by recent discoveries in microbiology, is that evolution is not just about random mutations followed by natural selection, as Darwin explained. There is a third way of evolution, one which Lyn Margulis  (1938 – 2011) describes as co-evolution or symbiosis of bacteria – things don’t evolve in isolation, but together. 

Lynn Margulis has changed the way we think about evolution – that it is a creative process of co-evolution.

Margulis explains that in the world of bacteria, genes are exchanged so rapidly that it is actually difficult to identify the different species of bacteria. She suggests that bacteria actually forms one microscopic web of life across the whole planet – a global communications network that has been around for billions of years (well before the internet!). 

This process of co-evolution and has created all life’s basic systems – fermentation, photosynthesis, nitrogen fixation, respiration…  Margulis says creativity is the new focus of evolutional theory.

Another key point Fritjof made was that human evolution is not just a physical, biological process, but that humans coevolved in social relationships and with technology. People’s ability to cultivate good community and the use of tools determined their ability to survive – it is not just survival of the biologically fittest.

Also ancient cave and rock paintings from 30-40,000 years ago show amazing sophistication. This shows that art was part of human evolution from the beginning. From this, Fritjof explains that the emergence of modern human species is the emergence of the storyteller and artist – and that we cannot understand the evolution of humans without understanding art, language and culture. A purely scientific  explanation is insufficient – we need a whole systems view of life.

By Thoams T. (https://flic.kr/p/9x7tZY) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Finally, Fritjof reminded us that we humans are the newcomers to the web of life and so we must respect life, and the rules and traditions of earth’s household – oikos…. Live simply and lightly on the earth, live in harmony with nature.

To illustrate just how recently we have arrived, in Fritjof’s lecture he referred to David Brower’s* story of the history of life on the planet:

Our planet was formed as a fireball of molten lava around 4.5 billion years ago. The first cell formation, the beginning of life, took place 3.5 billion years ago.   

Imagine however, the Earth is just 6 days old: 

The beginning: Sunday midnight – Earth is created in the big bang. 

Day 2: Tuesday 8:00am – Life created (first bacterial cells) 

Day 4: Thursday midnight – the microcosm becomes fully established and now regulates the planetary system 

Day 5: Friday 4:00pm –  micro-organisms invent sexual reproduction 

Day 6:  Saturday – all life forms emerge

• 1:30am – first marine animals

• 9:30am – first plants on land

• 11:30 am – insects and amphibians

• 4:50 pm – great reptiles (die out by 9:45 pm)

• 5:30 pm – mammals arrived

• 7:15pm – birds evolved

• 10:00pm – tree mammals evolve into first primates

• 11:00pm – monkeys

• 11:40m – great apes

• 11:52pm – first Southern apes stand up and walk on 2 legs (disappear at 11:57)

• 11:56 pm – first human species evolves (Homo habilis)

• 11:56:30 pm –  Homo erectus

• 11:59:30 pm – Homo sapiens

• 11 seconds before midnight – the modern human species finally appears (and in Europe only 5 seconds before midnight)

• Two thirds of a second before midnight – written human history begins.

* David Brower founded Friends of the Earth, Earth Island Institute, was CEO of the Sierra Club from 1952 – 1969. He was instrumental in the passing of the Wilderness Act in 1964. He saved the Redwoods in California, stopped a dam in the Grand Canyon and was instrumental in 11 National Parks being created. Brower died in 2000, but the Brower Centre continues and houses some of California’s leading environmental organisations including the Centre for Ecoliteracy.

“We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, 

we borrow it from our children.”

David Brower

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In my delving today I found a handspun, hand knitted jumper from the himalayan region of Ladakh – a momento of the months I spent there volunteering 20 years ago. I kept this jumper becuase it reminded me of the amazing time I had there, because I met the woman who made it, and because purchasing this was a contribtion to the rebuilding of the local economy and handicrafts industry. The jumper is now full of holes and unwearable and I haven’t worn the jumper since I moved to Queensland 20 years ago because it is too thick and hot!  I want to keep it, but for what? Perhaps it’s time to let go. I could return it to the soil and use it as mulch under a fruit tree, or I could darn it and donate it to someone in a cooler climate.

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