Hustle. Hustle. Hustle. Life can be so stressful when we are hustling here and there trying to get everything done in as little time as possible. Were we created to live in such a hurry, or is it okay to embrace slow living?
Maybe you don’t even know what slow living is. I have known about the concept of slow living for awhile now, but I have only recently started trying to incorporate this way of living into our lives.
As many of you have probably guessed by now, I am a very ambitious person. There is so much I want to do in life so slowing down does not always come naturally to me. This spring it became apparent that I needed to slow down before I got burnt out.
I had set some very ambitious goals for the last few months of the winter. I kind of wanted to see what I could accomplish if I really pushed myself. It backfired immensely.
It wasn’t a sustainable way to live, but that’s okay. Sometimes we just have to learn from our mistakes, jump back up, and find what will be sustainable. I don’t know everything about slow living, but here is what I have been learning and trying to apply in our lives.
What is Slow Living?
There is not one definition for slow living. Everyone approaches it a little bit differently, but for us it has come down to being intentional about where we spend our energy and money. It’s about being mindful of what we let into our lives. It’s slowing down to enjoy the little things in life.
There is so much that could characterize slow living. Here are 5 slow living mindsets that sum it up for us in this season.
Quality Items
Too much is easily accessible in our generation. You can get things that are cheaper yet not as good quality with the click of a button. They tend to break easier, not work as well, or just look cheap, too.
One principle of slow living is to embrace a lifestyle of investing in less, but quality items that will last a long time. Take time to look around and slowly make the decision of what you are going to buy.
Don’t be in a rush to spend your money and get it over with. Patiently, look for the perfect fit that will last awhile and in the end, you will probably save money, too.
Look for beauty as well as functionality when you can. It’s okay to spend a little extra on something that is a more beautiful product and that will give you joy to use. This makes tasks beautiful and more enjoyable.
The Little Things
Take time to stop and smell the roses in life. Actual roses, but also the simple beauty that life holds. A flower that pops up in your yard, a sunset, a smile, a butterfly, something that makes you smile, when your child picks you a dandelion.
Don’t let life get so busy that you forget what it feels like to have a gentle breeze on your face or the magical touch of grass under your barefeet. Admire the beauty of God’s creation and the little things that are easily overlooked and forgotten.
Slow down and make time for the little things.
Relationships over Tasks
It’s easy as homemakers to get caught up in the hustle of housekeeping. There is always more to be done. There is always something more that we could be doing. Especially when you have children, it is hard to find the balance of letting them interrupt you for the 16th time during the same task because they simply want you.
As one mom told me, household tasks will always be here for us to do, but our children won’t be. Prioritizing relationships over tasks is a fine balance. I understand that there are moments where children need to be taught that mom has to tend to food real quick before it burns or pull the laundry off the line before it rains.
However, if you are like me, it is so easy to want to just be able to get something organized or cleaned up without having to stop again. But which is more important: the task or the relationship? Sometimes it is the task, but more often, I think, it is the relationship.
Slowing down includes consciously choosing to invest in a relationship over accomplishing a task.
SAVE IT FOR LATER!
From Scratch
There is much to gain from the slow way of living from scratch as people naturally did only several generations ago. This means learning how to make things with raw ingredients including food from scratch and creating a home economy.
Food from Scratch
Food from scratch allows us to avoid harder to digest preservatives and additives that cause a lot of health problems. Following traditional methods of preparing and preserving foods like cooking with whole food ingredients instead of a frozen dinner or canning food yourself instead of buying pre-canned foods helps us slow down and enjoy a healthier life.
It can be harder or more time consuming to prepare food from scratch, but our bodies need movement. Why not embrace the movement of preparing healthier wholesome food that tastes way better and is so nourishing? With a little planning and experience however, cooking from scratch can be simple. It’s really up to you and what you choose to prepare.
Home Economy
Creating things that you would normally just buy is a good way to slow down in life. Instead of simply grabbing a product off the shelf and purchasing it, taking the time to learn how to create that same product in your home can help you save money and teach you a lot of helpful skills.
Some easy things to start creating are…
- Shampoo
- Soap
- Cleaning Sprays and Solutions
- Spice mixes
- Detergents
- Candles
- Condiments
If you would like to know more about building a home economy, check out the youtube channel called Home with Kelli!
Efficient
There seems to be a mindset that we should not strive to be efficient in homemaking. I agree with this as long as we separate homemaking from housekeeping. While trying to cultivate and create a home, efficiency is not helpful. You can’t speed up or shot cut the process of creating a beautiful home life.
There is a place to be efficient though when we are talking about housekeeping. I don’t mean efficiency as in trying to get things down as fast as possible. When I say efficient, I mean learning to do things well so that they naturally take less time because we have mastered them. When we have mastered tasks or processes (like resetting the kitchen after a meal or doing the laundry), it takes less brain power to do them and we hardly have to think about the task.
It does take time and a commitment to work on one or two processes at a time in order to become an efficient homemaker, but I am learning the value of slowing down and considering how I am doing things in order to do them well.
Becoming an efficient homemaker has become a very important part in my journey of slow living. I am still a young homemaker and I don’t have everything down, but I am excited to see the profit down the road of becoming virtuous in the day to day things.
If this idea of becoming virtuous is a bit foreign to you, you might enjoy reading my post on what is virtue.
Final Thoughts!
There is a lot that goes into embracing a slower way of life. It looks differently for everyone, too, because our journeys and our lives are all different.
I hope that you found it helpful to consider these 5 things and that they help you to slow down, stress less, and enjoy life more.
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