When I was a child I loved to lay my head on my grandmother's chest. I would put my ear on her chest and listen to her talk. I could hear what her voice sounded like from the inside.
I didn't want to move as she talked, it was a different sound hearing her voice from inside her chest. It often would lull me to sleep.
It was comforting...
Life was so very different during the time I was growing up. I started out in a time that was more simple then it seems everything took off in a rush.
World war two was over and we were moving into a time of new innovations. We went through the age of poodle skirts, then bell bottoms, leisure suits, long hair then short pin curled hair, then long big puffy hair, then straightened hair, then back to short hair and so on. The styles were wild. We eased into the age of box computers, pagers and brick phones.
Time kept going into bigger and better the super sized everything. It was common to have more bills now, charge accounts, the credit cards and debt. Many people lived like this and wanted more. Then came the electronic age and we are where we are now with computers, smart phones, tablets of all kinds, wrist band electronics and chargers and cords all over the place.
Several years ago my husband and I pulled the bus cord and said we want off this bus!
All this while my Grandmother never changed. She lived as she always had. She kept a simple and pretty hairstyle, cooked the same foods, she worked in her garden and would crochet when she had time. She most always wore a smock with pockets over her clothes.
She passed on about the time brick phones were coming about but she would have not gone that route anyway.
My grandmother was the most sensible woman I ever knew. Why could I not see that how she was living was what made more sense until much later in my life? She was proof that we did not have to live like this.
We steered away from an old fashioned life long enough to accumulate debt. I feel we were and still are constantly being targeted to get rid of the old and purchase the new. My Grandmother did not buy into this and I wish we had not.
We finally came to our senses and realized that we did not want anymore part of a modern life as we have today. Even though most people we knew lived much larger than we did we decided we wanted nothing to do with living large and fast.
We wanted to go backwards so we could move forward.
We cannot truly live as we once did because we do live in this modern time and things are different but we have worked out a good balance living more old fashioned but using some of the helpful things of today.
We started removing clutter and now we live with more purpose and take things slower which I feel still can be done at any age if we focus on not getting too much of what is in today's time.
If we live basic and not divert our attention to what everyone else is doing and figure out for ourselves what basic is to us we can work from that.
I have a blend of the past and today. We do not have family around as much today as we did in the past. If I am having a especially painful day I get Aunt Mabel to help me with the dishes. I rarely do this but she is there if I need her.
Then there is Matilda she is there to help me dry the clothes if the weather is not fitting to go out to the clothes line.
I make use of the good parts of today and blend with the past.
Another way to make things more simple and more like the past is don't cook too many different types of foods. Stay with basic foods and basic meals because we get good at it by doing these things over and over. We do not tire from good basic food.
Start paying off debt by paying off the smallest bill first then take that payment and apply it to the next smallest bill and so on until you have more money going to the bigger bills. Buy at thrift stores when you can to save money. This is what it took for us to finally get out of debt.
Don't take on too many things to do. Children's activities should be scheduled with much consideration. It can be costly for one because unlike the past today most activities for children are organized activities. Parents are running around back and forth taking children to activities and organized activities can become very costly. It can take up so much time that parents have no time for important things such as running a household. This is very important to consider.
Some of the most accomplished people are the ones that stuck with that one thing and worked and practiced that one thing and became very good at what they do.
The only time we see 11:24 on this clock is during the day.
Go to bed early. Children need more sleep than they are getting today and so do adults. When our children were very young bedtime was 7:00 PM as they got older we increased that time by 30 minutes. When we reached teen age it was 9:00 then10:00 was always the top limit while they still lived at home. We made it though the teen years without major complications.
My tip for putting children to bed early. We all put our pajamas on at the same time. Television off and as far as they know we are all going to bed. This way there is nothing to make them think they are going to miss out on something.
Children should help with chores starting at a very early age. It is our responsibility to teach our children and chores help them learn fine motor and gross motor skills, it teaches them responsibility and we are all a family unit and the unit works together.
I did listen to my Grandmother and I also saw the way she lived which she never took more than she needed, she obeyed God and never veered from her faith. She does not have to be standing next to me anymore to listen to her words because they are embedded in my memory.
If you start moving back to a more simple life you will possibly reach an epiphany moment and realize that all the nonsense out there is just that "non sense". The dictionary says Epiphany , such a moment of revelation and insight. And that it is.
Grandma Donna
