The art of simple living – why a simple life is a happy life

The art of simple living has become a thing of the past that I and so many other people get nostalgic about as consumerism is shoved into our faces. The older I get, the more I realise that a simple life is a happy life.

Wherever we look, wherever we move; brands, logos and the push to be more, buy more, achieve more surround us. But are more things really going to make anything better? Does it bring us any closer to the ultimate happiness? Isn’t the constant fear of missing out causing us to burn out and to never be satisfied with what we have?

How the art of simple living became a thing

My mid- to late twenties were very much about the chase for money and keeping up appearances. I was working in the city at that time, surrounded by colleagues and clients who lived for having the newest, most expensive things out there. My fear of not being able to compete caused me to work harder, to be dedicated to my job and to find more ways of doing and being my best. Only to then focus on spending my hard earned money on some fashionable item I could temporarily impress with.

It was a great time to progress my career and besides wasting a lot of it, the money my husband and I earned eventually allowed us to purchase a home for our growing family. But here’s the thing – now that we had a home, there were even more distractions, even more pressure to compete. Our home was already 40 years old when we bought it. It hadn’t been updated in a very long time and needed a lot of work to make it look magazine-worthy. How would we make open plan living, marble surfaces and state of the art everything happen before the first visitors came over? How did all the happy people on the covers manage? As ridiculous as it sounds, this was a serious concern of mine that I lost a lot of sleep over.

While I was browsing Pinterest for new inspiration on the daily and bought one design book after the other, the world changed right in front of my eyes. Covid started, our second child was born and we discovered a ton of damage to our home which insurance would not cover. Before we had even started to make any changes to our home, life suddenly became very draining – both mentally and financially. I will spare you the depressing details of it all, but having to prioritise spending our money on essential repairs while being stuck in the house opened my eyes to the art of simple living.

With extravagant purchases out of question, it was time to get creative. Given we couldn’t go out anymore, restaurant visits were the first thing to go. I started to cook more, experiment more and expand on my culinary skills. But what else could I do? Was the art of simple living something to consider? Older generations keep saying that a simple life is a happy life. Could they be right? I wanted to give it a try.

Thankfully, time was on my side. We were still locked up and I really didn’t get into glass cutting or puzzling. This is how it started. I started to pay more attention to using what I already had instead of buying more things I no longer had money for. I started to shop at farmers markets wherever possible to get fresh, seasonal produce to cook with. As we made changes to our lives, a few key benefits became apparent to us:

Less debt means less stress

The main goal for my husband and me is to live debt free. Ever since we got together we skipped credit cards, leased cars and anything that came with unnecessarily high interest rates. While most people, us included, don’t have the luxury to purchase a home outright, we focus on paying as much as possible towards our mortgage every month.

We still treat ourselves to something special once in a while, but it’s no longer a regular thing for us to simply buy whatever we want and can afford. We take our time deciding on purchases, sleep on the idea of owning it and re-assess a few days after. It brings us much greater joy seeing this huge red number on the bank statement decrease every single month than any additional item would.

Reducing our debt has made a big impact on our health also. Seeing beauty in the simple things, the things that matter to us has given us piece of mind. Even more reasons to keep going. And you know what, there truly hasn’t been anything we feel we missed out on since taking this approach.

Freed up time for things that matter

With less time spent chasing appearances, more time was available for what really matters. Ever since making the change to a simpler way of living, we have spent so much more quality time with our children. We visit playgrounds, take them to their weekly activities and on adventures. As sad as it sounds, they’re all things we simply wouldn’t have thought much about in our busy pre-pandemic lives.

As our kids grew more independent we were also able to introduce time for ourselves again. We started to exercise regularly again and took up new hobbies. I started a book club with a few of my friends.

We now make an effort to spend our time doing things we love, and stripping out the things we don’t. These simple daily practices of prioritizing what’s important to us, not to others, have made such a huge difference. Not only did our happiness improve, but also that of our littlest loves, who are just so excited to spend more quality time with us. It’s those meaningful moments that make life worth living.

Simple eating is healthy eating

Simplifying your eating habits came with a lot of “accidental” benefits. When I started to cook more from scratch, the first meals I introduced were soups and salads. Not only are they super quick to make but also packed with energy boosting nutrients. There’s so much value in simplicity. Our digestion improved, as did our sleep and mood.

Have you ever come back from a trip or another extended period of eating takeaway foods? Do you remember how good the first bite of your first homecooked meal tasted? How much your body craved the nutrients and simple flavours?

Fresh food, cooked from scratch lets us nourish our bodies. Skipping the processed food aisles and focussing on fresh ingredients cut out the additives and preservatives. Changing your meals and ingredients with the season excites me. What was common lifetime practice for our ancestors has become this well-kept secret in our modern world. Suddenly, my grandma’s daily recipes have become these pearls of wisdom. The key to a happy life.

It really doesn’t take much to make a delicious, nutritious meal from scratch. Start with a salad, then a soup and work your way up from there. And while the media is full of claims of healthy eating being too expensive, I beg to differ by completing a whole week’s grocery shop of fresh produce for about half of my packaged-foods bill.

Fewer things equal less clutter

Clutter is my enemy. Too much stuff gives me anxiety and the older I get, the worse the effects this has on me. During my teenage years I used to thrive on “stuff”. I would shop for bargains and fill my wardrobe with bags, shoes and tops I couldn’t possible get use out of if I tried.

Thankfully, my mindset changed over the years and these defining period during the first Covid lockdown drove the point home for me. My house is still not perfect and opening my kids’ drawers gives me nightmares sometimes. But we’re slowly working on decluttering room by room and finding a home for all we have.

If you are still at the beginning of your simplified living journey, please don’t be too hard on yourself. What worked for me was to incorporate decluttering into my daily practices. I promised myself to take 10 items a day and assess them.

Start with the living room to see an immediate transformation. Then move to the least used room in the house and work your way up from there. Take it one room, one shelf, one box at a time. Get rid of what you really don’t need and keep anything you’re not sure about. Then go back in a month or two and re-assess. You will be surprised how very little you actually want and need. More importantly, it will amaze you how much more joy you will get out of using only the things you truly love. 

Sustainable living over consumption

With our family paying less and less attention to consumerism and fast fashion, it became apparent that sustainability isn’t all so bad. While the term itself often gets looked down on as a hippy practice, I feel it’s the exact opposite.

I wrote about the chase for the newest stuff earlier in this post and you might think that I’ve now become this hermit who lives in rags and won’t spend any money anymore. But that’s not the case. Quite the opposite, I find us investing in higher quality pieces now. To me, that’s the true art of simple living. They often come with a higher price tag, but unlike a few years ago, we now get actual value out of them.

Have you ever come across the saying that an item’s daily cost of wear should be a dollar or less? It basically means that if an item costs you $100, you should wear it at least 100 times throughout its lifetime. I love this analogy!

Since buying less, but higher quality items, I find us creating far less trash. We love every item in our house and make a conscious effort to use and look after it all. Simple living encourages us to prioritize what we love, and in turn cultivates richer connections with the world around us.

It’s surprising how much better life has become since there is less of everything in the house. We now have one good set of tools instead of this collection of random freebies that never seems to do the job. One favourite pair of trainers which get worn every day until their time has come. A few good quality T-shirts that are easy to pair with the rest of our wardrobe. Even our kids started to surrender their party bag toys. It amazes me to see how much of an impact such small changes can have. To me it’s absolutely true that a simple life is a happy life.

To leave you under no illusion – my life is far from minimal. There are many more things I want us to achieve and I’m sure it will remain a constant work in progress. But that’s what life is about, you test things, like some, dismiss others and keep moving. To me, a simple life is a happy life and I want to invest more time in exploring the art of simple living.