Becoming Domestic

Top 10 Ways to Begin a Downshifted Existence:

Some of the ideas below could help people to feel less hurried, less rushed and less stressed.

See also the recent post ‘Thoughts on Downshifting Two years On‘ for more about the ideas behind Downshifting as a lifestyle choice

1. Become very well acquainted with your finances in order to see where your money goes.
- Examine fixed payments (rent, mortgage, insurance policies, mobile phone contracts) to see if there are any you could live without or reduce. We moved from a London house with a large monthly mortgage to a cheaper rented house in the country. We also said goodbye to several surplus insurance policies, renegotiated mobile phone contracts.
- Identify regular but not fixed payments too to see where savings could be made (eg. the weekly food shop, weekly purchases of magazines or newspapers, visits to the beauty salon, a twice weekly cleaner, eating out or buying take-aways, presents for others)
- Using an online banking facility helped enormously as one is able to download the month’s transactions and the can assign categories for expenditure to help identify areas to spend less on.
2. Identify areas of your spending to reduce with little impact on your overall lifestyle
- I gave up magazines, newspapers and book buying before leaving London as I was horrified to discover how much each year I was spending on them. I now am a regular at the local library for the latest read, they also have a magazine swap box which I use (added benefit being I don’t have piles of old mags cluttering up my life). I also swap magazines with a friend and have a wish list on Amazon.co.uk which I point family towards when they ask me if there is anything I’d like for Christmas. I also stopped buying lunch each day and took nice salads or leftovers instead, reduced spending on things I didn’t need (more clothes and shoes), avoided advertising and window shopping.

3. Stop over committing.
- There is a modern-day trend for packing each and every day full of interesting and stimulating activities. We socialise far more than our parents or grandparents ever did, we have access to oodles more culture (film, theatre, galleries, live shows, sporting events) and endless interesting places to ‘experience’ if we so want to.
- It is now being debated whether lack of actual down-time, relaxation and ‘just being’ is not only a symptom of the hectic way we live our lives today but also a cause of the endemic stress related disorders and general malaise so many people are complaining of.
- Even kids are not immune from the jam packed calendar commitments. Some of the five year old peers of my two eldest children are coming out of the classroom obviously spent and exhausted from the strain of having concentrated all day long, having being in a social situation from breakfast time until late afternoon but then are whisked off to ballet lessons, swimming, drama or music lessons.
- A calendar which is too full of nice sounding things can leave little time for self-admin, to do those little jobs which make one feel in control of ones own life. It can leave folks feeling tired and that they are rushing from one commitment to another.
- Now that I’ve got three kids - one of whom is a tiny baby, a house to run and a part-time role in our growing business I realise that if I say ‘Yes’ to doing more than two extra things (lunch/coffee with a friend) per week then something vital has to slip. I now allow myself just Wednesday and Thursday mornings to do something other than house, job, kids. None of my kids are signed up for swimming, piano, ballet etc as I truely believe they would be irratible and unhappy to do anymore than they already are (going to school and being at home playing with their toys or in the garden).
4. Write down some life goals - both personal and family ones.
-What do you wish you could achieve? What do you want to do in the coming year, by the time five years are up and by the time you reach retirement age?
- Its easy to let the days slip by without doing anything towards the things we like doing claiming we are too busy or too tired yet acutally many goals could probably completed with ease if we just spent a few 30 minute sessions working towards them every so often. By writing goals down you are able to remind yourself at a glance of the things that are really important and personal to you which enables you to keep them as a priority.
My husband recently jotted down his life goals and also commented on how much progress he had made towards satisfying them. Make a regularish date with yourself, your partner/family members to discuss finances/goals.
5. Give up News
- During the last few months of living in London I came across a lovely website called ‘Happy Family‘ which was a simple site dedicated to describing a downshifted family’s overall lifestyle. The owner of the site recommended giving up reading/listening to and watching news. I had just recently worked out that despite getting on the Central Line tube each morning relatively upbeat and positive I was getting off at my destination in a depressed, troubled mood and it was due to the awful stories I was reading each day in the free London newspaper. It resonated with me when Happy Family’s author Sheila spelt out that news stories were generally feeding off other people’s misery and were about things we have no influence over. She believes there is little to be gained from digesting news in its varying formats and much to be gained from giving it up. I stopped listening to Radio 4 in the morning, started reading interesting books or wrote on the journey into the City and made a point of walking away from the tv when news programs were on. I no longer feel overwhelmed by all the nasty things happening in the world. If I want facts on something which interests me I can use the internet or share opinions with friends and family.
6. Have at least one No Television day per week
- On the evenings that I watch tv (only usually when I have my mum staying with me as she loves a bit of telly) the period of time between the three children all being in bed and my bedtime (10ish) seems to whiz by with nothing being done almost to the point of being erased. In contrast, the evenings where I don’t even enter the front room I usually manage to get some writing done, catch up on emails, enjoy a nice meal and a chat with Bealers, put a load of washing on and do some reading or gardening before a quick shower.

7. Go for a walk
- Even a five or ten minute stroll for the sake of a walk can help reduce stress, make one see things with better clarity, notice small beautiful detail in the environment around you, takes you away from your normal surroundings, allows you space and time to just be, gets blood pumping through your body and oxygenates your brain. Walks are nice and good. They help to slow & simplify the way you live. If you work in an office take 15 minutes each lunchtime and go for a walk in a direction you’ve never explored before. Vary your route to work if you can too as your brain wakes up when stimulated by seeing the new.

8. Do some cooking
- Have a list of easy to cook meals you enjoy eating as well as making and add the ingredients to your shopping list. Cooking from scratch is tastier, better for you as you generally don’t add preservatives or artificial colours or flavours to home cooked food. It is usually cheaper than a pre-prepared alternative and you can always make a bit extra to enjoy for lunch the following day.

9. Grow a vegetable plant
- Tomatoes are the easiest by far and provided you water them throughout the summer will reward you with luscious bowls of tasty fruits in August and September. I’m pretty sure it was the three tomato plants given to me in 2004 and again in 2005 which made me begin to wonder what it would be like to have a garden bigger than a postage stamp and more time to enjoy such a space and ultimately initiated our descision to move out of our urban home to rural surroundings.

10. Get enough sleep
- Life always seems more better when a good night’s sleep has been had. In an effort to cram more into our days we are in danger of forgetting that our body’s need total rest in order to function well and make us resilient to whatever comes our way. Brains have such a lot to deal with during the day it is kind to go to bed on time each night and wake up before the alarm clock feeling refreshed and happy.

Downshifting is cool. Downshifting is fun. Downshifting allows you to feel removed from the so-called rate race, less like an aimless automaton running on empty, living for weekends and holidays and more in control of your own time on this planet. Good luck.

Almost two years ago to the week we did the simple sums which led us to believe that we could leave our London home and move to idyllic rural surroundings nearer to our families in Bristol, have me be a full-time mum instead of working full-time in a City investment bank and still be no worse off at the end of each month. As I was earning a handsome City salary at the time we had surely done our maths wrong to come up with the radical idea that we could manage without my income. It appeared to be a ridiculous notion.

We were, however in April 2006, spending a small fortune (and generally more each month than our combined net income) on two full time day nursery places for our three year old twins, on the mortgage for our three bedroomed terraced house, on a twice weekly cleaner, on monthly tube passes, on daily Pret a Manger sandwiches, on smart clothing, on dry cleaning, on Marks and Spencer ready meals, frequent take away meals and trips to restaurants (with associated babysitting and taxi fare costs thrown in), on beauty treatments, on foreign holidays, on Christmas and birthdays and on all the ad-hoc daily spending on random items we didn’t particularly need but made us feel momentarily satisfied. It didn’t feel like we had a luxurious existence. It seemed normal. We were, we realised, working hard to pay for a lifestyle we had outgrown and no longer desired.

Within just a few days we were both pretty sure that we had the option of ‘downshifting’, a term which we’d not come across before this revelation but had been coined in the US.

The house we owned in East London was rented out to four individual young professional tennants, a friend was hired as a trustworthy property manager, I was granted 13 weeks unpaid parental leave for both kids which amounted to a 6 month sabatical from the bank in which I’d worked for six years, Darren said goodbye to his partner in the London internet software agency he’d built up from scratch, started a new venture similar to the previous and we found a lovely four bedroomed unfurnished Victorian house to rent in Worcestershire surrounded by fields. We began our downshifting adventure which essentially meant living within our means by setting budgets and sticking to them

The theory was that if we hated rural life, if Darren’s new business didn’t thrive, if I wasn’t keen on being a full-time mother and homemaker (another American phrase we became familer with during our brief period of research) we could move back to London, I could resume employment at JPMorgan and life would continue much as it had been before.

We still live in the rented Worcestershire home (and have planted a willow den for the children and have a huge vegetable garden in operation), the web development business Bealers created is successful enough to have local offices, four full time employees and myself working as a very part-time, homeworking bookeeper/office manager and has plenty of satisfied clients. The London house was sold last Autumn and our new baby daughter was born at the beginning of this year. We remain delighted and amazed that we were able to downshift in the way that we did.

It was a very nice surprise to find out that this humble blog at time of writing comes up 5th in the list on Google when people search on the word ‘Downshifting‘. With that in mind I’ve thought about how people can set about downshifting without having to quit their jobs or homes and move out to isolated countryside to raise livestock, make yoghurt and cheese from their own goat’s milk. By doing a small downshift a large amount of simplification can happen and that in itself can lead to huge satisfaction.

Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.downshiftingweek.com/

I nearly missed it AGAIN! But once again clicked on Tracey Smith’s wonderful site just in time. Lots of great tips and links for those interested in simplifying life.

Our friends Casey & Tessa left London life last year with their young baby son to embark on an incredibly brave new existence in the Italian countryside where they knew very few people, have an enormous house restoration project to do by themselves and are committed to strong environmental principles. They are yet another example of our amazing, inspiring friends who I think of whenever the chips seem to be down, there’s too much to do or I find myself whingeing about nothing in particular.

At the beginning of the month Casey wrote an article on the increasing number of people who are choosing to downshift and start new lives away from office jobs, cities and consumerism. He is wise to point out to would-be downshifters that choosing modest affordable housing is likely to help downshifters continue with their dreams as reduced incomes are an inevitable aspect of downshifting as is living within your means…

“Downshifting? a word in your ear“

http://inpicenum.com/2007/06/07/downshifting-a-word-in-your-ear/#more-137 

Well done Casey & Tess. We hope your life in Italy continues to be a fulfilling one and look forward to seeing where you are for ourselves one day.

Oops. Looks like I almost missed National Downshifting Week.

I came across this initiative this time last year just as we were looking for a house to move away from London to and I was keen to find resources and information about stepping towards a new way of living.

National Downshifting Week

Saturday 21st to Friday 27th April 2007

7 days - 7 ways - to Slow Down and Green Up !

http://www.downshiftingweek.com/

I applaud Tracey Smith, Creator of National Downshifting Week, and her message:

“Making small and simple changes to your spending habits can have a positive impact on your purse, your health and well-being and it can also help the environment!

Companies and schools can benefit too by adopting these moneysaving principles and in doing so, they’ll help participants get on the right, green track.”

Activities for an Individual

• Cook a meal from scratch, using locally sourced, seasonal ingredients, preferably organic

• Cut up a credit card

• Donate a bag of clothes, toys or useful items to a local charity shop, refuge or recycling centre

• Hand-make a simple card for the next birthday or event on your calendar

• Eliminate 3 non-essential purchases this week

• Plant something in the garden you can cultivate and eat and start a compost heap

• Consider reputable work at home parents and small local businesses, for services you need

• Tonight, turn off the television, switch on the radio, play a few games and talk

• Volunteer an hour of your time to a local charity shop, animal shelter, hospice etc

• Book a half-day off work to spend entirely with someone you love, no DIY allowed

======================================================================================

“Excuse Me Mr Prime Minister…”

We are petitioning the Prime Minister to introduce a comprehensive Environmental/Sustainable Living lesson into the national curriculum, throughout nursery, infant, primary and secondary education.

[Ackers says: As someone who was trained to teach a Environmental Sustainable Living biased Education by a group of very dedicated and passionate lecturers at Warwick University I think this a fantastic petition to start and really hope that we can get loads more signatures so furture generations are equipped to manage the planet they reside on]

Please visit the No 10 Petition here and lend your support with a signature.

Children are the leaders of the future - let’s help them get on the right, green track, long before they step into adulthood.

Submitted by Tracey Smith of National Downshifting Week UK – Deadline to sign up by: 17 April 2008 – Signatures: 165

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Introduce ‘Sustainable Living & Environmental Awareness’ lessons to our national curriculum for all pre-school, primary and secondary schools in the UK.

A nationally supported educational structure that raises environmental and sustainable awareness, would get all of our children on the right, green track before they step into adult life.

Elements should include:- how to compost, seasonal cooking from fresh (which should never have left the curriculum), basic fruit and vegetable cultivation, what’s in our hedgerows, better interaction via a revival of non-electric games, natural cleaning without chemicals, balancing your cheque book/living within your means, simple renewable energy and promotion of volunteering in our communities, amongst others.

Children are the leaders of the future and would benefit from proper ‘life-lessons’ offering real guidance - let’s take the ‘freaky out of eco’ by normalising and encouraging sustainable behaviour and lifestyles.

At the beginning of April I planted my ‘early’ potatoes (a variety of spud which is ready to eat early in the season) and ‘main crop’ potatoes (a different sort which is ready later in the season - and bigger? I’m not entirely sure yet) in a couple of trenches (about 20-30cm deep) next to each other at the far end of the vegetable garden.

I left plenty opf space (30 cm) between them and a bit more between the first trench and the stumpy barely alive new raspberry canes. Bealers thinks I’m mad to leave so much room but I think we’ll be surprised how big they grow and we can always plant something little beside them. My theory was that I remember that potatoes need earthing up so the newly formed potatoes don’t get exposed to the sunlight and turned green while they are growing bigger.

I got the children to help me trowel in a couple of inches of well rotted manure before we pushed the seed potatoes in firmly and were about to cover them up with soil. I noticed that on the end of one trench there was extra room by the fence for me to dig another foot or so of trench so I could get more potatoes in.

As an experiment I didn’t line the bottom of this last mini-section of trench with any manure but covered the whole happy lot (about thirty seed potatoes) up as I wanted to get the kids in for some urgent tea & bathtime (they melt or are totally loopy and uncooperative if I miss their bedtimeby half an hour or so). I watered them in with a couple of trips with the watering can.

Anyway. This evening I noticed that the spuds have sprouted this weekend (and my sweet peas have become very poorly looking but that’s not interesting right now). The earlies are some thick blueish green foliage and the main crop  have lighter green leaves sprouting through the soil - BUT NOTHING GROWING IN THE BIT WHERE THERE WAS NO MANURE ADDED TO THE TRENCH!

No wonder man discovered manure being tremendous for the crops. I’m looking forward to finding out which ones taste better An hoping its the ones grown in poo as there are so many more of them…

We started messing around with our new vegetable plot this last weekend by digging overa couple of square metres and planting a couple of different varieties (artichoke for roasting and silverskin for general cooking) of garlic in the patch where potatoes were grown last year by Miss Dennly. We planted about 30 cloves each about 10cm deep and approx. 10-15cm apart.

Apparently it is best to plant garlic in the autumn but we missed that. I also read that the winter solstice is tradtionally the day for planting garlic.

The garlic will hopefully be ready for harvesting in Autum when the leaves have turned yellow.

The plot of land we’ve had added on to our tenancy at the back of our garden has been a vegetable patch for many years as it was owned by the keen gardener next door neighbour and landlady. Emily Dennly had lived here since she was 5 years old when she came to live with her grandmother, the only child of the woman who built the two semi-detached houses in the late 1800s.

Emmy’s friend Janet, who continues to be a great source of inspiration and knowledge, has lobbied Miss Dennly’s nephew (our landlord) for this house to have the veg patch. She knew Emmy through the local walking society, has been a professional horticulturlist all her working life, keeps bees for their honey, makes chutney and teaches me as much as I can absorb about plant names, pruning tips.

We now have the opportunity to grow and eat huge amounts of lovely fruit and veg. My daughter Eden and I really enjoy gardening together and eating vegetables so we’re going to have a whale of a time. Darren has happily taken on the chore of chief digger which just leaves Mo to be inside reading or watching the tv (or wailing about how he wants to be indoors if you insist he comes out for some fresh air, sunshine and running around). Eden gave me the following list of veg we should grow as soon as I read her the letter from the letting agent telling us we were officially allow to garden the piece of land at the top of the garden:

• Sweetcorn on the cob
• Brocolli
• Corgettes
• Peas
• Tomatoes
• Raspberries
• Strawberries
• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Beans
• Leeks
• Onions
• Garlic
• Cucumbers
• Cauliflowers
• Cabbages

Have you ever heard of a 3 year old who likes vegetables *this* much? Bless her for living up to her garden paradise name.
Anyhoo I’ve been Googling for some easy to digest info on how to get cracking on planning and implementing a new veg patch and have found out really quickly that it is really easy and really fun. There’s a few great hints and tips about how to get loads of things from a smallish plot (by growing a number of tall growing things like beans, cucumbers, melon [see melon anguish]. Oooh I can’t wait to get digging over, planting seeds, making cloches, mulching and then eating!

Janet has told me we need to create a pathway down the middle, to make sure we only plant things we like and to sow the rows from north/south so the sun shines on each side of the row throughout the course of the day.