Have more time and space for what matters.
One of the consequences of our consumer society is that over the years we end up owning too many things, things that we don’t need.
A pretty obvious area in our everyday Life is the kitchen, how we filled it with stuff, with gadgets.
The result is often that we rarely use these tools or if we do use them, we have forgotten how we were doing this in the past in a much simpler way and even sometimes, with better results! I enjoy cooking a lot and what amazes me most of the time is to see on TV how people in other countries would prepare wonderful meals with the most basic, rudimentary tools.
Once we moved to our home 10 years ago I was eager to have a house with only the basic things I would need to “run” our household Although I wasn’t really looking for a minimalistic way of life. Decoration, for example, could be considered as superficial or “unnecessary” which of course, I completely disagree with.
When the idea of simplifying your life came out in the 90s, Tiki Küstenmacher, German author and caricaturist, together with his wife, became very famous with their book Simplify your Life. I recommend you to have a look in their website: www.simplify.de. It could be the website is only in German language but their books have been translated into about 40 different languages, so I am sure where ever you live you will find some good inspiration.
In the next few weeks, I want to share with you my own view on how to simplify your home, area by area. These posts will cover:
- the kitchen
- the laundry room
- the bedroom
- the living room
- the dining room
- other tips around sustainability and lifestyle…
… with of course, a French, American and German influence. Talk to you next week!