Down to Earth

by Rhonda Hetzel

  There is always something you can do; it is never an option to ignore hard decisions. Making a plan and working according to your plan is always better than doing nothing. So start by tracking your money, then budget according to what you discover as well as how you want, or need, to live. As with most changes leading to a simple life, these suggestions are all small steps. But all those small things add up – even a saving of $10 a week will add up to $500 a year. That money could help with the mortgage or credit-card payments or be used to take the family away for a weekend.

  When you think about your money and the amount of debt you have, or will have in the future when you buy a home, I hope you realise that money and debt, while important, should not make you miserable. Money can make or break any of us, and it certainly has the ability to break up relationships or put a strain on them at the very least. But money used wisely can bring pleasure and stability to a family. Being frugal and using that great simple-living tool – a budget – will help you organise your finances so that most of the time you have what you need, and sometimes you have what you want, and you will be in control.

  Money used wisely can bring pleasure and stability to a family.

  Overall, the less money you spend, the greener and more simple your life will be. But I’m sure there are many who, while living more simply, still want to travel, give to charities – either by donations or volunteering their time – as well as buy odds and ends that others might think of as frivolous in a simple life. Don’t listen to anyone who wants you to go against your own wishes. If you’d like to buy a piano and think your life will be enriched by the music you play, save for a piano. If you will be enriched by travel or working in your community, do it – with a plan. Establish your priorities, budget for them and plan for them.

  Decide what you want your life to be. If you’re like most of us, you’ll want to work enough to buy what you need to live, and pay off a house and maybe a car. You are reading this book so I presume you have lifestyle changes in mind. Some of us were spendthrifts in the past. We believed what advertising told us; we bought everything that appealed to us, kept up with fashion and made sure our homes were always up to date. It was only later on we realised that if we continued to do that, we would be working to pay for our shopping sprees for the rest of our lives.

  We are all different and have different needs but we should all conserve our life hours for real living. Examine your life and think about what you want. If you have a partner, make a plan together and see it through together. I hope that plan turns into a guide that helps you along the way and leads you to the kind of life you long for.

  There was a time when I would have been bored waking up in the morning knowing everything that would happen to me during the day. Now, that is what I hope for. I love knowing every nook and cranny of my home. I love doing the same thing at the same time; I relish the familiarity of it all. I don’t have to think too much about what will crop up, there is no anxiety about not knowing, and the day rolls along with one thing following the other and minute by minute the hours become another day.

  The strangest part of this kind of familiarity is that it feels fresh every single day. I rise, shower, write, eat breakfast, bake bread, work in the garden, sew or knit, care for the animals and do my general chores every day, and each time it feels new, like this day is one of a kind. It never gets boring; it gets better.

  We have turned our very ordinary brick house on a one-acre block into a home we thrive in. We have organic vegetables growing in the backyard. Rainwater is harvested from the roof and on that same roof, the sun is heating our water, skylights send light to the kitchen, laundry and bathroom, and whirlybirds spin and extract hot air from under the roof. Fruit is growing to juicy maturity; plump heritage-breed chickens lay eggs every day and scratch around eating insects and weeds. Thousands of compost worms devour our kitchen waste and they, in turn, sometimes become food for the chickens. A creek flows by, providing water for a rainforest that gives us protection from the wind, and within the confines of that rainforest embrace, regeneration and life goes on.

  Inside our home, bread is baked, sauces made, jams processed and stored. Gifts are made for family and friends, the house is cleaned, soap is hardened, books are read, ginger beer is brewed and afternoon naps are sometimes taken on the verandah. Dinner is made from backyard produce and provisions stored in the freezer, stockpile cupboard and pantry. Life is slow and peaceful here.

  A simple home is not necessarily the biggest and best house in the street. It is not identified by how it looks. The worth of this home is gauged by the way people live, how they share their lives, what they give importance to, the way they raise their children, the boundaries they set, the work they do to provide that nurturing space and possibly by a hundred other things that are more difficult to define – but responsibility, respect, self-reliance, warmth, generosity, kindness and care are all in the mix.

  I am sure that when many people start out in adult life, they think the hardest part will be working to pay for, equip and furnish their home. But the challenging part of adult life, with a partner or alone, is setting up a home that feels like a home. Your home should be the one place where you and your family know with absolute certainty they are loved, where they can relax and be their true selves, where everyone can recuperate from being at school or at work, and have fun, help, be productive and creative and learn how to live. Your home is where children should develop their values and where parents should strive to live by theirs. Home is far more than just furniture, bricks and mortar.

  The prize is not having an outstanding house; it’s having an outstanding life.

  It doesn’t matter what stage of life you’re at; keep your eye on the prize. The prize is not having an outstanding house; it’s having an outstanding life. It’s tough juggling life, family, home, work, money, friends, hopes and wishes. Sometimes you fail. But in those times when it comes together – when you look and see what you hope to see, when you hear a quiet ‘I love you’ and know it is meant in its truest sense, when you want to announce to the world what a wonderful family you have but instead keep it inside you to nourish and grow, when you think you’ve failed but realise you haven’t, when you put the family to bed at night and sit, content – those are the times that will make up for the uncertainty and toughness of it all. As I look back on my long life of family and home-building I know for sure that it was not just the good times that made Hanno and me what we are today, it was the hard times too.

  We don’t get a lot of encouragement to build stable and happy families. The encouragement seems to be focused on success, creating wealth, spending to help the nation, and acquisition, and while those elements have some importance, they are secondary. Our real mission is to build productive and healthy families, which will create productive and healthy communities, which, combined, build the nation. I want to gently remind you that what you do at home is significant and meaningful, and that creating a warm and productive home provides the ideal environment for your family to thrive in.

  Setting up house

  Whether you’re single and living in your first apartment, a young couple buying your first home, a married couple with a few children, a single parent, a single solo adult, or baby boomers moving towards retirement, you can create a simple home that won’t burden you financially or emotionally. When you build a comfortable and nurturing home, you’ll feel like you’ve sailed into a safe harbour, that you’re where you can be your best. Don’t confuse the shell of the home – the bricks and mortar – with the essence of what a home is. You can create a beautiful home in the plainest shell. Don’t fall for real estate advertising that tells you lifestyle is attached to a building. Let me be very clear about this: buying a simple home that is within your budget and can be modified to suit you and your family is the best investment. It doesn’t have to be new or in the best suburb; it needs to be able to sustain what you want to do, to provide a feeling of relaxation and security to
all who live there and be within the budget you’ve set yourself. That is relevant at every stage of life as you move from house to house. Don’t be tempted by flashy, extravagant houses. What good is it if you have to spend most of your income paying off a mortgage and you have no money or energy left to enjoy life?

  If I were setting up a home today with the same sensibilities and knowledge I have now, I’d buy a well-loved, solid old cottage, a home with character. I’d reject new, cheaply made furniture and go for either second-hand, handmade or good-quality family hand-me- downs that would last many years and could be repaired and repainted when needed. I wish I could say I did that the first time around, or even the second, but I was caught up in the conspicuous-wealth syndrome back then and I bought things that were fashionable. I should have known better.

  Don’t confuse the shell of the home – the bricks and mortar – with the essence of what a home is. You can create a beautiful home in the plainest shell.

  By the time we arrived at our current home fourteen years ago, I’d had a change of mindset and knew that large houses only benefit large families and real estate agents. We were quite happy to settle in our very simple brick slab house. It was within our budget and an easy distance to most of the facilities we needed. For the first couple of years, the house didn’t feel right but then I suddenly realised that if I wanted to feel comfortable at home, if I wanted a safe and pleasant place to live where I could nurture my family and myself, I had to make that space myself; it wouldn’t just happen. So we set about making a home using things we already had, we changed cupboards to maximise efficiency and carefully placed furniture where it would aid productivity and relaxation. We changed the house to reflect a much more productive life; we decluttered and kept only what we needed or would pass on.

  A comfortable, safe and peaceful home will not only support people who, like us, are at retirement age, or younger couples raising children. This type of home is essential for those who go out to work. If you’re in paid employment, you need a place where you can relax and unwind. If you allow it to, your home will prepare you for work and help you be at your best when you’re out earning a living.

  SWEDISH STYLE

  One of my grandmothers was Swedish, so buried deep within me is a love of the Swedish style of furnishing a home. It relies on plain and simple wooden furniture that is painted in beautiful tones of white, milky blue or sage green, with bright splashes of red. Items suitable for renovating can be picked up at roadside throw-outs or bought at garage sales or in op shops, then sanded back, scrubbed and repainted.

  You don’t create a home by creating the perfect showpiece – that’s just a furnished house. A home is created first in the heart and then it is pieced together, with all members of the family playing their part, to make it the kind of home you can all thrive in.

  When you start to furnish and decorate your home, don’t rely on what you’ll find in a retail chain store. When it comes to appliances, it’s a good idea to buy new or near-new energy-rated, good-quality items that are built to last and can be repaired. But everything else can be recycled, made, repaired and reinvented. Look around and see what you already have, ask around to see if anyone in your family has furniture they no longer need, walk around your neighbourhood the next time there is a kerbside pick-up and see what you can find. Chairs and couches can be covered with homemade cotton covers sewn to fit the shape. Curtains and soft furnishings can be homemade, and bit by bit you’ll build your new home into something unique, rather than a carbon copy of a thousand other houses nearby. It is also a very frugal and environmentally sound way of furnishing a home. Be innovative and bold, invent your own style, and create a home you really love without breaking the bank.

  Let me say this clearly. Homemakers – the women and men who build stable families and communities – are an essential and significant part of who we are as a society. Whether that is acknowledged by our political leaders or not, they are the glue that holds us all together. Yes, we need commercial enterprise and entrepreneurs to keep our nation moving and commercially viable. We need big business to provide some of the products we use. We need to maintain our civic responsibilities and support our law enforcement and armed services organisations; we need to elect honest politicians. But unless we form stable families on which to build those civic institutions, we won’t amount to much. Families are the foundation of our nation.

  Make your mark, stand tall and know that your contribution is important. Providing comfortable and secure homes places our children and working people on solid ground. We are the ones sending them out capable of making the most of their work and school lives; we are the ones setting the tone for what our children will become. I am not silly enough to believe that our children grow up to be our mirror image, but we can have a significant input into the type of people they grow to be. Model the behaviour you want to see in them. Teaching kindness, generosity, tenderness and humility helps build character and forms a stable foundation on which to build a life. Show your children that you enjoy life and that your family makes you happy. That will be one of the greatest gifts you will give them. Be proud of your work and show it. Show children how they can contribute to the family – they will grow up with a realistic view of life and feel valued because they help the family function. This should start when children are two or three years old. They can pick up their toys and help set the table, then progress to more complicated jobs as they grow.

  Show your children that you enjoy life and that your family makes you happy. That will be one of the greatest gifts you will give them.

  Older children need that kind of guidance too. Traditionally, mothers would pass on their knowledge to their daughters. Times have changed. Now it’s sons and daughters who need this information, as well as the confidence to apply it to their own lives. This is not a gender issue, it’s about basic life skills and learning how to look after yourself. It is quite common now for young women and men to not know how to iron a shirt, or how to cook. It is time to rekindle interest in basic domestic skills and for all of us to encourage women or men of all ages who want to stay at home and raise children to see that as a viable, worthwhile life choice.

  I hope there will be many things of which you will be proud when you’re my age. If you can say you launched your children into the world as decent people; if you can say that most of the time you did your best; if you know that you supported and encouraged other men and women in their tasks; if you know that you helped build a strong and supportive community, you will have done a fine job, not only for yourself and your family, but for your country as well.

  Keep your family close

  I think children learn a lot when they gather with the family around the dinner table. This is the one part of the day when everyone can sit and relax, talk about what happened that day, and listen to what everyone else did. This is the time when we show, rather than tell, what our family values are. If you don’t take the time to reconnect every day, children drift off in their own world. We need that time to let them know they’re an important part of the family, that you support them and if they need help, you’re there. It needs to start early, from the time they’re eating from a tiny bowl, and continue right through until they leave home. Each stage has its own unique lessons; each stage prepares for the next. There will be requests to sit in front of the TV and to eat in their rooms, but the answer to that should always be no. They won’t understand the significance of the family gathering until they’re older. No phones or iPods at the table. No disruptions; all else can wait. This family time comes first, no exceptions. That thirty minutes can make or break a family.

  As I get older I understand how crucial the family unit is. Children who have been nurtured by a loving family and have seen active parents working towards a greener and simpler future undeniably have a better chance of doing that themselves. There are many things a child can do without, and you don’t have to fret if you can’t, or don’t want to, supply iPods, mo
bile phones, fashions and computers, but never be ungenerous with the love. Children want their parents’ love and attention more than anything else. Acceptance, kindness and love delivered in full measure, consistently over the years, builds character and confidence in a way no product ever can. The trick is to start early and never stop.

  I have often thought that modern society has divided into two camps: adults and children. Governments, corporations, media and the advertising industry are the adults and the rest of us are children. They speak; we listen. We are expected to be dependent and compliant; we are told constantly that we will be made happy with ‘stuff’, that part of modern life is to carry a large amount of debt and if we work hard, we’ll be able to pay off our life as we live it and retire at sixty-five or seventy to enjoy what we have.

  Advertising is ubiquitous. Wherever you look, there will be an advertisement telling you what to buy, where to get it and how wonderful you’ll feel when you buy it. When we wake in the morning and turn on the TV news, advertising is there to greet you. Read the paper – more ads. Go to work or to the park and you’ll probably pass billboards and advertising signs along the way. You come home to relax and if you turn on the TV, every few minutes ads will be telling you what you can’t do without and how to get it.

  We have messages coming at us every day about what’s right for us and how we should live. Advertising makes us look outside our homes to find what satisfies us. It teaches us that when we see what we like, we should have it. It never teaches prudence or patience; quite the contrary, it encourages us to go into debt to buy whatever our hearts desire. We are encouraged to work our entire lives so that big business remains healthy, the country prospers and we skill ourselves in how to earn a living rather than how to live a life.