Sep. 21, 2008 - Simple Living
Voluntary simplicity is not a limiting lifestyle. Actually, choosing to live “consciously and deliberately” will give you freedom… more quality time… more discretionary money… and more appreciation and enjoyment of every aspect of your life.
Choosingvoluntarysimplicity.com
We took our kids to the Boston Children’s Museum yesterday. If you’ve never been, it’s AMAZING! I was highly impressed with the creativity of the exhibits and the activities for the kids to participate in and learn from. It was an exhausting trip but well worth it!
Something I took with me and have been contemplating over the last 24 hours was the Kyoto house on the 3rd floor of the museum. It’s an actual house from Japan that is over 100 years old and one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. It is a small house constructed entirely of wood--at least 10 different kinds--but doesn’t feel at all dark or claustrophobic. There are full wall windows on both ends that allow light to enter. There are two large adjacent rooms which are mostly open to each other and the floor is covered in hand woven straw mats that smell fresh like spring. There is a small kitchen area open to the 2nd room and a very small bathroom with a very narrow and deep tub. The most impressive part was the furniture—or lack of. There were two tables. In the first room was a small square one reminiscent of an end table only much lower and the second was also low but slightly larger and rectangle shaped. Both had several pillows around them obviously for seating. There was a futon mattress on the floor in the first room and I asked if it was what they slept on (proving how terribly uncultured I am) and was told that they sleep on it and then it gets folded up and put into the closet so that they can use the room for other things throughout the day. The closets extend along the entire wall of each room! The rooms multitask! What the heck happened to us her in America? Why DO we devote an entire room to sleeping? How much wasted space is that? The wheels have been turning in my head ever since. DH got a little nervous today as I searched the internet for Japanese philosophies and ideas on simple living. You see, up until yesterday, I honestly thought simple living meant surviving on 6 pairs of shoes instead of 60.
