Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Simple Living

Simple-Living Boot Camp

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We’re all familiar with the learning curve – that slow, hiccuping start we get off to when we tackle a new task. The period where we suck at something, which is the necessary preamble to the period where we kick ass at something.

I’ve watched my two-year-old son wobble, fall, and falter hundreds of times already. So I’m sure I’ve been through the learning curve more than a million.

But, for some reason, I didn’t expect a learning curve when it came to simplifying our lives

About a year and a half ago, my husband and I both worked outside the home. We had opposite work schedules, so we never saw each other. We were both working constantly, either at our jobs, or at home caring for our infant son and trying to tame mountains of laundry, dishes, and bills.

By the time our son was one, we were crazy about him. But we were exhausted and miserable about our lifestyles. We knew we had to make a change.

We decided the answer was simple – simple living that is. We would choose to live on less, allowing me to quit my job and be with our son, as well as focusing on my dream job of freelance writing. We’d make bread. We’d garden and compost. We’d ditch processed foods and restaurants and cook everything from scratch. We’d keep backyard hens. We’d make stuff ourselves and heat our house with wood. We’d hang our clothes on the line. We’d ride our bikes and walk more and drive less.

It’s not as though we lived extravagantly before. My husband and I have both always lived fairly simply. I was raised by thrifty freelance-writer parents. I’ve ridden my bike and walked most places for my entire life. I’ve never been into diamonds or spending weekends at the mall. Shopping has always been low on my list of favorite pastimes. And I’ve long been a fan of the voluntary simplicity movement.

So I assumed we’d love our simpler lifestyle. I imagined it would be relatively easy to pare down.

It wasn’t easy.

Recently, a few things made me realize how difficult it was.

  • We went out with friends to a restaurant we used to frequent. (We used to eat out a lot.) The food didn’t taste good. Then the same thing happened at another restaurant. That’s when I realized what had really happened. The food we make at home now tastes really good. We learned how to cook.
  • I started looking forward to heading outside on cool mornings to swing the axe around and realized that I’ve become a master wood-splitter.
  • I have not used a recipe to make bread in eight months.
  • My friend asked me if I missed our car, and I couldn’t figure out what she was talking about at first. Miss our car? Oh, that’s right, we’re not driving our car. I hardly even think about our car, and I usually don’t miss it, at least 95 percent of the time.

The relative ease of cooking from scratch, making bread, chopping wood, and living sans automobile today made me realize that these and so many of our other lifestyle changes were once pretty difficult.

The first few times I made bread felt like conducting a chemistry experiment. And I’m glad you’ll never see my first attempts at chopping wood or taste some of our not-so-delicious attempts at main courses. When my husband first started riding his bike to work, he came home exhausted most days. And I think he probably said, “The simple life isn’t so simple.” at least 50 times last year.

It feels like we’ve been through simple-living boot camp.

We still have a lot to learn. But we’ve gotten physically stronger and more resilient and we’ve honed dozens of skills that serve us well everyday, make us feel better about our environmental impact, and which I hope will help us be more financially secure in the future. As my friend, who’s been on her own journey toward a simpler, greener, thriftier life, quipped the other day, “If I’d lived like this for the last ten years, I’d have $50,000 in the bank right now.”

So if you’re thinking about paring down, trying to save more money, learning to cook or meal-plan, giving up TV, ditching plastic, switching to green cleaners, making your own personal care items, or embarking on some other lifestyle change, I am here to tell you that it may not be easy at first. You will probably have to learn each new skill, just as you’ve learned everything else in your life – slowly and day-by-day.

But you will kick ass at it before you know it.

What new skills have you learned this year? What’s the most difficult lifestyle change you’ve made? What’s the most rewarding?

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Happy Thanksgiving

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We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude. -Cynthi Ozick

Tomorrow is one of my favorite holidays, when many of us gather to celebrate food, family, and friends.

Almost 400 years ago, 50 English Colonists and more than 90 Wampanoag Indians started the tradition when they shared an autumn harvest meal of wild fowl together. Want to learn more about their celebration? You may enjoy this Virtual Field Trip back to 1621. It’s an entertaining and educational 30-minute video created for students by Scholastic and Plymoth Plantation, a bicultural living history museum in Massachusetts.

It’s also a field trip in simple living. You’ll tour a reproduction of the settlers’ small thatched-roof wooden cabins, which were  furnished with narrow beds and open-flame fire pits for cooking. These austere dwellings probably felt luxurious to the settlers after they lived on the freezing-cold Mayflower through their first winter. You’ll also hear what it was like to play, eat, sleep and live as a Wampanoag and a colonist, as well as what history tells us about the harvest celebration, where the two cultures came together and probably shared corn, venison, fish, and pumpkin.

Sadly the harmony between these cultures didn’t last. Native Americans across the United States were subjected to years of violence and discrimination, and many still observe Thanksgiving as a National Day of Mourning. Other people argue that it should become a National Day of Atonement. But it’s worth taking a trip back to that cold New England autumn when two peoples with different customs came together in goodwill to celebrate.

One thing I’m particularly thankful for this Thanksgiving is you. Thanks for reading this year and for sharing this space with me. I’ve enjoyed reading your comments and emails and getting to know many of you. I hope you have a happy holiday. I’ll be back here next week.

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Confessions From the Car-Free Life

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“Maybe we should get the car fixed,” I mutter to my husband as icy rain pelts my face

It’s a pitch-black, moonless evening. It feels more like midnight than 5:30. We’re on our way to a birthday dinner for my husband’s colleague, pedaling onto a bike bridge that crosses a busy street. Below us cars zooms past, a snake of yellow headlights.

“You’re telling me,” my husband says. One of his bike spokes broke earlier in the day, and his back wheel lets out a shrill whine every time he pedals.

Our two-year-old son seems oblivious to our harrowing adventure. “We’re going to the pizza shop,” he sings in his trailer. “The pizza shop, the pizza shop.”

My family is in the midst of an experiment in car-free living. Our Isuzu Rodeo is still parked in front of our house, but we haven’t driven it for three months. It needs major repairs, and we can’t decide whether to invest money in it. Even our mechanic, who stands to gain mightily from us continuing to drive this car, looked hesitant when he told us about the repairs. “When things start going on these…” he said, trailing off and shaking his head. But we also don’t want to take out a loan to buy a newer car right now.

So we’re weighing the pros and cons of car ownership, and it occurred to us that we needed more information to aid our decision-making. After all, we didn’t really know what it was like to live without a car. So we decided to try something I’ve long been fascinated by – car-free living.

I’m not fond of driving. I love to walk and ride my bike. I’d usually prefer to be in tune with the weather, the seasons, my neighbors, and my city, rather than experiencing them from behind a windshield.

Moreover, I don’t like what car-dependence has done to our culture. I don’t like gulping down smog. I hate the constant roar of traffic in our backyard. I hate sitting in gridlock. I don’t care for behemoth box stores with sprawling parking lots. I’m saddened when I think about oil wars, spiraling obesity rates, growing social isolation, and thousands of people dying in unnecessary accidents every year.

But this night, as we lock our bikes to a rack and trudge toward the pizza shop, I want a car.

At the restaurant, our party is sitting at a long table in the corner. We cross the room. My husband’s rubber rain pants squeak with every step.

Everyone stands up to say hello. Most of them are accountants. They’re dressed up. I sit down across from a financial planner, who’s wearing a white button-down shirt and ironed slacks, and stow my helmet under the table. I smile and try to pretend like riding a bike to a dinner date on a freezing cold, drizzly night is a perfectly normal thing to do. But, at the moment, I’m sure I look like my grumpy tabby cat when he comes in from the rain.

Our car-free experiment has actually been much easier than I imagined it would be. My husband is having a great time riding to work with a coworker. We figured out how to pick up chicken feed with our bike trailer. Most of the time we don’t even think about the car. And that’s the thing about car-free living, it’s not that hard once you get used to it – if you don’t let yourself think about how effortless it used to be to zip to the store or restaurant in a V6.

We munch on slices of pizza, and I make small talk with the financial planner. During lulls in the conversation, I dream about cars. Leather interiors. Seat warmers. Air conditioning. Cruise control.

After dinner, we bundle up and brace ourselves to head back out into the freezing rain. But it’s not raining anymore. And after only a few minutes on my bike, the heaviness of my pizza dinner lifts. We glide down the bike path, our lights glittering in the darkness, and talk about the night.

As we pedal onto the bike bridge and soar down the other side, I realize that if we had a car, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be flying through the night. I wouldn’t feel so light, so healthy, so free.

“Do you really want to fix our car?” I ask my husband.

“Well, it can’t get much harder than tonight, right?”

I wonder if someday soon, we’ll laugh at that question. But for now, our experiment continues.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Ever wanted to ditch your car? Read Confessions from the Car-free Life. #carfree #biking #bikes” quote=”Ever wanted to ditch your car? Read Confessions from the Car-free Life. ” theme=”style1″]

If you liked this post, read more of my popular posts about car-free living:

Do you live, or have you ever lived, car-free or car-lite? I’d love to hear about it.

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6 Fun Ways To Spend a Cold, Dark Night

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I love cold weather, but the shorter days are always difficult for me to adjust to. Over the years I’ve stored up a toolbox of activities to make cold, winter nights more fun. I find myself especially in need of them in the days and weeks after the time changes.

1. Eat by candlelight

We didn’t light a lot of candles in my house when I was growing up, but occasionally we’d eat by candlelight. Those nights, along with random power outages, are some of my happiest memories. Flickering soft light just makes any dinner more special. My family also eats by candlelight now and then. And every time we do it, it’s as fun and uplifting as I remember it being when I was a kid. Maybe it’s because it’s hard to rush when you’re watching the reflection of flames dance on glasses.

2. Start a fire

There’s so much to love about a winter fire – the warmth, the mesmerizing flames, the way it brings the entire family together in one spot to look at something other than a TV screen. Bonus: you may not have to turn on your heater to enjoy toasty nights.

3. Read aloud or tell stories

Years ago, an older friend told me that she and her husband had been reading books aloud to each other each night for decades.  I loved the idea, and since then, my husband and I have read many books aloud together. These days we spend our read-aloud time reading to our kids. But I know soon, we’ll move on to adult books again. There are so many great reasons to start a family reading tradition. I wrote about them in this post.

Storytelling is also a fun way to pass an evening. In Robert Shank’s book Tell Me A Story: Narrative and Intelligence, he explains that “human memory is story-based.” We’ve learned by telling each other stories since long before Homer. If coming up with a fictional yarn sounds more pressure-packed than taking the GRE, don’t worry. Just relax and tell stories about your childhood, grandparents, or past adventures. If you’re a parent, this kind of storytelling serves a bigger purpose: it helps kids recognize their place in a larger family and feel closer to their parents. Most people love listening to stories. And the more you practice, the better you get at telling them.

6 fun ways to spend a cold dark night #winter

4. Throw a potluck

With the extra dose of darkness, we can all probably use double-shots of health and happiness. Well, the research is in: social connectedness is good for us. Researchers from Brigham Young University recently reviewed 148 studies and found that people with strong ties to family, friends or co-workers have a 50 percent lower risk of dying over a given period than those with fewer social connections. As The New York Times reported, “Having few friends or weak social ties to the community is just as harmful to health as being an alcoholic or smoking nearly a pack of cigarettes a day.” Potlucks are a thrifty and labor-saving way to invite your friends, neighbors, or colleagues over. My acquaintances may just be exceptional cooks, but potlucks never seem to disappoint.

5. Stargaze

I wrote about winter stargazing in this post. Shortly thereafter I made bold plans to stargaze every night with my trusty copy of 365 Starry Nights. The first few nights of January, I had a great time scouting out Orion and Pleides. Then it got cloudy. And it stayed cloudy until … July. Yes, rainy Eugene is not a stargazer’s paradise. Oh how I miss the Colorado night skies. But if you live somewhere with few clouds and a dark sky, bundling up and gazing at the stars is an age-old, relaxing way to spend a cold, dark winter night.

6. Make Something with your hands

In her book Lifting Depression, neuroscientist Kelly Lambert argues that using our hands for manual labor helps us prevent and cure depression. She says that when we cook, garden, knit, sew, build, or repair things with our hands and see tangible results from our efforts, our brains are bathed in feel-good chemicals. I just got my knitting needles out after neglecting them for the summer, and it’s incredibly rewarding to see what I can make with my own two hands in a relatively short time (while I’m sitting in front of the fire, listening to a story, watching a movie, or otherwise enjoying a winter evening).

The Color of Springtime is in the flowers, the color of winter is in the imagination. Terri Guillemets #winter #seasons #coldweather

If you liked this post, you may enjoy these related posts:

What’s your favorite way to spend a cold, dark night? Do you have any tips for coping with fewer daylight hours?

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Resourcefulness is Back in Style

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Resourcefulness – (n.) The ability to come up with clever ways to solve a problem.

The bad economy hasn’t been easy for my family, or for many of my friends and neighbors. But these lean times are forcing many of us to hone an incredibly useful skill: resourcefulness.

In the last few years, my husband and I have learned to build raised bed gardens, grow vegetables, raise chickens, make bread, put up a fence, prepare delicious meals from inexpensive ingredients, fix broken faucets, remedy a variety of plumbing problems, treat a handful of minor human and feline ailments, grow and harvest herbs, and on and on. We are, by the day, becoming more resourceful people.

We learned one thing early in our roles as homeowners, cat and chicken-tenders, and parents to a little person: things will go wrong. And when things go wrong, it’s tempting to (a) feel overwhelmed (and often sorry for ourselves) and (b) tote out the Yellow Pages to look for someone to call to make things better. The problem with this approach is that it’s very expensive.

So my husband and I are learning to step back when things go wrong and ask ourselves, “How can we fix this?” This simple tactic has saved us many hundreds of dollars – in the last month alone.

But it’s done so much more than that. Tapping into our ingenuity, instead of calling someone to fix things, takes away fear. When we grow confident in our ability to solve problems – or to network with our friends and neighbors to solve problems –we stop being scared of the things that may go wrong. We start trusting that we’ll be creative and clever when we need to be, and that we can find solutions to even seemingly insurmountable problems.

Of course, we can learn much about honing our inner resourcefulness from our grandparents’ generation. They (and many generations of people before them) had to master the skill. Take these stories from Ohio’s Great Depression Story Project:

We grew all our own vegetables. We had our own orchard. We had our own cows, had milk, made our own butter, did a lot of canning. My mother at one time had over 800 jars in the basement of jams, jellies, meat, fruits, vegetables, all these different things…
– Dean Bailey, age 82

Grandma made her own bread and baked it in an open hearth oven that my Grandfather had built in their backyard. I have never tasted anything as good as that since. If there were any loaves left over by her next baking day, Grandma would make an Italian dish called ‘minestra’ – made with the cut up left over bread, beans, ham hocks and dandelion greens. This was a poor man’s meal, but very nourishing. Mom and Grandma would walk to lnterlake field to pick the dandelions used in this dish.
– Mary Rose DeMaria, age 83

For a refrigerator we used an empty gallon can with a rope tied to it, which we lowered down a dug well to sit on the top of the water. That would cool a pound of bologna… For a while before we had electricity, we heated the irons that we used to do the ironing on the cook stove. We bathed in a large wash tub that was also used to wash our laundry…
– Lester Baiman, age 82

We had no cellar to store our canned food in and my dad would make a place in the garden where he would pile up straw or hay. He would put vegetables in a pile then he would put more hay or straw on them. Then, he would put burlap sacks and old coats on top of that. He would cover it all with some soil and in the winter he could dig in it and get vegetables to eat and they kept very well.
– Charles Warrick, age 81

We raised chickens (lots of chicken and eggs were on the menu), canned our garden vegetables along with apples, pears, grapes, cherry and plums. Dandelions were our first spring greens and we welcomed them after the long winter. Mom made many casseroles, pancakes, cookies, fried donuts and fritters. Sometimes we had ice for the ice box, but we often cooled many foods in a special place in the basement.
– Marian Seilheimer, age 89

There were no disposable diapers, no paper towels and no paid babysitters. Everything was used and re-used and repaired. Nothing was thrown away. You saved buttons, nails and screws in a Prince Albert tobacco can, 1# size. It was a great day when the feed company started to put feed in pretty, printed sacks. We’d tell the men to get 4 sacks alike. That would make a dress, curtains, shirts, tablecloths, etc.”
– Margaret Smith, age 94

We lived in a couple rooms at a private residence and I remember the single light bulb hanging in the combination living room/bedroom. Mother cooked on a hot plate and washed dishes in the bathroom, which we shared. No refrigerator, only a window box to use in the winter. We never had a thought in our mind that maybe we weren’t rich. Mom and Dad always had a job and everybody laughed all the time.
– Vane S. Scott, Jr., age 85

(If you enjoyed these stories, you can read many more here.)

Are you becoming more resourceful because of the bad economy? I’d love to hear about it.

Bartering 101

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Bartering is downright hip right now. Last February I wrote an article about a traditional Belgian waffle house, where the owners have accepted acupuncture, massage, plumbing, a trumpet, art, and yard rakes in lieu of cash. They also erected a giant bulletin board next to their counter, where customers can make exchanges with each other. Then just the other day, I interviewed a doctor who accepts produce, baked goods, house-cleaning, and handcrafted items from cash-strapped patients.

I love the idea of bartering, which is basically just the direct exchange of goods. These are lean times, and so many people these days have untapped skills, goods, time, and potential – but no cash to spend.

There’s just one problem. Bartering also sort of terrifies me. I don’t think I’m not alone. The owners of the waffle shop and the doctor I interviewed say that even though they’re happy to make trades, most of their customers pay cash. Why? Maybe it’s because most of us simply don’t come from a culture of bartering.

But lately I’ve been dabbling with bartering and seeking out tips on how to do it better. Maybe they can help you make some savvy swaps as well.

1. Assess what you have to offer

Since my son was born, I’ve done lots of bartering in baby-sitting. And recently I realized I have lots of other things to trade. My garden’s overflowing with cucumbers, zucchini, oregano, and thyme right now. We often have extra eggs. I make tote bags and bake loaves of whole wheat bread. I can write copy and edit. And I have all sorts of unused contraptions gathering dust in my garage.

I bet you also have things to exchange. Maybe you have plumbing or carpentry skills, make crafts, or take photos?

2. Determine your needs

Identify what you want. Would you like yoga classes, massages, or house-cleaning? Maybe you need some apples, hazelnuts, or fresh eggs?

3. Find a trading partner and pop the question

Look for someone who performs one of the services or provides one of the goods you want – who might also be interested in something you’re offering.

Potential barter-partners are everywhere. Friends, neighbors, and the vendors at your local farmer’s market might be good people to start with. Or if you’re too timid to approach someone in person, the Internet can make this step easier. More and more sites help people find partners for swaps. Here’s a sampling:

3. Determine values

Make sure you and your trading partner are specific about what you’re offering. Don’t just say you’ll baby sit. Say you’ll watch two children for three hours. Don’t offer yard work. State that you’ll rake a quarter-acre lawn.

Then assess the worth of what you’re giving and getting, and make sure they’re equal. If you would normally charge $10.00 an hour to babysit, and you’re offering three hours, make sure whatever you’re getting in return is worth $30 to you.

4. Consider documenting the swap

Obviously, if you’re trading a waffle for a few eggs, you probably don’t have to write out a receipt. But if you’re making a bigger trade or trading with someone on a continual basis, it’s wise to document it. For instance, a friend hosts my website in exchange for copywriting. That kind of trade works best when both parties keep track of what they’re owed.

5. Don’t forget Uncle Sam.

Does bartering sounds like a great way to avoid taxes? Think again. The IRS stipulates that “The fair market value of goods and services received in exchange for goods or services you provide must be included in income in the year received.”

Janelle Orsi, an attorney who specializes in collaboration, writes that “The IRS doesn’t seem to concern itself with one-time, casual, non-commercial exchanges of goods or property.” But “unfortunately, it’s hard to say at what point a barter arrangement has become sufficiently formal, commercial, or regular to be something that you should report.” Confused? She explains the legal and taxation issues involved in bartering here.

I still get weak-kneed at the thought of bartering with someone. But I’m learning to take a deep breath and ask.

Do you barter? Do you have any tips to share?