Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Simple Living

Six Books That Could Change Your Outlook on Life

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Photo credit: austinevan

My husband and I don’t collect many things, but our house is full of books. I love to read fiction, but I tend to collect more practical books, ones that I’ll look at hundreds of times – almanacs,  reference books, plant-identification guides, cookbooks, and how-to guides. My husband’s into the decidedly unpractical – first edition novels.

I spent many years working in libraries and bookstores; I loved being surrounded by books and people who love books. At the last library I worked in, I sometimes wandered the shelves in the afternoons as the sun streamed through the stained glass windows and just gazed up at all the books. Each represents months, years, or decades of brainstorming, writing, revising, editing, and proofreading; it seemed that any of them could alter your life, shift your viewpoint … change everything.

Here are a few of the non-fiction books I’ve found particularly thought-provoking over the years:

1. Material World: A Global Family Portrait by Peter Metzel and Faith DeLusia

A team of photographers traveled the world, got to know 30 different families in 30 different countries, and asked each family to pile all of their possessions in their front yards for a giant photograph. The result is a surprising and unforgettable book. It’s 16 years old now, but I still pick it up all the time, study the photographs, scan the statistics, and read about the different families, and every time I learn something new.

2. Hungry Planet by Peter Metzel and Faith DeLusia

For this volume, Metzel and DeLusia photograph a week’s worth of food bought or grown by 30 different families in 24 different countries. The photographs are accompanied by a detailed listing of the food; a discussion of how the food is raised and used; a variety of family photos; and a treasured family recipe. Like Material World, this is a book I read over and over again.

3. No Contest: the Case Against Competition by Alfie Kohn

Alfie Kohn argues that Americans have a difficult time seeing how competitive our society is, because we’re like fish trying to come to terms with being in water. Kohn cites more than 100 studies showing that competition is not inevitable, that it doesn’t make people perform at their best, that it undermines self-esteem, and that it damages relationships. He also offers ways that we might restructure our lives, classrooms, and society to encourage cooperation instead of competition. It made me take a critical look at the structured competitive activities in my life and my own inner competitiveness, and I came away feeling that both were often keeping me from reaching out, learning, and connecting with others.

4. Slow is Beautiful by Cecile Andrews

Andrews envisions that people can find more fulfilling lives through the “rediscovery of caring community, unhurried leisure, and life-affirming joie de vivre.” I read this book years ago, but I still think about it often. It reminds me to slow down and think of joy, itself, as an important and worthwhile goal.

5. Your Money or Your life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez

Dominguez and Robin encourage readers to think of money as something we trade life energy for. They lay out nine steps for readers to assess their finances and decide how much energy they need to spend earning money, with the goal of achieving financial independence. My family still has a long way to go toward financial independence, but this book and others helped me to think about earning and spending money in an intentional way.

6. Between Parent and Child by Haim G. Ginott

Ginott encourages parents to look at situations from their child’s viewpoint and help him or her vocalize emotions. The book, itself, is a bit repetitive, but I found Ginott’s advice incredibly helpful in communicating with my two-year-old. Tantrums and midnight wakings go infinitely better when I remember Ginott’s advice; it helps me to get to the root of why my son’s upset, help him vocalize his emotions, and reminds me to empathize with him. Ginott’s approach almost invariably calms him down instantly. Amazingly, the book also has helped me to communicate more effectively with my husband. I’ve read heaps of books on communicating and attended various workshops on the subject at past jobs, but this book is the first I’d describe as truly helpful.

What books have you found particularly thought-provoking? Has a book ever changed your outlook on life? I can’t wait to hear your suggestions.


Thoughts on Simple Living

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  • The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little. ~Jon Kabat-Zinn
  • Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. ~E.F. Schumacher
  • Maybe a person’s time would be as well spent raising food as raising money to buy food. ~Frank A. Clark
  • I go about looking at horses and cattle.  They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young.  I am sick with envy of them. ~Sherwood Anderson
  • Again and again I congratulate myself on my so-called poverty. I was almost disappointed yesterday to find thirty dollars in my desk which I did not know that I possessed, though now I should be sorry to lose it. ~Henry David Thoreau
  • You can live without anything you weren’t born with, and you can make it through on even half of that. ~Gloria Naylor
  • The trouble with simple living is that, though it can be joyful, rich, and creative, it isn’t simple. ~Doris Janzen Longacre
  • Anywhere is walking distance if you have the time. ~Steven Wright
  • Our affluent society contains those of talent and insight who are driven to prefer poverty, to choose it, rather than submit to the desolation of an empty abundance. ~Michael Harrington
  • Don’t get really good at what you don’t want to do. ~Dr. Mark Albion
  • Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty, in things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in. ~Emma Goldman

Do you have a favorite quote on simple living?

Days of Rest

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Last week my son and I spent a couple of nice, leisurely days at the Oregon Coast with my mom and sister, who were visiting from out of town. I’m always amazing by how recharging even a short time away from work, emails, phone calls, and social networking can be.

In the last few months, I’ve started powering down every Sunday – leaving the computer, email, and phone off and hanging out with my family. Sometimes we go on a hike, go swimming, or walk to the park. Sometimes we hang out at home and linger over breakfast, read the newspaper, and work in the backyard. I usually take a nap with my son in the afternoon or read a novel.

At first taking a day off just felt strange. Between taking care of my son and the house and working on this blog and my writing business, I’m used to toiling nearly every waking moment. Sundays just felt entirely non-productive, even wasteful. But as the weeks pass, I find myself looking forward to my family’s slow, quiet, non-electronic Sundays.

Moreover, I’m realizing that a day of rest is actually productive. It gives me time to think and reflect, which are necessary elements to the writing life. And I don’t find myself wasting time, procrastinating, or avoiding work as much on the other days of the week, because I know I’ll get a chance to rest and recharge on Sunday.

Many have long understood the importance of a weekly day of rest. Followers of Judaism observe Shabbat from sundown on Friday until Saturday night. They are freed from the regular daily labor, can spend time with family, and can contemplate the spiritual aspects of life. Traditionally Jewish people also observed a Shemitah Year every seventh year, when they left the fields fallow to give the land and society time to rest. All debts were also canceled during that year, so they could begin anew again.

Many Christians observe a day of rest on Sunday. Some Muslims take a day or half day of rest on Friday. And there’s a new movement growing called Secular Sabbath. Marc Bittman wrote about it in the New York Times a couple of years ago, when he came to terms with his addiction to being plugged in. He discovered what I and probably many others have in our always-on society – forcing yourself to unplug can be surprisingly difficult:

I woke up nervous, eager for my laptop. That forbidden, I reached for the phone. No, not that either. Send a text message? No. I quickly realized that I was feeling the same way I do when the electricity goes out and, finding one appliance nonfunctional, I go immediately to the next. I was jumpy, twitchy, uneven.

Like me, Bittman eventually adjusted and came to look forward to his days off:

Once I moved beyond the fear of being unavailable and what it might cost me, I experienced what, if I wasn’t such a skeptic, I would call a lightness of being. I felt connected to myself rather than my computer. I had time to think, and distance from normal demands. I got to stop.

Do you take a day of rest each week? How do you spend it?

No Impact Man

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Over the weekend I watched the documentary, No Impact Man. Have you heard of it? Writer Colin Beaven talked his wife Michelle Conlin and their two-year-old daughter into dedicating a year to trying to make zero impact on the planet. That meant turning off their electricity in their New York City apartment, eating only local foods, giving up toilet paper, washing laundry in the bathtub, and riding bikes everywhere. Beaven says the point of the experiment was to see what would be easy to give up and what would be not quite as easy.

I loved that:

  • Michelle was a self-described reality-show addict and retail junkie and was less than thrilled about the project at first, but by the end, she loved riding bikes (even through Manhattan traffic), spending TV-free time with her family, and shopping at the farmer’s market.
  • Both Colin and Michelle said that the year made them better parents.
  • Michelle found that turning off the TV and all the gadgets made time slow down.
  • Colin discovered that working in the garden helped him connect to the rhythms of nature.
  • As the project went on, Colin reflected more about not just making personal changes, but getting involved in making change on a community level.

Things I wondered:

  • Why was it not against the rules to use hot tap water and the city sewer system?
  • Did they wash the diapers in the bathtub?

It’s a fun movie. I definitely recommend it if you haven’t seen it yet. I love that the message is not that we all must deprive ourselves to save the planet, but that less can be more. Simple living can be a deeply satisfying, rich, entertaining, connected, and fun way to live.

It left me wanting to power-down more often and do more bicycling, but more importantly, it renewed for me the importance of building community. At one point Colin Beaven said almost precisely what Rosie Kirincic told me recently when I visited Aprovecho, a non-profit collective dedicated to researching and teaching sustainable living practices and green skills: ““There’s accountability in knowing your community. It’s really a powerful thing.”

Have you seen No Impact Man? What did you think?

To Watch or Not to Watch

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It’s TV Turnoff Week, or as Adbusters calls it Digital Detox Week. You can learn more about it here. The idea is to take a break from the television, computers, and digital gadgets that have become such a huge part of most of our lives and see what we might be missing out on, like spring flowers, for instance.

“The goal is not to dwell on the pitfalls of our electronic devices but to reflect on ourselves. And who knows, if the magic begins to creep back into your life, the digital detox may never end.” – Adbusters

I abstained from all screens for the entire week last spring, and I had a great time. I completely recommend it. At the end I felt relaxed and recharged, and it helped me strike a better balance with online time and family time – at least for awhile.

Unfortunately this year, I can’t afford to power down for an entire week, because that would mean, um, not working. But I have family coming for a visit soon, and I plan on taking my own little digital vacation then, since I’ll be taking some time off from working and blogging anyway.

If you’re thinking of celebrating TV Turnoff Week and on the lookout for some non-digital activities for the week, check out the links under “Homegrown Entertainment” over there on your right.

Last April I reviewed Living Outside the Box: TV-Free Families Share Their Secrets by Barbara Brock (2007). I thought you may enjoy the review if you missed it:

The statistics about television-watching in America should concern everyone:

  • The TV is on for 6 hours and 47 minutes a day in the average house.
  • The average person watches more than 4 hours of TV a day. (That adds up to 9 years of a 65-year-old’s life).
  • 66% of people watch TV while eating dinner.
  • 70% of daycares use TV to occupy kids during a typical day.

What does this mean for America’s kids? The average child spends 1500 hours a year watching TV, as compared to 900 hours in school, and sees on that flickering screen:

  • 8,000 murders by the end of elementary school.
  • 200,000 acts of violence by the age of 18.
  • 20,000 thirty-second commercials a year.

It’s hard to imagine that all this TV isn’t having detrimental effects on Americans, especially children. And sure enough, anecdotal evidence suggests that too much TV contributes to all kinds of behavioral problems at home and in school. Kids have attention problems. They fight with each other over TV programs. They beg for brand-name products. They grapple with weight issues and obesity. They don’t play outside in nature. They don’t read.

When we turn on the tube, do we turn off life?

In Living Outside the Box, Barbara Brock mentions the personal and cultural ills TV undoubtedly contributes to, but it’s not her focus. Instead she asks us to ponder what we miss out on when we’re sitting and mindlessly observing so much of our lives away. After all we could be reading, writing, painting, crafting, traveling, cooking, baking, hanging out with friends, playing instruments, singing, gardening, exploring, running, walking, or just playing. We could actually be living.

A very small minority of Americans (less than 1%) lives TV-free. Brock sent 500 of them surveys to find out about them. Who are these rebels? Well, they vary widely, but the striking thing is, most don’t miss TV at all. More surprising, their kids don’t seem to miss it. Brock’s research makes you wonder – are kids more addicted to the television, or are  their parents? Even if you can’t seem to drag your kids away from the tube, you might be surprised at their reactions if you shut it off altogether. Of kids who pledged to ditch TV for three months, many reported it as the best time in their lives.

TV night: Relaxing or stressful?

Brock makes a lot of cogent points, but one most registers with me: she points out how watching TV, even in small amounts, structures our time. For instance, you don’t want to miss a favorite program so you rush home from a night out, or you race through dinner, or you hurry through a phone call with a friend. You always have one eye on the clock.

Sure enough, we have a TV night in our house, and it’s always more stressful than other nights. We rush around to get everything done before the shows come on. Usually our evenings just sort of unfold. We turn on music, we talk, we play with the baby, we clean, we play games together, or we read. We glance at the clock occasionally, but it doesn’t dominate our nights. I feel better on these TV-free nights. I sleep better. But I’m not sure it’s the TV that makes me feel stressed, or just watching the clock.

The computer counts too.

I was surprised that by Brock’s definition, my family is already TV-free. Brock considers anything under six hours a week TV-free, and we watch about two to four hours. But every time I wanted to feel smug about my TV-free ways, Brock slipped in a mention of computer time. Oh yeah, that. I know aimless Googling and Facebooking doesn’t make me happy, but I find myself clicking away at the mouse a little too often.

Searching for balance.

Living Outside the Box is a fast and easy-to-read book. It will undoubtedly make you ponder how entrenched TV is in our lives and what kind of impact it’s collectively having on our society. Could Brock’s arguments convince a die-hard TV addict to change her ways? I doubt it. And if you lean toward the TV-free life already (which I suspect most people who read the book do) you may feel a tad hopeless reflecting on how entrenched television is in most people’s lives – a little like a teetotaler stuck in a tavern. After all, it doesn’t matter if you’re hellbent on knowing all your neighbors better than the cast of Survivor unless your neighbors feel the same way. However, if you’re thinking about ditching the TV, and concerned that it might turn your kids into social deviants, Brock’s research might ease your mind.

I picked up Living Outside the Box because my baby’s getting to the age where the television sucks him in. When he gazes at it and his eyes start to glaze over, my instinct is to shut it off – for good. It’s not that I think TV will destroy him or make him into a zombie. After all, I watched my share of I Love Lucy marathons as a kid. I just want his childhood to be full of music, books, friends, and nature. I want his time to be unstructured and unhurried. I want him to be satisfied with all of the comforts and joy we have in our lives, not to be constantly told he needs more toys, cereal, clothes, or candy to feel good. Most of all, I want him to have a real life, not a childhood spent observing fictional kids on television living.

But I’m just not convinced we should put the TV out with the garbage. One of those four hours of TV we usually watch each week is The Bill Moyer’s Journal on PBS, and every time I start thinking of TV as evil, I see Moyer’s lopsided grin. That show, and a few others – like Curb Your Enthusiasm, Six Feet Under, and Freaks and Geeks – have added something to my life. They’ve make me think, or laugh so hard I can’t breathe, or see the world a little bit differently. They’ve made me happy. I know the real answer is to only invite in the television programs that stimulate my family. But what a challenge that is – especially with kids.

What do you think?

I’d love to hear how TV fits into your life. Do you have TV-free or TV-addicted kids? Have you struck some kind of balance? Are you participating in TV Turn-Off Week? Why or why not?

7 Cheap Ways to Spend a Weekend Afternoon

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1. Visit a new neighborhood.

Get on a random bus and see where you end up. Or bike to a neighborhood you’ve always wanted to explore. Once you’re there, just wander around.

2. Grab your camera and go for a walk.

Decide beforehand what you want to snap photos of – flowers, tree branches against the sky, the color purple. You might be surprised at how differently you look at everything, even on a familiar walk.

3. Discover a new food.

Visit the produce section of your grocery store or your farmer’s market and find a fruit or vegetable you’ve never eaten. Then find a recipe for it. Last week, we tried yucca-root quesadillas. (They were good, but a little bland. Next time we’re going to spice them up a little more.)

4. People watch.

Go to a bustling part of town and just sit or wander around and enjoy the spectacle of your fellow townsfolk. My favorite people-watching spots: the college campus, the library, and just about any coffee shop.

5. Visit open houses.

Check the real estate listings in the newspaper and on Craigslist and visit some open houses. Pretend you’re picking out some new digs, or just find out how other folks live.

6. Find a free event.

Go to a lecture. Attend a book reading. Go on a group nature walk. Or take your kids to a story time or free play.

7. Watch a sporting event.

Go to a little league game or a high school sporting event. Bring a picnic. Root for a team. Cheer.

What’s your favorite cheap way to spend a weekend afternoon?