I’m half-way through reading my six-year-old The Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. If you grew up in America in the 1970s and ’80s like I did, you’re no doubt familiar with the popular TV series, Little House on the Prairie, based on Wilder’s books.
Both series recount life in the American pioneering days of the late-1800s, when homesteading was a common way of life and surviving meant living off the land.
I have always loved reading to my daughter and talking about books together but this book has been a particular conversation piece.
The premise of the book discusses life for a family living far from any modern (1860’s) conveniences. It describes in detail how they did things, like smoked meat and stored food for the winter, loaded a musket for hunting, or slaughtered a pig, and how each day of the week had a specific designation: “Wash on Monday, Iron on Tuesday, Mend on Wednesday, Churn on Thursday, Clean on Friday, Bake on Saturday, Rest on Sunday.”
Aside from needing to explain to my child what many of these tasks are—some of which neither I nor most of my friends even do anymore—it really made me stop and consider what sort of rhythm my own week has to it.
I certainly don’t designate a specific day to do laundry and even if I did, with our high-speed, high-efficiency washer and dryer, it would take me less than 3 hours, start to finish (including folding and putting away) to do it, leaving me with a good 14 hours left to fill.
My daughter thinks an iron is something you use to fuse Perler Beads together. Mending is for the errant button or rare hole. And the extent of our churning began and ended the time I bought heavy cream from the market, poured it into a glass jar, added a pebble and had my kids entertain themselves by taking turns vigorously shaking the jar for 10 minutes until it yielded a buttery treasure. Voila! Nature and science come together.
In short, there is no set rhythm to our week. When we need something, we run out to a store and get it. If I have dress clothes to wash and iron, they go to the dry cleaner. Laundry is primarily done by machines. And when I need to alter clothing, I use a tailor.
It all feels a bit decadent compared to life a century and a half earlier, when resources were limited and very little wasted.
I’m loathe to consider what a pioneer of the 1860s would think of our big box stores, the hours we waste watching cable television or the portion sizes in our restaurants?
I worry about the things we expose our kids to; forget the Land of Plenty, ours is the Land-of-Excess. Our largesse is accentuated in the names of family cars: Yukon, Armada, Grand Caravan, Town AND Country…Drink sizes come in Venti, Big Gulp or Super Size; and our “single serving” portions are enough to satisfy a family of four in many other countries.
To make our task of teaching moderation harder still, my husband and I are raising our kids in a town surrounded by affluent suburbs. Restaurants we reserve for nice date nights are considered family-style by some. Toys and gadgets we are slow to acquire—waiting for the opportune event or occasion to earn them—are found casually discarded at the local Take-n-toss section of the town dump.
We live in a disposable society, where people consider most things temporary. Everyone poised, anticipating the next-best-thing to spend their disposable income on. (The mere term, “disposable income,” in itself, is vulgarly offensive.)
So how do you instill moderation?
How do we teach our kids to live within limits when they are surrounded by examples of people paying for goods on credit; when our own government sets the standard of living beyond its means?
Here are some ways we try to exercise moderation in my family:
- Whenever possible, we try to conduct transactions with cash, in front of our children. (It’s amazing how much more careful you are with money in tangible form.)
- We order meals and split them. If someone’s still hungry afterward, we order an appetizer or a side.
- We try to instill an understanding of saving as well as donating to others. Every time our kids receive small monetary gifts, we make them put half in their piggy banks and a portion in their charity boxes, the rest they can spend. Large monetary gifts go right into savings accounts.
- We readily accept hand-me-downs and cheerfully set aside anything outgrown: toys, clothes, books. These items we pass on to friends or family with younger kids or we deliver them (with our kids in tow) to charity.
- We help stock local food pantries and keep open dialogue about how we have more food than we sometimes can eat but many around us are without enough.
- We donate our time to serving those in need through food donations, meal preparations, or sheltering the homeless.
- We watch world news with our kids and try not to shelter them from calamities and hardships outside of their buffer zone.
Back-woods camping may be the closest we ever come to homesteading but I still feel there’s a lot we can do to close the gap between having our kids assume that there is a glut of everything to their becoming aware that, in most cases, what they see is just too much.
How do you keep things in perspective for your family? Are there ways that you exercise control and moderation?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Senior Editor, Kyla P’an. Kyla also can be found writing about personal musings on her blog, Growing Muses. Kyla is a freelance writer, editor, mother-of-two, and trying to live with less.
The image used in this post is credited to Bruce Guenter. It has a Flickr Creative Commons attribution license.
Kyla P'an (Portugal)
Kyla was born in suburban Philadelphia but spent most of her time growing up in New England. She took her first big, solo-trip at age 14, when she traveled to visit a friend on a small Greek island. Since then, travels have included: three months on the European rails, three years studying and working in Japan, and nine months taking the slow route back from Japan to the US when she was done. In addition to her work as Managing Editor of World Moms Network, Kyla is a freelance writer, copy editor, recovering triathlete and occasional blogger. Until recently, she and her husband resided outside of Boston, Massachusetts, where they were raising two spunky kids, two frisky cats, a snail, a fish and a snake. They now live outside of Lisbon, Portugal with two spunky teens and three frisky cats. You can read more about Kyla’s outlook on the world and parenting on her personal blogs, Growing Muses And Muses Where We Go
Follow Me:
I found myself cheering throughout your post, Kyla! Really relevant for our times and our parenting, I thought.
We try to differentiate between needing: love, water, food, warm clothes and shelter and wanting everything else. And wee’ve moved to the countryside so that our boys experience their food cycle from field to plate in situ.
Thanks, Karyn. I knew you had moved but didn’t realize your motivation for it. Have you read Barbara Kingsolver’s: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle? I’m not sure I talked much about that but it’s at the core of the over-abundance issue.
Great post, Kyla! Kudos to you for doing so much to make your kids aware of the bigger picture, and how fortunate many of us are.
Thanks, Slightly Wonky. I feel there’s still so far to go. I’m reading Nancy G Brinker’s Promise Me, about how she started the Susan G. Komen Foundation and it’s very inspiring but also a little depressing because I’m so totally not as much of a Samaritan. Above all else, I don’t want my kids ever to feel entitled, it’s such a curse yet so widespread these days.
I’m reading that same book with my 7-year-old daughter. It really is incredible when you think about how they traded fur pelts for their special table sugar and fabric for clothes, and our society seems contended with nothing less than having one of everything.
It would be nice to be able to hit “rewind” on some of the childrens’ clothing trends, toys, and media exposure to return to a place where kids can just be kids.
Wonderful post!
Thanks, Wombat Central. I agree with you about how trading and bartering is such a more poignant way to deal with the transfer of goods. What impact or significance does purchasing totally superfluous items with a little plastic card have? But then, perhaps someday, World Moms of the future will look back on our times and long for them…who knows.
Great post Kyla! I always talk to my kids about this kind of stuff and especially about life in other countries. It is so important to help them understand that the whole world does not live this way.
I imagine it must be so much more real, teaching your kids about life in different countries, considering the amount of travel you do. I look forward to exposing my kids to life in less privileged countries in the near future. I wonder where we’ll start…probably somewhere in Asia. Where will you take them?
Loved this post, Kyla! And, I’ve read every single Laura Ingalls Wilder book, and now after reading your post, I can’t wait to read them to my daughter — thanks!
Our favorite park happens to have an 18th century working farm on it. We’ve always gone there to see the animals, but we have a lot of conversations about how people did things back then inspired by wandering through the main house set up in the period, the workers anachronistic clothing and the different exhibits they have throughout the year. My daughter’s favorite is milking the cows. They even let her do it.
Ways in which we exercise self-control and moderation. I think for a parent, it’s all about not giving in just because we can give in. We don’t need to buy a stuffed animal bird toy from the Wild Bird shop if we’re there for seed. I have to stick to my guns, so she will learn not to always just expect everything. (Can you tell that this conversation was actually had just yesterday?) We save most special gifts to buy for birthdays and Christmas, and I think they’re more appreciated this way.
This year we made Valentines for the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life campaign. This brought about conversations about helping other children around the world to keep them healthy and how we are lucky that we have access to great healthcare. Kids like the idea of helping other kids.
I love the idea about having your child have a charity box. Why don’t we do this? I know what our next craft at home will be!
Jen 🙂
Thanks for your long comment, Jen. I love taking my kids to working farms too. In fact, as you know, they both attended a waldekindergarten where everything from the snacks they had during the day to the crafts they made came from the land and had to be prepared by the kids (and teachers) and cooked over a wood stove. It was very homestead-like.
Next on my list of chapter book series: Anne of Green Gables…but that’s a bit of a different spin on life in days of yore…though I do think the time period is congruent.
Excellent post. Reading books like Laura’s are a good reminder of how much we do have. Using our money wisely (as you are teaching your children to do) is a good thing, as too often it’s not about how much money we have but how we spend it. My hubby and I have lived for the past several years on quarter of the income of one of his buddies, but his buddy has no money and is living with his mother (in his thirties). We’ve always managed to pay our bills and even to pay off a vehicle loan. We try to “live simple” and appreciate hand-me-down clothes. Thanks for the excellent tips for doing that more. 🙂
You are so very welcome, Koala Bear. You should be really proud of yourselves for living within your means and exercising financial discipline. People are so careless with money these days, spending well beyond their means…where exactly do they think it’s coming from and whom are they expecting to pay it off (wait, don’t answer that last one, the answer’s too sobering and too many Chapter 11s and foreclosures are springing up as results). Keep up the great work and know that your responsible lifestyle is setting a valuable and excellent model for your (future?) children.
This is something that I struggle with as well. My mother, who watches the kids while I work, spoils them terribly and never says no to the them. Then when they ask me for something, no matter how big or small, and I say no it does not bode well, but if I explain that it is expensive and not a necessity, that seems to calm things down a bit. We do have a charity box at home (called a tzedakah box), which we try to add to weekly. And I explain to my son that his things that he has outgrown is going to people who are not as fortunate, but alas he is a hoarder and does not let go very easily. He is 5 now, so I have been giving thought lately that he is old enough to go to a soup kitchen or do some physical volunteering. I think that is something that I will look into during the summer….once the school year is out.
Thanks for the reminder!
Was your mother strict with you? I always think the pendulum swings farthest in the other direction when a parent, who took parenting very seriously with her own children, then gets a second chance to do it all again (except this time without rules) with grandchildren. Check the restrictions at your local soup kitchens. Sometimes they won’t let kids under a certain age participate. It can be hard to find service opportunities for young kids but good ones to consider are bringing in donations for your local food pantry and asking if your kids can help stock or shelve. Some Senior Centers have volunteer opportunities for young kids. Here’s one website that might help generate ideas for you: http://www.compassionatekids.com/ Keep us posted on how you evolve and good luck unspoiling!
In Poland towns a cities are sourranded by farms and fields with crops and animals feeding on them. Most of the families still have somebody in the family who grew up on a farm and who knows how to make from scratch almost anything. People living a cities have the chance to “rent” an allotment garden outside the town where they can grow fruits and veggies.
Here where we live we signed for a garden spot in a community garden and since last year we are 72nd on the list even though we see 3 unused spots. We called them, we sent them emails and they still seem not to care much about doing something about it.
So even living in an apartment we’ve decided to grow some of our food in buckets. It works and we are happy with the effects.
I cook most of our food from scratch and we rerely eat in restaurants.
As for our future we plan to move to a farm and live as much sustainable and frugal as we can with a little help from new technology, of course 🙂
What a great plan, Mom Photographer. That’s shameful that you’re #72 on the list for a community garden. I have a friend from France who has done container gardening on the very small deck of her apartment and she’s yielded a bumper crop of fresh items for cooking. Sometimes being creative yields the greatest outcome. Good luck with your crops, both current and future.
It is interesting that our lives really don’t have much of a rhythm anymore. It’s easy to be carried along by the rushing activity and demands. It would be nice to know what will be done when. I think kids would benefit from that kind of structure too. Back in Little House days adults worked and kids helped or kept themselves busy. Now children seem to be the center of everything and housework barely gets done. Just an observation.
In our home it is a constant struggle to live simply. We live in an expensive suburb and are surrounded by excess. For many parents it’s easier to buy and appease than take the time to do something meaningful. I know I have been guilty of such behavior. We do make the kids spend their own money on toys beyond gifts. Saying no can be a long draining battle but I’m working on saying it with conviction more often.
Thanks, Brennagee. Yes, the contrast between today’s parenting and parenting during the “survival era” is quite stark. Children seemed so much more obedient when they were not the center of a parent’s world like they are today. I commend you for exercising restraint with your kids. In the wealthy Boson suburbs we are surrounded by, it often turns my stomach to see how excessive parents are and how lazy they can be when it comes to teaching restraint and patience. Gratification is immediate and lavish, and often short-lived. It becomes harder and harder to please and fulfill those with so much…as though they almost (but don’t quite) recognize the hollowness of their many possessions.