Simple Living This Week No. 62

Today is Good Friday and I wish you many blessings as we celebrate the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ this weekend. Our Easter plans are quiet ones, but that tends to be the way we celebrate most holidays so that is nothing out of the ordinary for us.

I’ve been continuing to think about beauty a great deal this week. I’ve especially been thinking about this comment I saw on a Telegram channel I started following recently. (If you are on Telegram, it’s called Simple Life.)

Art is important. It speaks directly to us without using words. With ugly art you can make people depressed and angry. Art in subways etc is used to program a population in the same manner as ads do. Create more beautiful art and share it everywhere. Print out posters of beautiful classical art and you will see it will get torn down as “hatespeech”. Every act of beauty is a revolt against the modern world.

Every act of beauty is a revolt against the modern world. This sums up in many ways why I take such effort to make this space on the internet as beautiful as possible. This site and the work I do is a statement against the ugliness, perversity, and sordidness of the culture in which we currently live.

When I found the artwork for today’s post, I marveled at the beauty of the lighting. I’m continually amazed at what an artist can see in his mind and then translate onto canvas with such realistic and lovely detail. This particular painting is by George Dunlop Leslie. I wish had included the name of the artist each time I wrote one of these posts. I think I’ll try to do that at the end of each post moving forward. If I am ever bored or in need of something to do (ha!), I’ll go back and add them to some of the earlier posts.

Homemaking

This week I took my own advice in the weekly newsletter and started taking a more careful look at my pantry. If you follow the Simple Living & Homemaking forum, you already know I shared information about rising prices and shortages. Both of these were already on the horizon before the issues with the Suez Canal. That situation will only add to it either due to reality or the fact that some companies will take advantage of the situation to increase prices.

Canning supplies continue to be hit and miss. Seeds are the same way. If there is anything you want or need for food, food storage, growing food, etc. then you should stay right on top of it or be very proactive. I don’t see any indications that the situation is going to improve at all this year.

I printed off a few pages from A Quiet Simple Life Planner & Guidebook. I’m focusing on:

• Setting Personal Goals
• Water in the Home
• Pantry Inventory

I also printed off some pages with seasonal pictures to make a list of five goals I want to work on in the:

• Spring
• Summer
• Fall

We aren’t used to thinking this way, but most of our ancestors worked all spring, summer, and fall to prepare for when the harvest was over and food was stored. I do think there is something helpful in keeping that mindset. It’s not normal to walk into a store and get whatever you want whenever you want it. We all learned over the past year how fragile that system is. I may not be an agrarian in that I grow all my own food, but I do think like an agrarian in terms of the seasons and have emphasized that while educating Caroline.

Personal

I printed off the April Monthly Personal Reflections page in the Guidebook as well. This is a helpful practice in thinking through the past month and planning what I would like to focus on for the coming month.

I find that taking one month at a time is much easier. I know there are people who can develop grand plans for their entire year. That rarely works for me in any kind of detailed way. A few big plans like I mentioned above? Yes. The details of life? Not so much. So taking a few weeks at a time is much more manageable. It also allows me to discard things that don’t fit with the way life is developing.

Homeschooling

This continues to move along. We homeschool year round so we’re not in the winding down stage that some of you are approaching. In fact, we’ve hit a bit of a stride in recent weeks and I’m going to milk that for all it’s worth as long as it lasts.

I’ve felt a few moments of panic when I realize that we have to start keeping records in earnest for high school in the fall. I keep records, but not meticulously. I need to find the balance between keeping accurate records and not being a slave to them. This will be an important part of Caroline’s permanent file since homeschool parents are told to keep high school records forever. There are many stories of homeschool graduates needing to prove things years afterwards when some school, employer, etc. questioned a homeschool diploma. So I want to make it as thorough as possible without driving myself nuts in the process.

Home Business

We have the four Editable Homeschool Planners updated and almost ready to add to the shop. I need to go through them one last time and then I think they will be ready. We made so many updates and changes last year that we’re not doing much of that this year. We did darken up some of the colors that I felt were too light once I started using them myself. I primarily used the Lavender & Teal this school year. I may switch to the Daisies & Gingham for next year. Or the Cottage Pin & Blue. LOL! I know I won’t use the Turquoise & Orange because it’s too bright for me (although many women love it). Anyway, if you are looking for the new ones in the shop they will be there soon. If you have a full year shopping pass membership, you’ll be able to download them all and pick and choose!

That’s what’s going on in my world this week. What did you do this week? I hope you’ll leave a comment and share. I am very happy I decided to move this weekly post to Friday as a recap of what I did. This will be a permanent change so I hope you’ll stop by each Friday and share what you’ve been doing in your home. You might inspire someone else in ways you never realize! Plus we all need encouragement that other women are working in their homes and caring for their loved ones as well. Homemaking is a vital ministry that God calls us to in our different ways. It might look different in each of our lives, but the heart of it is the same.