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Kay and Charles Giddens sold their home to start a bed and breakfast. Four years later, the couple now dishes out banana pancake breakfasts, cleans toilets, serves homemade cookies to guests in a bed and breakfast surrounded by trees on a mountain known for colorful sunsets.
“Do I miss the freeways? Do I miss the traffic? Do I miss the trees? No,” says Ms. Giddens. “This is a phenomenon that's fairly widespread. A lot of people are rethinking their lives and figuring out what they want to do.”
Simple living ranges from cutting down on weeknight activities to sharing housing, living closer to work and commuting(通勤) less, avoiding shopping malls, borrowing books from the library instead of buying them, and taking a cut in pay to work at a more pleasurable job.
Vicki Robin, a writer, tells us how she deals with the changes in her budget, now far less than what she used to make.
“You become conscious of where your money is going and how valuable it is,”Ms. Robin says. “You tend not to use thing up. You cook at home rather than eat out. You find your life is not a mess anymore, and you discover your living costs have gone way down.”
Janet Luhrs, a lawyer, quit her job after giving birth and leaving her daughter with a babysitter for two weeks.“It was not the way I wanted to raise my kids,”she says.“Simplicity is not just about saving money ; it's about me sitting down every night with my kids to a candlelit dinner with classical music.”
Ms. Luhrs now edits a magazines called Simple Living, which publishes tips on how to buy recycled furniture and shoes, and organize potluck（家常便饭）dinners instead of fancy receptions.
“Simplicity is about conscious living and creating the life you want. The less stuff you buy, the less money goes out the door, and the less money you have to earn,” Ms. Luhrs explains.
