Frugal Living,

Just a insight to our lives... in answer to a few questions from followers..

Im not sure wether how we live comes under simplistic living, downsizing or frugal living... it all covers us really.
We came here to escape the daily grind of a consumer lifestyle, the hamster on a wheel type of life that means the more you seem to earn the more you need...
Ive never been a 'keeper' of material things and now in some ways i'm worse and some ways even more minimal. I drive Rik crazy with my obsession with keeping things that will be useful... like plastic bags, bubble wrap... odds and ends of string etc... Ive even kept two old leaky hotwater bottles... the rubber maybe handy one day... I just feel that kind of stuff is good... what I throw away or wont buy is electrical things... they cost too much to run... ornaments... too much dust... and any kind of clutter really.... Our clothes are a general rag bag of worn out things.. I never throw clothes away untill they turn to dust... everything can always be mended .. Its just getting Rik to agree to wear them... We keep a couple of sets of goodish clothes to wear when we go out to town and thats it... The rest is mended and darned to hell....if its warm and comfy who cares...
We live such a simple life, good homegrown organic food, mainly veg and pulses, we drink our well water and our own organic wine, we have our own olive oil, add a little pasta, rice and now and again a small amount of meat... wonderful. All our cooking and heating is free, we use logs from the forest.
We have no TV, radio or internet at home, I love the peace... we dont need 'The News' its all bad anyway.... There is an internet space in town which i'm using now.... its very accesable and free....We read, do crosswords, play scrabble, go out on the bike if we have fuel, and just actually talk to each other ...As I enjoy cooking we tend to invite people over to eat with us and thats our way of socialising, as even if we have no money we tend to have loads of food..
Our days are spent either building /working on the house in someway, or on our land, there is always something that needs doing, Rik does help out other people with the odd day of casual work to bring in a few euros now and then, plus we have the cottage rentals at times.
But money is always practically none exsistant, but its not a problem, we have most of what we need right here at home, food , warmth, and a comfy bed.

Pat