If I hear one more person telling me how they'd love to be a one-income family but they really do need this huge house, I think I'm going to scream:) In my time, working mothers at least had some decency to pretend they loved their jobs, nowadays they openly state it's all about money ( I actually read a discussion where a woman was asked why she worked and she answered with I really love the money, no kidding!)
I have always been puzzled by the fact that so many folks insist they need a bigger house with a garden when
a) they have the maximum of 2 kids
b) their house is always messy because they don't have time to clean it due to the working schedules
c) the only thing they do with their garden is to pave it with tiles (which, in my opinion, should be forbidden by law:)
So here I found a video which once again proves, that it's quite possible to raise a family in an average size house and be happy. It features a Danish couple who live with their 4 kids in a house of 93 m2 (which not so long ago, used to be a normal size Euro town house). The mom chose to be a homemaker which means they have to save and be inventive with the space they have. Their living room is 20 m2, and their two older children (daughters) share a bedroom of 6 m2. And you know what? They are doing fine!
It probably helps that this is a Christian family, yet in my observation, many Christians nowadays appear just as much (if not more) obsessed with money and status as their unbelieving counterparts.Yet this family, apart from not inhabiting a 5 bedroom semi-detached, don't appear to be lacking much, which proves another of my points. If you choose to live on one income, you won't be really "poor" in Western Europe, you'll just have a bit less luxury in your life. You'll still be able to drive a car and go on vacation, but of a budget sort.
So yes, you can be a housewife, even in Denmark, if you choose to. Here is the link to the video.
One reason people seem to need bigger houses is that they have so much possessions. If you think about, say, as distant past as the 80's, people did not have so much stuff. Not so many clothes, not so many pots and kettles. Family usually had ONE tv, and for example my family did not have microwave owen or VHS recorder before 90's. (I don't have microwave at the moment, either.)People did not hoard shoes and handbags and such. Kids did not get ALL the famous and fashionable toys. My niece has at least 10 "Monster's High" dolls and several other barbies and such. I had three (fake) barbies and one Ken. One of my barbies actually had broken leg and she did fine in her doll life. :)
ReplyDeleteWhat people have less, is books. I sometimes feel that I and my parents are the last people in Finland who actually have big bookshelves.
Another reason is that furniture is awfully large nowadays.
Here is where decluttering and minimalism helps:) Agree about books, when I go for a walk in the evenings I see people staring into a huge size screen but never ever reading. I recently started going outside in the mornings with a book. Passers by look at me as if I'm doing something indecent. Makes me wonder if they can read:) There was an article on ZeroHedge which compared how much time people of different countries spend reading per week. When your country is behind Turkey like mine, well I don't know what to say....
ReplyDeleteAnd if people are in a bus or train, they just play with their phones or work with their laptops. Nobody reads anymore.
ReplyDeleteOr writes. Think about Simoine de Beauvoir or some other intellectual writing in some Paris cafeteria: unheard of nowadays.
Smartphones are enormous time-wasters! I know it from personal experience:) Anyway, I've read somewhere that in more traditional countries like Italy women used to spend their free hours doing crafts like crocheting, now it's just fiddling with your phone. Not sure if true, but can believe it...
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