November 20th, 2004 - Living Simply with Children by Marie Sherlock
I left this one to the last of of a batch of library books, because we don’t have children yet. Finally read it this weekend. This is the first one I’ve thought “I have to buy this so I can refer to it all the time.” If you couldn’t tell, this one gets the highest marks of approval.
It validated a lot of things we already planned to do, but also gave me other ideas of further ways to keep up the simple life. The book also frequently addresses how to pass on these values to our children.
The last chapter was on Christmas (and other holidays). Very apro pos (spelling?) for this time of year. If I hadn’t already done so, it would have given me the impetus to reduce my gift-giving list. One my Dad’s side, I have just one family of relatives with just three kids. They had no other relatives, as their father was an only child. So our families always exchanged gifts. This has continued through our adulthood. Two of my cousins are now married (have been for years) and have children; their spouses all have extended families as well. So they aren’t hurting anymore for relatives and gifts at Christmas time. I still have a small family, but I’m not hurting for gifts at Christmas time, for I don’t really care if I get any. And shopping and mailing gifts to these relatives nearly doubled my list–and truly mine. My husband didn’t agree with continuing to give them gifts, so it came out of my personal spending money, not the family budget.
I no longer got much joy out of exchanging gifts. I rarely see, talk with, or mail these relatives, although I do think about them often. So I know little about their lives and what they might truly appreciate as gifts. And they know little about what I would appreciate. For years, I’ve been wanting to quit the exchange. I was going to last year…but found a cool gift in the summer that I didn’t have to mail. So this year, I said I had to do it. I composed a nice email explaining that I have simplified my holiday, and as part of that we’d decided to exchange fewer gifts. As I expected, they, too, were happy to stop the exchanges! I think my aunt is disappointed, but she can always still send me a gift if she wants to; I wouldn’t mail it back to her. ;-)
So our list is pared down to
- parents (4)
- brother (1)
- niece (1, 11 years old)
- sister (1), 9 years old)
- each other (2)
- my grandparents (2)
And everything’s taken care of except I need to send my parents a check for Grandma’s present, make some goodies to send to Grandpa, and buy for each other. We haven’t decided how much to spend, but it’s probably going to be about $15, as we’ll have $30 in the budget after the niece’s present is paid for (my mother-in-law is picking it out). That’s the most we’ve had to spend since we got married. One year, I spent only $2. I paid $1 for a book at a church sale, and put a $1 raffle ticket in for a basket of gift certificates and other “men’s stuff.” And I won! Eric received about $50 of things for my $1. That was the greatest. (Oh, wait. Eric spent more than $15 last year, although it was in the budget. He found the perfect item, and it cost a little more, but it was perfect and I was utterly delighted by it.)
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