Doing Less

Snowy Landscape at Mrs. White's Vermont Home.

There is a gentle snow falling here in rural Vermont. It looks so peaceful and pretty as I look out the window.  Even though the calendar claims the season as spring, it is still winter here in the mountains of New England.

This is a good time to rest. It is a good time to make resolutions for the coming year.  Perhaps planning out little gardens to plant when the last of the frost is gone?  Maybe think about all the things we would like to do this summer?  It can be a happy time of bundling up and sitting near a cozy fire dreaming of spring flowers and sunshine.

I am doing less these days.  I remember when all my children were young. They helped me so much with the chores and housekeeping.  They did much of the cooking with me and the planning to keep budgets under control.  While they learned valuable life skills and work ethics, I had happy comrades to help me in my work. 

Now that the helpers are all grown up, I am not able to do all the chores and duties. So I've had to make changes - find ways of doing less of other things so I could rest more.   Of course, there is less work in a smaller household, but there can still be an urgency (in this culture) to multitask and be so busy with projects, making money, and running around that we can become stressed and burdened.   Sometimes, we do not even notice this is happening to us until we are forced to stop. Perhaps by a snowstorm or a car that will not work.  Sometimes it is by a sickness that forces us to rest.  Once we accept these detours (of sorts), and yield to them, we find a benefit of peace and a rest for our minds.

Doing less is definitely the opposite of the race this culture is running.  But it gives us time to read the Bible more and to pray more without rushing.  It gives us an aura of gentleness and spreads a light of cheerfulness to those around us.

Doing less can mean many things. To me it means I do not want to be swept up with the distractions and glitter of this life that tend to lure me away from a quiet, simple life of a happy, godly home.

Blessings
Mrs. White

From the Archives -

I want to be - The Mother Who Isn't Busy.

Good propaganda - Kitchen Sermons.

A happy day of -  Gracious Homemaking.








Mrs. White's special book for Homemakers - "Mother's Book of Home Economics."