Meara (00:01.186)
Welcome back to the House of Noor. At some point, everyday life just got really complicated. And what's weird is that we have more things than ever that are supposed to make life easier. We can order dinner without leaving the couch. Groceries show up on the porch. Our kids can learn from a screen. We can buy almost anything we need with two taps on a phone. And yet so many of us are completely bone-tired.
I know I am and was. For years our family was just constantly running. I was working fifty-two hours a week. We were crammed into spaces, moving houses, ordering food constantly, because no one had the energy to chop up an onion at four PM. The kids had school appointments and places to be. From outside we were managing. We were fine.
But eventually I realized there is a massive difference between surviving your life and actually enjoying the life you're building. And that's what hit me. Because, let's be honest, I wasn't looking to pack up and move into the woods to give up everything modern. I do enjoy washing my clothes on the washing machine.
I don't have a coffee maker, but I do have a drip coffee maker. And I love the convenience of being able to order something when we need it. You know, I didn't want to live like it's 1850. I just started wondering when convenience stopped helping us and started running our lives. Food was probably one of the first places I noticed it.
When you're working 52 hours a week and your husband also has a full time job, you aren't coming home humming a happy tune, ready to whip up a gourmet meal from scratch. You know, you're looking at the fridge thinking, what can I feed these kids with the absolute least amount of effort before I collapse? And sometimes that's just reality. You you're gonna give yourself grace for that, and you need to. Pinpointing that moment isn't about guilt. It's just that after a while I started noticing how much my
Meara (02:05.455)
We were throwing away on takeout, how sluggish and awful we were feeling physically, and how completely disconnected we were from what we were eating. And we started wanting something different. We wanted to make bread, grow things, cook more, learn about the herbs and the yard, and actually know what we were putting into our bodies.
you know, I didn't suddenly flip a switch and change everything overnight. Trust me, our pantry didn't magically transform. We still have things there that I don't want there and it takes time. But I just got curious. And curiosity has honestly changed my life more than than any big dramatic decision ever has. Because one question leads to another. What is actually in this package? Can I make this myself?
Can I grow a little bit of this in the dirt out back? Or why do we why do we do it this way just because it's convenient, you know? Is there another way? There has to be. And I think the same thing happened with homeschooling. I wasn't sitting around dreaming about becoming a homeschool mom, trust me, because I don't have the patience. And I was looking at real struggles with my kids and asking, why are we forcing them through a system that just isn't working because this is the way it's always been done? That question has fallen.
Me into a lot of areas of my life, and that's really what simple living means to me now. You know, it doesn't mean doing everything for yourself. I mean, you need to do everything for yourself. It doesn't mean doing everything yourself. And it definitely doesn't mean your house is needs to be pristine and your sourdough is always Instagram worthy because
I'm having a hard time with sourdough. That's like one of the major things I'm trying to learn right now. And you know, and your children are peacefully singing while we read the garden. if you walk into my house on any given Tuesday, someone is probably arguing. There's always laundry on the couch that's been there for several days, or even on the floor. And dinner might literally be last night, scrambled eggs and egg noodles. Because that's just what I had time for. So my life is not Pinterest, it's real life.
Meara (04:17.103)
And to me, simple living just means being more intentional about what gets your time, your money, and your energy because those three things are strictly limited. And if we're not paying attention, someone else is always more than willing to spend them for us. Your schedule will take your time, convenience will take your money, and constantly trying to keep up with the invisible standard of what life should look like will take your energy. I'm learning that I don't want to spend my
whole life just keeping up. I actually want to be in it. And I want to know my kids, like really know my kids. And I want to know our land. And even if I'm killing half the things I plant, I want to know how to make some of those things we use with our own two hands. And I want to sit down sometimes and just breathe without feeling guilty that there are 15 other chores waiting for me. I have been learning to do that over the past few weeks and it has really taken a lot of energy to try and figure that out. But I do notice a difference in
my patience and me just being okay. And I'm nowhere near having any of this figured out. I'm still overwhelmed and I still fall back onto old rushed habits, trust me. But you know, I'm paying more attention now and maybe that's where it all starts.
So instead of giving you a neat little list of 10 things you need to change this week, I think there's really only one question that you should probably sit with, and that's what part of your life feels unnecessarily complicated right now? Not what looks imperfect to the neighbors, what genuinely isn't working for you anymore. Because that answer is going to look different for everyone listening, and you don't have to burn your whole life down to fix it.
It. Sometimes you just make one different choice and then you see where it takes you. And that's exactly what I'm doing. And maybe the answer isn't doing more. Maybe starting over isn't about changing everything. Maybe it's just about returning to the simple things.