There is something inviting and comforting in a handmade home.
Handmade, for me, began when I became a stay at home mom. I learned to cook from scratch, mend clothing, add length to kids’ jeans, modify used clothing, sew privacy curtains in a fishbowl townhouse, patch upholstery, fix scratched furniture… make do. At first, I struggled with this. Constraints are hard. It’s so much easier to just make a list and buy all the things when needed. Or to not plan ahead and buy pizza after a large grocery trip instead of cooking from the ingredients I just purchased. Or stay out later and pick up fast food. Buy a cake instead of make one. Hire someone to clear land instead of painstakingly doing it ourselves.
Another constraint I happened upon was finding out I had thyroid cancer. The diagnosis answered a lot of questions I had regarding my health and skin rashes to name a few. The constraints: I had to figure out how to make my own skincare I wouldn’t react to, and processed or convenience food? Forget about it. I had to learn to shift my entire lifestyle to one that would heal my body. Thank God. His constraints in my life saved my life.
I recently ran across this idea of constraints. How less is more, and necessity is the mother of all inventions. How Shakespeare limited himself to iambic pentameter even though no one spoke that way. How Bach used only so many notes to create a master music piece. How writers give themselves a date to begin a book by. How companies operate with fewer employees and only so many resources to turn out creative ideas and products. Not goals. Constraints.
Living on one income and being very very sick created a constraint that forced me as a young 24 year old newly wed to learn real life skills that actually paid off. Up to that point my skills were rooted in an 8 hour a day education and an afterschool job. None of which ever became useful to me, rather university left me with debt and not much more. Even today, at 40, I look back and when I think of regrets, I think, “my biggest regret is going to college.” Which is wild. To me anyway. Coming from a family who highly valued education and a lucrative career that followed.
My dad grew up poor and enlisted in the Marines. He went to school and then back into the military via the Air Force. He went back to school again for another degree and eventually became a biochemist. I suppose for him, and my mom, they both viewed college as a means out of a cycle of poverty. The world they built for their children looked vastly different than the struggling world they grew up in. Naturally, school became the pinnacle of our existence, that that’s what it took to live a good life.
In a way, I suppose my parents were right. In a way, I suppose they were wrong. Education is what improved their lives, to a degree… However, after 18 years of being a mom and now about to have my 9th kid, I don’t believe formal education, as we’ve been taught today, is the answer to a well lived, successful life or meaningful life.
Moving to rural Alberta was eye opening for me. There is vast wide rugged country here. People are polite and good, but tough as nails. Most of the successful people I know never finished 8th grade, rather they hacked out a career in oil or logging, some even creating or working into buying their own businesses with incomes that far surpass the salaries of my well educated Midwest family. Maybe it’s where we live, maybe it’s a different perspective, maybe it’s opportunity… but education is different here. You can know how to conjugate a sentence and recite the periodic table, but can you fight off a wild fire when public resources are scarce, or change a tire in negative 30, can you run a chainsaw or chop three foot logs for heat, can you fight off a grizzly while skinning a deer… these things really happen here and it’s wild to me. I couldn’t even begin to know how I would feel if I was back in the Midwest suburbs with all the commodities of an easy life right at my finger tips.
There’s something about having it all that makes us soft, and dare I say it, rather impersonal to our fellow man. In an easy situation one can operate nearly on autopilot, but when there is danger, and severe beauty, all around you, suddenly you begin to awaken. You see opportunities typically missed. You lack hesitation when fellow man is in need. You become capable, quick witted, self assured; because whats harder than working daily in negative 40 or facing grizzlies in the bush, or hunting in the mountains, or living a winter just below freezing because you didn’t get enough wood in… after that, most things are pretty easy.
Constraints. Different than goals in that working within constraints, working with less and higher stakes, suddenly alerts you to the creativity you need to not just survive but thrive.
Constraints for us have been rising heating costs and limited money so we resorted to firewood. Once a daunting task now made enjoyable as we use the opportunity to scout for fall hunting or harvest wild edibles or bring home moss for garden paths.
Not having a tiller and instead spending three years learning about no till methods, my gardens are finally producing in our harsh climate, something that really can’t be done with traditional gardening technique. However, limited equipment led me to learn about soil structure and microbiome and creating microclimates that now produce truly organic nourishing food for us.
The constraint of not being able to buy all the beautiful curriculum I wanted for our kids’ school. I thought surely I couldn’t teach unless I spent thousands of dollars on the best books. 12 years homeschooling and I have found that if you have the internet, a computer, paper and ink; the sky is the limit regarding education. Constraints also led me to learning about how the school system changed in the early 1900’s and now I teach our core subjects from archived curriculum prior to 1915. What I found? My younger children are learning to read and write faster. Sums, addition facts and so on; faster. I have my older kids doing the advanced curriculum prior to 1915 and let me tell you, our ancestor’s curriculum got right to the meat n’ potatoes of education. The stock market, balancing finances, taxes, quick mental math, percentages, poetry, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates… our great great grandparents before us didn’t spend 8 hours a day in school only to come out with a shallow skill less education, they were given a deep meaningful education that showed them how to use it in real life for a purposeful life.
Which has me circling back to constraints and handmade. Working within constraints taught me to learn to work with not just my mind but my hands too. Simple satisfying meals from scratch, quickly cleaning a kitchen, keeping a home clean and healthy, canning, preserving, increasing nutrition, making the most of very little, knowing what to do with a basic resource and moving forward with confidence in using it. Like Ma Ingalls making cheese, stringing peppers and apples for drying, soaking straw for hats… the family was fairly poor, but because they knew how to utilize the resources before them Laura Ingalls Wilder turned out charming beautiful stories of her experience growing up on the new frontier. Constraints and a good attitude; you could say are more important than more education, more money, more disposable resources. If anything, I might suggest that those things breed boredom and complacency.
If you find yourself working under constraints today, smile, for with time you will see the Creative Way since this is how your Creator molded you for this very Purposeful Life He has you living.
Warmest Blessings,
Ashley
Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself.
William Martin
