How does a busy life make us discontent you may ask?  Well when life is too busy we find that that the home and family will suffer.  Things in the home won't run as we would like them to.  The house may be more chaotic then we would like, household tasks are not being attended to,  meals may lack nutritional value, too much money is spent on convenience foods due to lack of time, laundry piles up, we may not be able to get to some of the projects we have been putting off, and so the list goes.  So we end up feeling discontent because things are not as we would desire them to be.  Our homes are not functioning as though we are in control of our domain.  

So we set out to make some changes. We have an idea of what we might like our homes to be and begin to figure our ways to achieve this.  As we desire to make changes we start looking for ways to make our lives easier.  We think that easy and simple go hand-in-hand. 

We have countless appliances that will do every task imaginable.  We seek out the latest convenience foods so we can spend less time in the kitchen; we stream line so we can accomplish more and more each day.  Not all of this is undesirable or without merit, but is this the answer to a simple life?       

To me simplicity is not dinner from a box; it is a home cooked pot of soup and homemade bread.  To me simplicity is not a cake mix, but a cake made from scratch with whole wheat flour I grind myself.  To me simplicity is not permapress clothing but a little time at the ironing board to think, pray, and learn to be content with my role in life.  To me simplicity is not always wanting more stuff, but learning how to enjoy and appreciate what I have.  To me simplicity is not sticking a DVD in for the kids to keep them occupied; it is spending an afternoon in the garden working side-by-side with them.  To me simplicity is not buying my milk from the grocery store, but milking my own goats.  Simple living is not always easy living.  Simple living, to me, is taking a slower walk in life and appreciating the things that go to making our lives as homemakers complete and fulfilling. 

The satisfaction and joy we can get from so many homemaking tasks can easily be lost unless we intend in our heats to live a simple life.   But a simple life can take more time.  If we can't slow down enough to enjoy some of the basic fundamentals of homemaking then perhaps we are missing some of the very things that make a simple life an enjoyable life.  A simple life is something one learns to love if it is a life that they desire to have.