Being and Doing

Being and Doing at Home

Washing the Slugs off the Kale

By Gene Sager

Scenario A

A family of five live in a very large, single family tract home. The mother and father commute to full time jobs, arriving home at 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. The daughter (age 10) and the son (age 8) come home from school at 4:00 or 5:00. The elderly grandmother lives in the home as well. Her health is relatively good, but a caretaker/cleaning lady is hired for the afternoons so grandma is not alone all day.

Costs and incomes are high. Since the parents have long commutes, major expenses include gas and maintenance for two vehicles, grandmother’s caretaker, and the gardeners. The parents and children eat fast food and junk food snacks (“quick and easy”) during the day. The family often eats out for dinner; no one has the time or energy to prepare dinner. The dinners out also function as entertainment and as a “reward,” especially for the hard working parents. Other expenses include dad’s fitness gym and mom’s manicures and pedicures (“if you get both a manicure and a pedicure done at the same time, it cuts your nail drying time in half”).

Although considered normal among their contemporaries, the family’s lifestyle has its stresses and strains, especially for the parents. They believe what “everyone” says—that today a family needs two full time breadwinners to survive. But they feel exhausted and stressed about time. Their schedules allow for little or no quality time with the whole family. Weekends promise to provide time for family togetherness, and for catching up on household chores such as laundry, baking, oil changes, and shopping. Weekends are also a time for recreation, answering emails, and socializing with friends. But two days are not enough to accommodate all of this, let alone a sense of leisure or “hanging out.” The weekend is busier than the week, and Monday morning comes round again. Life is on fast forward; there is no time to savor life.

Scenario B

The same family commits itself to a less expensive, less hectic lifestyle. They move out of the big “monster” house and into a smaller, less expensive house which is near the husband’s workplace. The wife quits her full time job and finds part time work near their new house. Since the husband’s work is fulfilling and includes good benefits for family, he keeps his job, but he now saves five hours a week which was lost in commuting. The wife is relieved of her long commute and the job which was for her a “drudge.” The husband and wife can now lunch together because their workplaces are in the same area.

Both spouses have more time for family and friends, for preparing meals, and much more. The wife earns less now but the loss is offset by the smaller mortgage, smaller utility bills, and savings on gas and car maintenance. Since the husband and wife spend more time at home, they no longer need caretakers and gardeners. The wife’s brother is available as a backup caretaker. Luxuries sworn off to balance the budget are manicures, pedicures, dad’s fitness gym, and cable TV. The weekends are no longer a desperate catch up time; there is even some open or free time.

Anchor Person

The wife/mother’s job change opened up five hours a day which she chooses to use as the anchor person in the home. This valuable function, which may also be called “household manager,” can be performed by a woman or a man. The concept is perhaps misunderstood today, so a brief explanation is necessary. The anchor person should be the spouse who can spend more time at home, but it is definitely not the person designated to do all the “grunt jobs.” All family members should do at home, so tasks like doing dishes, vacuuming, and cleaning bathrooms are shared. In Scenario B, the anchor person’s main activities would be caring for grandma, gardening, and food preparation. As we shall see in a moment, these at-home activities are carried out in an atmosphere significantly different from most employment situations. The anchor person, in this case the wife/mother, is in control of her agenda and timing in the home. Rest breaks and change of pace are among her choices, so she is not likely to suffer from mental or physical exhaustion.

Five Benefits of Being and Doing at Home

It turns out that spending more time being and doing at home is the single most potent step in getting control of one’s life. Working off of Scenario B, we can see why this is so in five ways: family closeness, physical health, simplicity, green issues, and spiritual issues. All five dimensions are integrally woven together, but we can see the potency of being and doing at home by tentatively separating out the distinct advantages.

Family Closeness

An emphasis on home life benefits the whole family and prevents the fragmentation so common in modern life. Fragmentation: Elders unattended by family often decline through isolation; when spouses work and commute long hours apart from one another, they tend to drift apart emotionally; less time for face to face parenting means more peer direction. In Scenario B, trading manicures and trips to the gym for time at home are beneficial exchanges in terms of family togetherness. A major change in values is also clearly reflected in the mother’s job change and the move to a less expensive home near the father’s workplace; family closeness is more important than earning big bucks and living in a big house.

Family togetherness extends to the grandmother, who in this case is the wife’s mother. She is cared for, hands on, by her daughter. They have switched roles: years ago the mother made sure her daughter ate three good meals a day, and now her daughter does the same thing for her. No well meaning hireling can take the place of family caretakers. Family members have a deeper, broader, longer commitment. They share blood and a history. When the elder tells a story about past family life, the elder’s story literally ties into the life of the caretaker. There is a three generational connection pulsing through the home.

The two-full-time-breadwinner trend has caused serious problems for marriages. In many cases it provides more bread than is really needed. Husband and wife can grow apart, divided by the combined forces of time, place, energy, and association. Daily interaction with coworkers can lead to friendships and these relationships may seem more fulfilling and interesting compared to the sparse interaction with the spouse who is mentally and physically tired after a full day’s work. And if all household chores remain to be done after work, this does not feel like “quality time” together. In contrast to this, in the Scenario B model, both spouses have increased their time at home together, and they lunch together. Their time at home is not as stressful as in the two-full-time-breadwinner scenario.

The children need to limit extracurricular activities (such as special school activities or soccer league) to one or two days per week. They are expected to be and do at home also. They need to limit TV, computer, video games, and telephone conversations. Being at home is not just physical presence. The children are to spend some time with grandma and help with chores. Kitchen cleanup can be a family time—some wash (by hand), some dry, some sweep, etc. After dinner, passive entertainment like TV is limited.

Instead of exercising at the gym, the Scenario B father can gain family time by exercising at home with his son. The gym trips had extended his commute, the fees were high, and the time at the gym was more time away from home and family. He was the virtually absent father. The gym solution to the exercise problem complicated life and made things worse. Now he spends more time with his son, and some creative parenting can turn exercise time into a fun time.

The final word concerning family closeness has to be “hearth.” When the family arrives home, someone is there tending the fires. There may be snacks available and odors of spices are adrift. The opposite of “hearth” is “separation”—into cyberland, sportsnews, endless internet chat or telephone jabbering. Instead, let us gather around the hearth to restore ourselves and our relationships.

Physical Health

Being and doing at home promotes physical health in at least three ways: through nutrition, exercise, and stress reduction. As regards nutrition, there is no substitute for homemade meals. The following quote from an article written by “time management experts” in Cosmopolitan magazine (Dec. 05) is a flabbergast:

Next time you throw a dinner party, order in the food. No one has to know. Just put that store-bought rotisserie chicken on a nice platter and dump that pre-made salad into a gorgeous bowl. Presto: dinner looks home made.

It may look homemade, but the tricalcium phosphate in it was made in a lab far from home. The time management experts offer this food preparation suggestion in all seriousness, but surely there is a healthier way to manage one’s time.

When it comes to nutrition, the best suggestion is to plant your own garden if you can. Much depends on available space and climate, but even a small greenhouse is better than no garden at all. Nothing satisfies more than working with the soil and producing your own food (veggies, herbs, fruit). This way the food is composted, organic, and picked fresh. My favorite from the garden is kale. It is full of vitamins A and C, calcium, and potassium, and it re-grows after cutting. Just wash off the slugs, cook, and serve.

Whether you have a garden or not, good nutrition requires expert grocery shopping and careful food preparation at home. Restaurant meals must be limited, because we simply do not know what is in the food. Even if the menu or other source purports to specify all ingredients (a rare practice), the cook on duty may substitute a different oil or other ingredient. There is a nutritional world of difference between hydrogenated soy bean oil and pure olive or canola oil. Good nutrition involves discrimination concerning oil, sugar, salt, whole or refined grains, processed food, packaging, and much more. In addition, there are important issues about whether to include meat, dairy, and eggs, as well as problems about identifying locally grown, organic, and genetically modified foods. Only the household anchor person has the time to sort out these issues, do the shopping, and prepare the meal by the time the rest of the family comes home.

We have already touched on the value of at-home exercise. Gardening and other work around the house is good exercise, but some families may want more aerobic or strenuous exercise as well. In general, at-home exercise is preferable if the home has adequate space inside or around the house. Next best would be a nearby park or school playground. A last resort would be to purchase special exercise equipment to use at home, but here again, the danger is that the means or method complicates life and causes more problems than it solves.

Stress reduction is just as important as nutrition and exercise. By creating more at-home time and an easier, less hectic schedule, Scenario B brings relief from stress; this in turn fosters the healthy function of the immune system. The key relationship, the one that sets the tone in the household, is the relationship between husband and wife. Adequate time for togetherness is crucial, and the resulting harmony will spread throughout the home. A final reminder about stress concerns the anchor person: she is not the 24/7 on call worker or helper to meet everyone’s needs. Family members must understand this and let the anchor person enjoy leisure time.

Simplicity

Being and doing at home interlocks with the virtue of simplicity. as when the husband dropped the gym and began at-home exercise. Simple ways meet needs without creating additional needs or problems. When we practice simplicity, we get things done without raising a lot of extra dust. In Scenario A life was complicated by a host of activities and luxuries that made life too “crowded.” One luxury sloughed off was the wife’s regular trips for manicures and pedicures. Pretty nails cost a pretty penny, plus the expense of extra gas and extra time. Time spent for one thing is time not spent pursuing other values, perhaps more important ones. The hassle of scheduling the nail trip is a cost as well. The simple nail deal is doing your own nails at home: easy to schedule, cost free. Some women see manicures as being treated “special,” with TLC. But surely various forms of TLC are better provided by family members, not by beauty salon employees.

Simplicity might seem to be an impossible practice for the anchor person. When grandma is having a needy day, veggies need to be chopped, and daughter wants help with her homework—when these converge, how can the anchor practice simplicity? Being and doing at home allows maximum flexibility because the problems are at hand; issues allow many alternative solutions. Frozen homemade stew can be defrosted and compromises negotiated with family members. Management is the key here: at home the anchor can prioritize and simplify, but at work or on the freeway she is at the mercy of forces beyond her control. The practice of simplicity yields a sense of flow and calm.

Green Issues

These days most individuals and businesses claim to be concerned about the environment, but the color range of actual practice runs from kale green to pale green that fades into white. Being and doing at home allows us to live out a deep green lifestyle through less abuse of nature and more wise use of natural resources. A short commute means less abuse (less pollution), and an organic garden is an example of wise use. The more we learn about less abuse and wise use, the more we see that being deep green takes time—time at home to compost and mulch, time to pull or cut weeds instead of poisoning the earth with chemicals, time to scrape off aphids and wash off slugs.

Even if you are unable to garden, prime time hours (daytime hours before 5:00 pm) at home provide green opportunities galore. Most people are aware of thorough-going recycling and the use of sun and wind to dry clothes on the line. Reuse of all sorts of materials is perhaps not as much appreciated. Here is an example: Reuse of clothing, sheets, blankets, etc. can mean donating them to charitable organizations, but it can also mean passing them along to relatives or friends. Sheets and blankets can be reused as carpets in the storage area of the car or van to protect against soiling and damage. Some materials make good napkins or useful cleaning rags. A green household uses rags instead of paper towels.

The anchor person will most likely do most of the shopping, an art which requires considerable time and a great deal of green smarts. Intelligent shoppers today are aware that some corporations wear green masks: many of their practices and products are environmentally unfriendly, but the corporation presents itself in advertisements as a “green corporation” on the basis of a few token efforts to protect the environment. Armed with knowledge of which products/companies are truly enviro-friendly, the green shopper can balance issues of ethics, prices, packaging, etc. But let the family beware: don’t leave major shopping to be done in the evening or on weekends; that will take away from family time and fatigue the parents when they need a break.

Inner/Spiritual Values

Talk about gardening and shopping may make it appear that being and doing at home is mostly doing. But perhaps the best kept secret about being and doing at home is that it allows sufficient time for simply “being.” Life is not on fast forward. You can practice what Duane Elgin calls “soulful simplicity” because you have the time to slow down and sense your intimate connection with all life (Natural Life, Nov./Dec. 2003). If the family divides the tasks properly, time at home is not over-crowded with chores. Again, the key point is that being and doing at home opens up a range of choices and puts you in control. If you become an at-home workaholic, it is the result of bad choices.

The teachings of the world’s religious traditions are relevant here in several ways. The esoteric or mystical side of these traditions teaches that a quiet mind is a mind especially receptive to spiritual experience. The Scenario B type lifestyle allows sufficient open time and a non-stressful atmosphere which is conducive to prayer and meditation. However, most of us are not inclined to pray or meditate for long hours; we prefer exoteric or non-mystical religion—that is, religion focused on certain moral values to direct our daily behavior. Here the world’s religions speak in one accord: earning money should not displace caring for family members and actions to protect nature/God’s creation.

Culture Shift

The lifestyle change we have explored is so far-reaching that it can be called a change of culture or a change of fundamental values. The key element – being and doing at home – yields great benefits in terms of family, physical and psychological health, simplicity and the environment. But this culture shift can be difficult, especially for children who are accustomed to the fast forward culture and who are bombarded with ads and peer pressure which reinforce the fast forward values of individual advancement and pleasure, material wealth, and heavy use of cars and technogagetry. The children in Scenario A were no doubt enticed by the idea of hanging out at the mall, chatting incessantly on cell phones, and buying junk food. At home the cool things to do would be watching TV, chatting on line, and computer games. The new term “mouse potato” aptly portrays the person who chats, surfs, and plays away the time. If the family shifts its culture, severely reducing or eliminating these fun activities, they may suffer from culture shock. The children might put the issue this way: “What’s fun about being and doing at home if it’s not using the TV, computer, telephone, or stereo?” There are myriads of good answers to this question, though much depends on the particular family, climate, and location of the home. We can offer here a few examples, emphasizing the flexibility and creativity of the family members.

Family barbeques and picnics at home or at a nearby park are perennial favorites. Why not include kabobs and corn on the cob on the Barbie, not just the usual burgers and dogs? Net games and paddle games and ball games are easy to set up. Parents who listen and watch well can learn what sorts of games or recreation the family members enjoy together outdoors or indoors. Possibilities include board games, card games, charade games, jeopardy games, and so on.

Invite families with similar values to your home for dinner and recreation or games. There are now local groups of families in Canada and the U.S. (some are called “green dinner clubs”), joining for dinner once a week at a member family’s home. Some families prefer just a two-family dinner; others enjoy a larger group of three or four families. In any case, children and elders are included: the wholesome life is inclusive, not exclusive or fragmenting.

A creative friend of mine has included the various ethnic and religious holidays into his family’s calendar and he invites us to join in. We have played dreidel at his home, broken piñatas, hunted Easter eggs, and sung “Las Mananitas” at dawn. We celebrated the Chinese New Year with special foods, paper dragons, and stories about the zodiac animal for the year to come.

Such “ethnic stretches” may be too strange for some families. But creativity can sometimes mean turning a rather ordinary activity into something special. We end here with two ordinary but extraordinary at-home activities: camping at home and movie night. Why not pitch your tent on the deck or in the yard? After a BBQ or bonfire, the campers can bed down without paying a fee or looking at a long drive back home. Parental judgment can determine whether the children’s friends and/or family friends may be invited to an at-home camp or to a movie night. “Movie night” doesn’t sound like a new or creative idea, and it is what psychologists call “passive entertainment.” But, as my wise young son says: we can’t throw out the fun factor. So plan an at-home weekend evening when the family can kick back, eat snacks (tasty and healthy ones, of course) and enjoy a well chosen film. For a few bucks, the whole family can be entertained at home. When the movie starts, all the telephones are turned OFF.

Gene Sager serves as professor of Religious Studies at Palomar College, San Marcos, California.

Page updated 6 April 2014

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