simple living

More-with-Less for toddlers

A page from the children’s book The Dumpster Diver, by Janet S. Wong, illustrated by David Roberts. 

Being a parent, I’ve found, can be profoundly clarifying in terms of what aspects of faith one finds most meaningful, and therefore most worthy of teaching to one’s children. One aspect of the Mennonite tradition that has shaped my faith profoundly is the ethic of simple living, of living in ecologically-sustainable and socially-just ways, of living more-with-less. This is something I want to pass along to my two-year-old son.

Confessions of an editor

“What I didn’t expect was the sense I suddenly had that author Doris Janzen Longacre and the contributors to Living More With Less were peering around the shelves at Target, watching me finger those plush crimson towels I really didn’t need. . . .”

Editing a book about living simply has a way of throwing one’s own hypocrisy into stark relief. When I began work on the 30th-anniversary edition of Living More With Less for Herald Press, I knew that I’d have to face the many ways that I failed to make choices that were mindful of global poverty and climate change.

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