You get up in the morning and throw a breakfast sandwich in the microwave, and you wash it down with the coffee that brewed automatically at 7:00 am. After breakfast, you hop in a hot shower. You use a blow dryer and curling iron to fix your hair, and head out to work.
Now contrast that with this scenario where you get up in the morning. You pour some water into a pan on the stove to boil. You manually grind some coffee beans and put them in your french press. Once the water is heated you pour it into your french press. While you’re waiting five minutes before pressing the grounds out of the liquid, you grab a skillet and set it on the stove with some butter in it. While its heating, you drop two pieces of bread into the toaster and beat two eggs. You add the eggs to the skillet and scramble them. You pull the bread out of the toast and butter it. And as soon as your eggs are done, you slide them onto your bread.
I could continue to describe the morning of the second person because there is so much tell, but I wanted to paint a picture for you that there is a HUGE difference between simplicity and convenience.
Convenience
According to Dictionary.com, convenience is “Anything that saves or simplifies work, adds to one’s ease or comfort.”
In the first scenario, everything is convenient. You don’t even have to wait for the coffee to brew because there’s a timer on the coffee pot so it can start brewing before you get up. Your breakfast is already made. You just have to heat it up. You don’t have to wait for your hair to dry to style it because you can use a blow dryer. These things all simplify the work of getting ready for the day.
Simplicity
So I checked the definition of simplicity at Dictionary.com. Simplicity is defined as, “absence of luxury, pretentiousness, ornament, etc.; plainness:” Simplicity in the above example is the fact that you have to heat the water separately on the stove. You have to grind your own coffee by hand. And after you do both of those things, you have to combine them and let them steep. Then after that you have to make your own breakfast. None of it is HARD, but when you compare it with our modern conveniences, it’s not a life of luxury.
When we think about how people lived two hundred years ago, they lived simply. Which is easier to drive to the grocery store and buy several cans of corn, green beans, and slices carrots along with an already washed selection of lettuces that are ready to eat OR going out into your back yard and working very hard to grow these things, keeping the pests off of them, fertilizing them, weeding around them, harvesting them at the right time, and canning them (minus the lettuces) yourself? Well, we’re all going to say that going to the store is easier.
What is your goal?
I seriously want you to take a moment and really think about your goal. Is the goal of your life right now convenience or is it simplicity?
Now, don’t hear me sitting in judgment!! There are times in my life when my goal is only convenience. I have so many other things on my plate that living only with simplicity isn’t possible. Last week, we had a two and a half day-long church event. I was barely going to be home during the whole thing. A couple of my kids were parsed out to grandparents, I had to drop them off, pick them up, and return to the church for the rest of the event.
Because of that, I did everything that I could to simplify meal preparations. I bought frozen, ready-made lasagna, chicken nuggets, french fries, canned soups, boxed mac and cheese. My life was too complicated (not hard, just complicated) in other areas, so I used convenience when I could.
Convenience or Simplicity? 
But the question that I want you to ask yourself is what is your ultimate goal: Convenience or Simplicity?
As a prepper, if your ultimate goal is simplicity, your life is going to look a lot differently than if your goal is convenience. A prepper whose ultimate goal is convenience is going to buy items like solar panels, electrical gadgets that make life easier. They will purchase freeze-dried MRE’s and Meal Buckets instead of individual ingredients.
A prepper whose goal is simplicity will have a lot of simple machines like a hand crank grain grinder, a mandolin, hand crank flashlights, tea lights, kerosene lamps, knife sharpeners, tools, and other necessary items.
Who Cares?
So what’s the big deal whether your or my ultimate goal is simplicity or convenience?
When our ultimate goal is convenience we prepare differently. We rely on our gadgets instead of learning how to do things for ourselves. When the ultimate goal is convenience, I always buy bread instead of learning how to make bread. If my ultimate goal is convenience, I won’t learn how to chop wood with an ax, I’ll use a chainsaw. This also means that I’ll never learn to sharpen the ax. When yours or my ultimate goal is convenience we don’t plant gardens, we just use the grocery store. I’m sure you get the picture.
I can hear you asking though, “But Karen, yea, my ultimate goal isn’t convenience, but I don’t want to have to live like an Amish person! I’m too busy for that.” Absolutely you are! So am I.
So how do we cultivate simply and yet live with convenience?
We do things one.at.a.time.
Need to learn how to make bread? Great! Take a few weeks, learn, and practice how to make bread. Don’t stress about chopping wood with an ax or gardening. Take one thing at a time.
Once you’ve mastered that skill, you can go back to that convenience (while maintaining your skill from time to time) Now choose a different activity and learn that one; practice it; master it. And repeat the entire process, but that means we can have the best of both worlds to a point.
A Word of Caution
This balance between simplicity and convenience works well to a point. Until there’s something like a SHTF situation, we won’t HAVE to do more than one thing at a time. That being said, putting things together now will help you feel less overwhelmed if and when that change happens. It’s just something to consider.
What About You?
What are your thoughts on simplicity vs. convenience? I’d love to hear. Leave a comment below and give us your perspective.
Together lets Love, Learn, Practice, Overcome
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a little of both, at 57 years old a little comfort goes a long way. simplicity can go south in a hurry, better to have several options. in shtf if you can grow your own food “DO IT”, save those mre’s and freeze dried stuff just in case shtf turns into the apocalypse. redundancy and self reliance are key to surviving. in the early stages of shtf if you can grow food, before the crowds start foraging ok, because later when Walmart and the local grocery stores run out then the fun begins. a field full of veggies is a dead give away somebody is a survivalist, you just became target number 1. most canned goods last 2 years, I’ve gone beyond that but don’t advise it. after 2 years most of your druggies, alcoholics, mental cases, wannabe Rambo’s will be dead and gone, then go back to farming. nothing is better than grabbing a home canned jar of peaches in the middle of winter. my mother and grandmother taught me how to can, I cannot thank them enough for that skill. I hope this helps.
We have all the makings, skills, and tools for simplicity and use them along with convenience. At 70 years of age, we are slower and find that we cannot do all we used to do. Thirty years ago, it was a life of simplicity. Health and age will factor in heavily to ability.
Who doesn’t want convenience? Having lived in a 28 ft RV (24′ box) for the last 11 years, simplicity trumps convenience.
Of course, an RV seems luxurious over the van that I used to live in… and a car before that … and, in the Army, a duffel bag. At any rate, I think that minimizing trumps both. In fact, I know a guy, a 38 yr old Millennial,* who has all his earthly belongings in a back pack and has a small car that gets 78 mpg. And he’s been living that way for a number of years.
* soon to retire
I think you need a little of both. To use your breakfast example, I’ve “simplified” by having a pre-set menu of quick breakfasts that require no recipes or fancy ingredients- Monday is scrambled eggs, Tuesday is oatmeal, Wednesday is waffles, etc. But this also creates convenience in my hectic mornings by making “what’s for breakfast” one less thing I need to think about. This frees up my time and energy for other important getting out of the house on time tasks. In terms of prepping, you should shore up your “back to the basics” skills….but doing things the old and slow way does take a lot of time and energy! I see nothing wrong with buying better tools and a variety of supplies to add convenience to your SHTF plans, assuming you have the finances.
To me simplicity mean s a minimally stressful lifestyle. It also means saving money, having quality, being prepared and being happy. To those goals, convenience fits in well. I think of my pantry needs as an example. I love convenience products because, well, they are convenient but I think of them in terms of simplicity by making most of them at home. So by learning a few skills my home runs smoother, I save money, am happy, have better quality of life & things, and am working toward being prepared.. All this makes me happy.