Editor's Preface

The pattern for more-with-less living that Doris Janzen Longacre outlined in Living More with Less, paired with its classification as a home economics volume, looked to me like one more way to make homemakers (still mostly women, still mostly mothers) feel like they weren't doing enough. The time and energy to "green" one's life, as popular parlance had branded it, felt like privileges I didn't have and couldn't summon. So it was that I spent my days caroming between self-righteousness when I met my more-with-less ideals (full laundry line! local foods for dinner!) and self-reproach when I didn't (an hour of screen time for the kids! frozen pizza!).

Had I worked on an anniversary edition of Living More with Less in those years, my editorial vision would have been blurred by envy of the writers in these pages for achieving what I wasn't and resentment of them for not admitting how much work a more-with-less ethic may require. The 1980 Living More with Less sat mutely on my bookshelf, and I avoided cracking its aging spine.

A few things have changed since then. I'm realizing that Living More with Less is about as close to a theology book as it is a home economics manual (see chapter 4), and that it holds joy and challenge for both women and men, no matter their roles. I still worry about the crazy-making potential of trying to implement all the ideas offered in this volume, and I sometimes feel depleted by guilt over all that I'm not doing, rather than energized by joy at the little that I am. But I'm learning grace toward myself and others, as well as learning to trust that the momentum of my small actions can carry me toward larger ones.

I still wonder: is the burgeoning interest in living more with less cheapening it into a fad—or enlarging it exactly the way Doris Janzen Longacre would have hoped? Now that "more with less" has become a slogan for everything from Proctor and Gamble coupon books to corporate downsizing, how do we keep it tethered to faith and authentic concern for the poor and for the planet? And speaking of the poor and the planet: are the concerns of both always aligned, and what's the best course of action when they're not? How do we avoid oversimplifying the complicated economic and ecological realities facing all of us? And how can we pursue more-with-less ideals without settling into self-castigation, smugness, or doomsday sermonizing?

Perhaps there are no good answers to such questions. But perhaps thirty years from now we'll have found a few.

Valerie Weaver-Zercher is a writer and editor in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.