What is Slow Living?
Born in the 1980s, the Slow movement quickly gained aficionados around the world. First appearing in opposition to Fast Food, the term Slow Food was used in 1986 by Carlo Petrini, a gastronomic journalist. It emphasizes healthy, fresh food, using more traditional preparations, as a return to the roots.
Slow Life conflicts with consumerism, individualism, materialism, overconsumption, overproduction, our society of too much and too fast!
To counter this global acceleration of our life rhythms, the followers of slow living call for living the world in full consciousness, enjoying the present moment and simple things. Slow Life advocates values such as authenticity, sharing, benevolence, respect, and a return to nature.
The basic principles of Slow Living
- Unplug, disconnect, slow down the pace of life,
- Allow your children to take a break, take time to tell them stories rather than overload them with extracurricular activities,
- Avoid planes and cars and exchange them for trains, boats, bicycles, and feet,
- Reconnect with the simple things,
- Prefer small local markets to hypermarkets,
- Take time for yourself (listen to your body, know yourself better),
- Take time for others (get to know others better, enjoy with family and friends, create social links, participate in the life of your community and others, know how to laze around),
- To (re)connect with nature (gardening, integrating eco-responsible gestures, practicing outdoor activities),
- Disconnect from the virtual (take hours or days without a cell phone, laptop, social networks, TV…),
- Awaken your senses,
- Develop your creativity,
- Savor the present moment.
Slow Living: a difficult goal to reach
If the principle seems simple, it is not always easy to adopt in our personal life rhythm.
Saying yes to Slow-Living means doing a few renunciations.
To consumption
Giving up overconsumption and consuming the minimum can be difficult when we are constantly conditioned in the street, through the media, … We are constantly solicited by advertising.
The current consumer society makes sure to convince us of certain “needs” that are not: with household appliances, cars, cell phones always more powerful …
To productivity
Today’s society conditions us to produce more and faster. We are in a world where producing often means making money.
Qualities such as sharing and benevolence are often overlooked. Producing the happiness of others, helping the sick, the elderly, children, the homeless, or others in need are often less valued than having a job where you make money! 🤑
It is increasingly difficult to be able to make a living from your passion if what you love produces little or no money.
Today’s world is speeding up and the benchmarks of stability are flying out the window.
Displaying happiness at all costs on social networks
The information, like life today, is immediate: text, tweet, email, …
No need to learn spelling at school, because we all have an automatic spellchecker, no need to learn a foreign language when we can just use Deepl or Google Translate.
No need to queue at the bank, we can just use an application, … or to go shopping, when we can order everything online!
To reinforce this non-socialization, no need to have real buddies when you can have thousands of friends on Facebook or Instagram. Sadness…
Social networks condition us to permanently display a happy and colorful life. Happiness has become obligatory. We must always be beautiful, smiling, know how to cook, know how to parachute, swim in the middle of dolphins to accumulate likes and comments, and finally have the feeling of existing!
Feelings of sadness, anger, or anxiety become shameful. But we are never happy all the time. But these natural feelings must be drowned in the tumult of daily life.
Therefore essential to take a break and urgently adopt slow living if we don’t all want to go crazy! Above all, avoid making yourself feel guilty for taking time for yourself. Releasing the valve often allows you to gain in efficiency and productivity, rather than working more than you have to!
The different areas of application of the Slow Life movement
In practical terms, this concept is applied in many areas of daily life.
Slow Food
Slow Food has become an international organization, with the snail as its emblem, which advocates healthy, local, seasonal, and environmentally friendly food.
The term slow is praise to slowness but also an acronym:
- S for “Sustainable,
- L for “Local”,
- O for “Organic”,
- W for “Whole”: Whole, not processed.
Slow Travel
The Slow Tourism trend was born in the 2000s. It puts forward a different way of traveling, avoiding in particularly fast and very polluting means of transportation such as airplane and favoring bicycle, train, boat. ✈️
The goal is also to motivate people to do local tourism or travel by going to discover local cultures, inhabitants, their traditions. It is a slower way of traveling, more respectful of the environment and the country visited.
Slow Cosmetics
Slow Cosmetics encourages people to take care of themselves without harming the planet. Initiated by the Belgian Julien Kaibeck in the 2010s, this trend consists of consuming fewer cosmetics but more qualitative and environmentally friendly products (eco-responsible products) or making your own cosmetics from natural ingredients.
As for Slow Food, the followers of good living and better consumption want to know what they consume (reading labels, using applications,…). The origin of products, their manufacturing processes, and their environmental impacts become of crucial importance to these consumers.
Slow Decoration
The “slow” interior decoration is in rupture with the production of low-cost furniture, overproduction, and overuse of raw materials.
The slow deco induces quality furniture and objects, designed from sustainable materials and in a perimeter close to the distribution site in an optics of “consume local”. It favors objects and pieces of furniture made of natural materials, such as wood, rattan, raffia … or recycled materials (wood, cardboard, …). Second-hand consumption also fits perfectly into this concept.
It is in this movement that Sambal&Cheese privileges the reuse of recycled materials: wood coming from the seaside or abandoned and torn down houses, recycled objects found in dumpsters, … and natural materials such as macramé, rattan, … We try to propose products with a low environmental impact and being part of an eco-design approach. Most of our resources come from Melaka. Our products are designed in our workshop behind the house!