Downsizing

I guess this post may be a little cliche nowadays - isn't everyone talking about the economy right now? But honestly, my desire to simplify goes back further than the recession... It started when I was pregnant with Sophia, and my asthma was really bad. I had several asthma attacks - and let me tell you, if you think not breathing is scary, try adding the pressure of knowing your baby isn't getting enough O2! So in an effort to eliminate ALL dust from our house, I cleaned up. I mean, I got rid of all clutter - there was not a single nic nac or picture frame left standing. Every flat surface in the house was bare, and it felt good.

Slowly, some picture frames and decorations have crept back onto the mantel, the nightstand, the bookshelves. But I still aspire to keep things as simple as I can.

I don't know if it's because my life has felt a little frantic lately, or because of the economy, but I have been feeling the same urgent need to clear the clutter in my life... a couple of months ago, I closed my facebook account, because it was cluttering my mind - it was just one more thing to check, one more pressure to keep up with, one more thing taking up space in my brain. Aaah, it felt good, like packing up those nic nacs and sending them off to a new life at the Salvation Army.

Today, I became completely enchanted with these houses, and the thought of living in a space were owning too much crap wasn't an option, where we didn't pay $500 a month just in utilities, where cleaning can't possibly take more than fifteen minutes... we are all within fifty square feet of each other - all. the. time. - anyway, so why not?

I'm just feeling a little too "owned" by our things these days - if we didn't have a TV, we wouldn't need a satellite, if we didn't have fifty sippy cups we would be forced to keep up with them better, if we didn't have so many lamps we wouldn't need to change so many light bulbs.

Now, I'm saying this while living in a 1,300 square foot bungalow. The average American house is now around 2,500 square feet - more than double the average house size in the 1950s. My house is quite a bit smaller than ALL of my friends' houses. And yet, sometimes I feel the need to downsize.

I love that I can hear my kids no matter where they are (so when Sophia asks me something and I say no, and then she turns around and asks Daddy the same thing, I can say "I heard that!") I love that we can't really go off into all of our own little parts of the house - we are usually all in the kitchen, or all in the office, or all in the living room. Lack of storage (my house was built in 1935, when, apparently, people did not own brooms and coats and luggage) has just forced us to avoid accumulating more than we need and be creative. Would I be just as happy in a two-hundred square foot house? Today, I think maybe yes.