The Joy of Less Read online

  For me, it was love at first sight.

  Despite the obvious signs of neglect — overgrown grass, broken windows, and peeling paint — the house was charming. It was two stories and had a wrap-around porch, which was edged at the top with gingerbread trim — the exact sort of porch that simply begged for rocking chairs and lemonade.

  The inside was a mess — the house had been vacant for three years and had sustained a lot of interior damage from burst pipes — but the structure was sound, and the layout of the home was perfect, with lots of nooks and crannies for children to roam and hide, an enormous farmhouse-style kitchen, and plenty of room for visiting friends and family. The yard was exactly what I had wanted. The house sat on over five acres of apple trees, berry bushes, fields, and woods with plenty of climbing trees, and was bordered on the back by a creek.

  Throughout their childhood years, my children were constantly exploring the outdoors, splashing in the creek or building forts in the woods.

  I knew this was our new home.

  We have lived here now for over thirteen years, and I cannot think of a better place in which we could have raised our children. Throughout their childhood years, my children were constantly exploring the outdoors, splashing in the creek or building forts in the woods. During the winter, they would create extensive snow tunnels and fortresses, and then return indoors in order to thaw out with hot chocolate in the farmhouse kitchen. Their creativity was endless. To this day, despite the fact that my daughter is now grown and my son is a teenager, both of my children would rather engage in a crabapple fight or try to catch crayfish in the creek than be glued to an iPad or iPhone.

  My husband and I also have learned a great deal from living here. In light of our deliberate choice of a simple, frugal lifestyle, we learned how to perform home repairs ourselves — fun things like plumbing, electrical work, framing, and flooring. We learned how to build sheds, playhouses, and furniture, and how to make beautiful items out of scrap material. Because of our rural location, we learned how to care for farm animals and how to create and manage a large garden, which provides healthy food for our family. Due to our choice to heat our home with a renewable resource, firewood, we learned how to operate chainsaws and log splitters. In order to make our food budget stretch, I learned how to purchase staples in bulk and then cook as much as possible from scratch, using as much produce from our garden or wild crafted from our fields as possible.

  Although I know that our lifestyle choice is not for everyone, I cannot begin to explain the joy that I have felt while watching my children chase each other in the back yard, seeing them playing with the farm animals, or giving each other rides in the wheelbarrow (something which has not stopped, even though my son is now 6’5”). I look at them and see two young adults who have not been caught up in consumerism, but instead are throwbacks to previous generations of people who preferred relationships over material things. That is something that will continue to benefit them — as well as the people around them — for the rest of their lives.

  Our move to a rural location in order to simplify our lives has also given me a lot of personal pride for the skills that my husband and I were able to develop — skills that benefited us as well as others. But, more than that, I have a deeper appreciation for my family — our slower pace of living has fostered our sense of belonging as we share life together.

  While the events that led to this lifestyle change were tragic, I am grateful that for us some good has come out of that tragedy — the ability to live our dream.

  ~Marybeth Mitcham

  The Undecided Pile

  Self Storage: When you care enough to just hide the stuff from his bachelor days rather than throwing it all away.

  ~Author Unknown

  “There’s a car under there?” I stared at the five-foot pile of junk that filled one entire bay of the garage.

  “Yeah, a VW Rabbit. I’m going to get it running and sell it as soon as I have time,” said my soon-to-be husband, Jimmy.

  “How long has it been there?”

  “Ten years.”

  For the first time, I realized the full extent of the project to move both our households into the house we’d just closed on. I was already having trouble making decisions about my own belongings even though I had considerable experience with downsizing from my frequent moves. And Jimmy! My God, had the man never thrown anything away in his entire life?

  We had started our packing project with good intentions and mutual consideration.

  “What’s in that box?” I’d asked.

  “My grandmother’s dishes. No one else wanted them when she died.”

  They were really ugly and chipped, but our relationship was still new enough that I hesitated to object to a family memento.

  After a day at his house resulted in only a piddling pile he was willing to give up, we moved on to my apartment.

  “How about this?” Jimmy asked, nudging a wicker basket.

  “All the programs from the plays I’ve gone to over the past twenty years. I thought they’d make a great collage someday.”

  He started to say something but apparently thought it prudent to let it go.

  After a few hours I realized that, at this pace, we’d never be ready to move by our deadline, so we agreed that it all would go in the attic, with the stipulation that as soon as we settled in, we’d ruthlessly go through it piece by piece. Maybe have a yard sale.

  “But the Rabbit goes!” I said.

  He was wise enough to realize he’d won the war, and easily agreed to offer the car to a single co-worker with a junk-filled back yard.

  Our move was accomplished; fifteen years passed. New stuff came in, old stuff went into the attic, or the cabinets, or the too-large closets, sometimes into the basement. I was fairly confident there was room for at least two vehicles in the garage since I never saw Jimmy’s van or truck on the street, but I preferred to stay ignorant of what might be stored in the rest of the space. We occasionally talked about that yard sale, but somehow never found the time.

  Then we decided to retire and follow our dream of buying a motorhome and wandering around the country having adventures. We took a year to plan our escape down to the tiniest detail. Or so we thought.

  “They made a bid on the house, but if you accept it, they want to move in a month from now,” announced our real estate agent.

  We wanted to jump up and down and shout “Hallelujah!” The one element we’d had no control over was how long it would take to sell our house, and here the third couple to look at it actually wanted it! Thank God our motorhome was ready to move into. We were in the home stretch.

  Thus began the most challenging period of our marriage. Jimmy was still working every day, so I went through the house room by room, with the exception of the basement, the attic and the garage, which we would handle together. I began by assigning each item to either the “keep” pile, the “thrift store” pile, the “junk pile, or “undecided.” Eventually it became obvious that the largest pile of all was the “undecided.” I invited friends and relatives in to take what they wanted, but still that “undecided” pile filled an entire room — two rooms after Jimmy and I finished with the basement and attic. The garage turned out to be the easiest. Jimmy agreed to sell most of its contents to the new buyer of the house, who apparently didn’t have enough garage junk of his own.

  “We just can’t keep it all,” I wailed, as we looked at the huge piles of “undecided” stuff on our last Sunday evening.

  Jimmy looked up from the box of Grandma Sowder’s ugly dishes. Was that a tear in the corner of his eye?

  “Okay, listen,” I said, knowing a quick solution had to be reached. “Let’s just rent a second storage unit, move all this stuff in, and once we get into the motorhome, we’ll sort through it, keep what we want and sell the rest at a yard sale.”

  “There’s a car under there?” I stared at the five-foot pile of junk that filled one entire bay of the garage.

  Wel
l, our site at the RV park didn’t have a yard, did it? Besides Jimmy had sold his truck and van, so how could we move the stuff out of storage?

  Six months later, off we went, heading west for the beginning of our adventure, one substantial monthly payment automatically deducted from our checking account for two large storage units. I only thought about them when I balanced our checkbook at the end of the month.

  Then one day the manager of the storage facility called. A junk dealer was offering five hundred dollars cash for the contents of our “undecided” unit. Jimmy balked when I told him.

  “If you can name five things that are in it, we’ll keep it.” I said.

  “Uh, Grandma Sowder’s dishes. And I think there’s a table, uh, maybe some pots and pans?” He held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, we’ll split the five hundred.”

  Every couple of years, we go through the remaining storage unit while visiting our hometown, and over the years we’ve downsized to the smallest unit available. It’s been surprising how little most of the stuff we’d deemed keepers seems to matter anymore. All that remain are family documents, a few antiques, and some artwork we still can’t relinquish.

  The reasons people hold on so tightly to stuff they don’t use is because they think they might need it someday, or because it reminds them of a person or a time from their past. Maybe it gives them a sense of security, of safety in a world that sometimes feels too large, too impersonal, too lonely. Jimmy and I have learned that most stuff can be easily and cheaply replaced if you need it, and is quickly forgotten when out of sight. And those forever memories are carried with us in our hearts, not our attics, and are all we really need. How often do you actually dig Aunt Helen’s teapot or Grandpa Jack’s old derby out of the attic and think about the departed? More often it’s an old song, the smell of fresh-dried lavender, the taste of rhubarb pie — catching you unaware — that triggers memories and brings those loved ones back to you for a brief moment.

  We still constantly fight the impulse to acquire, but it’s now kept under control by the limitations of our space. And to our surprise and delight, having only as much as we actually need gives us as much of a sense of freedom as does living in a home on wheels.

  ~Sheila Sowder

  Good Riddance

  Material blessings, when they pay beyond the category of need, are weirdly fruitful of headache.

  ~Philip Wylie

  There’s nothing like the sudden loss of a parent to put one’s life, and one’s priorities, in perspective. My dad had passed away four months ago and my husband Eric’s dad had a serious illness. We decided it was time to move closer to family.

  So one night, after dinner, while we were all still sitting around the dinner table, Eric brought up the subject, with only two words: “We’re moving.” The statement hung in the air for a moment, with none of us speaking, before he continued. Holding up a calendar, Eric added, “We’re planning on moving at the end of May, back to Fairhope.” There was another second or two of silence in this sudden dinner-turned-family-meeting.

  “It’s only January,” fourteen-year-old Sarah said, after giving twelve-year-old Gus a “back me up” look. “Why the rush? And what about your jobs?”

  “I do international work,” Eric said, “so I can work anywhere. As for your mom, she’s a teacher and a writer; she’s pretty mobile, too.”

  After a little further discussion, both kids were on board to prepare for our move from just outside Nashville, Tennessee to Fairhope, Alabama, 520 miles south. Although Sarah had been right in saying that we had months to get ready, we had a large house that was filled to the brim with possessions. We had four months to empty a four-bedroom house with a five-car garage, guest quarters downstairs, and a 150-square-foot basement storage room. The house would have to be fairly empty by the first of May for us to put it on the market and have it sold by the end of that month.

  We laid out a plan: everyone was to pack a box a day, label it, and tape it up for a storage space we had rented in Fairhope. This box-a-day plan sounded simple, but every day there were decisions about what we really, truly needed for everyday living, because the boxed items would stay in storage for several months until we found another house.

  And so the months flew by, with our house becoming more streamlined and less cluttered. Some items were destined for storage, and twelve vanloads of stuff went to Goodwill. By the first of May, with so many possessions removed, we discovered something we had not anticipated: we were suddenly less stressed about taking care of the house. Eric noticed it first. “Do you know,” he asked me, “we’re not spending nearly as much time dusting, moving and generally taking care of things?” His eyes took in the living room, empty now save for the television and sofa. “Our life is simpler.”

  Rather than our “owning” possessions, after a time, they “own” us.

  “Yeah,” Gus chimed in. “I kind of like it this way.”

  We all seemed to feel a sense of lightness, without all those possessions.

  As we drove to Alabama it occurred to me that none of us truly owns our possessions. Every item you have must be cared for, kept clean and, sometimes, insured. Rather than our “owning” possessions, after a time, they “own” us.

  By the time we got to Fairhope, offloaded our truck and collapsed onto our blow-up mattresses, we knew it was time to downsize. With most of our things in storage, we first looked for a house that would accommodate us and no more — no guest quarters, no huge garage. The minimalist bug had bitten us, and hard.

  We moved our basic necessities into the new, smaller house, and after a few weeks, all four of us went to the storage unit, planning on taking all that to the new place. But a funny thing happened: once we opened the door to the storage unit, nothing inside appealed to us.

  For example, the chairs in need of reupholstering didn’t need to come out; I’d had them for years and had never touched that project. The huge roll of upholstery fabric was there, too, still in its original wrapper. Parts of bed frames were there, still in need of repair. Filing cabinets, full of papers we’d not even looked at in years, lined the walls. Boxes of hundreds of books and dozens of pounds of research papers from my writing projects stood nearly to the ceiling. Boxes of stuffed animals and toys the children hadn’t even wanted or played with were stacked near the entrance.

  We all stood there, eyeing all the possessions that had consumed so much of our energy. We eyed the mountain of “stuff” again, and then, nearly simultaneously, we all said, “It’s all going to Goodwill.” That was eleven years ago, and we haven’t missed any of it. And now, when we’re rearranging items such as furniture or artwork, we pretend we’re moving again, and that usually lightens our load a bit more.

  ~T. Jensen Lacey

  Giving New the Boot

  I love charity thrift stores. Amazing one-of-a-kind pieces at terrific prices, and all the money you spend goes to a good cause.

  ~Lara Spencer

  “Look what he’s done!” My eight-year-old daughter and her six-year-old brother were returning from their first day of the new school year. Rhys had left the house wearing grey high-tops and Levis and a crisp blue and grey football shirt, all purchased especially for the occasion. “Look!” Ceily repeated theatrically, flinging her arms toward her brother’s incomprehensible state of disrepair.

  His new shoes were suggesting at least six month’s steady wear. The Levis, although they still retained most of one knee and surprisingly all of the other, clearly posed the question as to how much longer this would be the case. The blue and grey football shirt? Well, obviously Rhys had painted with black and orange and red; and, clearly, there had not been enough paint smocks for the entire class.

  “Oh Rhys!” I said. Not surprised but, nonetheless, disappointed. “However, did you manage…?”

  “It was a rough day,” he interjected, “and the clothes were squeezy and stiff.”

  “Stiff… squeezy,” I repeated. “Well, you know that your kinderga
rten clothes don’t fit anymore, so I guess it’s shorts and a T-shirt tomorrow until I see if I can do anything with these…” and I paused, considering what I should call the once pristine outfit.

  The following day, I relayed the story to my sister. “We had a good talk after he was in bed — his dad away and us not having a lot of money, trying to make ends meet as they say…. Of course, we’ve had this conversation before and I’m sure that the next time he won’t wipe painty hands on his shirt; he’ll use magic marker on the buttons or something like that. It’s never the same thing but it’s always something.”

  “Have you thought about buying his things from the thrift shop until he gets a little less impulsive?”

  The thrift shop? The core of my being gave a violent shudder. Granted, I had peered in the store several times and once I had even seen a window display that seemed rather attractive. But dress one of my children from the thrift shop? What if another child or another parent recognized the clothing? What if someone saw me in there?

  Eventually I found myself checking the thrift shop before I purchased new clothing or kitchen cutlery or even hinges for the bathroom cabinet.

  When both knees of the Levis disappeared and I had to turn the pants into shorts, I decided, at the expense of my misguided pride and ego, to explore my sister’s suggestion.

  “Cool!” said my son when he saw my bargains. “Man! These are exactly like Dooley’s.” I said nothing.

  The year wore on and both children’s clothes wore out; and, eventually, I brought home two sweaters and a pair of jeans for Ceily. They were in excellent condition. And then one afternoon in spring, I found the perfect lightweight skirt and shirt for myself. “Why not?” I thought. “They’re like new and anyway, who’s to know?”