CASE IN POINT

The price of anything 

is the amount of life you exchange for it.

-Henry David Thoreau

Last week I posted a picture of this vintage suitcase.  I really love that suitcase.  I really do.  Don't ask me why.  I'm so weird this way.   But my crush on that suitcase is not the storyline here.
Today I want to talk about the 90 minutes I spent cleaning it.  You see...the consequence of being obsessed with old things with seedy pasts is that you are ALWAYS cleaning up things.  If you know me, you know that virtually everything I own is at least 50 years old.  Unless it is food or toiletries, it makes me really happy to find something with a history.  If I need curtains, I find them at an estate sale for $5 (and then spend one afternoon washing them, another sunny day drying them on the line, and then one more afternoon sewing them back together since the threads were so fragile that the panel stitches literally disintegrated).  If I need a coffee pot I find an ancient one at the thrift store and then painstakingly clean out every nook and cranny and google "1962 Regalware Percolator manual".  Do you see a pattern?  My things take up a bit of time.  They make me happy.  But I have to recognize that they cost more than the $3.99 Salvation Army price sticker.

So back to the suitcase.  It was clean-up day at the "big house" (also known as the old house and more recently known as the house with all of our junk left in it).  I took some time to sort through our HUNDREDS of children's books to glean a relatively small number of treasured favorites.  And then I realized that I would need some place to put them!  So I picked one of my favorite pieces of 50's luggage and declared it "Guardian of the Books".  

The only problem was...it was really sticky.  Not lollipop residue sticky but rather, a sticky of a more mysterious and subtle variety.  Every surface had a tacky "grip" to it.  You know that feeling when you rest your hand on something and as you pull it away you get this fleeting sensation that the release wasn't as quick or natural as you would expect it to be?  That was the disconcerting problem.  So I spent an hour and a half scrubbing every inch of the case with hot water, soap and a toothbrush.  And while I was spending this perfectly beautiful and surprisingly autumn-like summer day scrubbing God-knows-what off of a suitcase I was watching Tom outside fighting his own battle.  I watched him labor for that same 90 minutes over  a busted cable in our pop up camper.  The kids played merrily with their toys  and Tom and I sweated and uttered profanities over ours.  
And then... I thought of our day.  
What would we have done today if I didn't own this beautiful old suitcase? 
That is the price of an old thing.  

On the other side, have you ever bought a brand new car just to spend months of agony, terrified that someone might scratch it?  Or yelled at your kids because they left a crayon in the backseat and now there will forever be a patch of plastic-like cornflower blue on the otherwise perfect upholstery.  Or didn't get to go on vacation this year because you can, in fact, manage a $500 car payment.  But.  Just.  Barely.   
That is the price of a shiny new thing.  

I'm starting to realize that there is a price to everything. New thing.  Old thing.  Expensive Thing.  Free Thing.  It doesn't make a difference.  The price is the THING.   And then, if you really want to freak yourself out, turn around and look at all the things around you!  Compound all that work, maintenance, stress, fear, and disappointment  that you bear over all those things!   Now...how many of those "things" are actually serving a real purpose and giving you some kind of joy that you wouldn't have if it weren't actually there?

I still love that suitcase.  I love it even more today! It serves a perfect purpose and takes up a prime piece of real estate in the little house.  But it kept me from something that day...and I will never know what it was.  I will never know where we would have gone.  Who I would have met.  What we would have seen.  What conversation I would have entered into with my children.  That is the price.  And if that is the price of owning something that I love, how much more the price of something that doesn't really mean anything to me?  Am I intentional about the things in my life?  Do I weigh their purpose with their cost?  Even after the big downsizing, if I look around me and answer honestly, the answer is still no.  But I'm working on it.  

*****In related news....Tom no longer "loves" the pop-up camper.*****

BIG MOVE : LITTLE HOUSE

"Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned by them rather than housed by them."

-Henry David Thoreau

 

 I have been reflecting a lot on how many people questioned the wisdom of downsizing into a smaller house.  So many people just couldn't get their minds around why a family of five would ELECT to go from an 1100 square foot, three bedroom house down to 800 square feet and two bedrooms.  Well, we have been in the little house for 10 days now.  And can I just say that it has been amazing?!  Downsizing and simplifying our life has really proved its worth this past week.

I love this little place that Tom made for us.  I wish I could REALLY make you understand  how much work he put into it. Literally every square inch was toiled over by him in some way.  My most recent hobby of collecting mid century furniture played some perfect timing for the decorating.  I must admit that I loooooove how it all turned out.  This house was built in 1943 as employee housing for the US Army's Manhattan Project .  We wanted to decorate it to reflect how it may have looked as a family would have lived in it during the 1950s.   Most of the furniture is in fact, from the 50's or 60s. 

Don't you love the blue fridge Tom found for me?

The kids love the hardwood floors for sock skating...and they are great surface for Dizzy's trains!
The electronics are clear indicators that we are, in fact, in the 21st century. 

The new section of kitchen is still under construction, but I still love all the room in this space.

We dropped one bedroom, about 300 square feet, and a lot of closet space for this house.  And amazingly, I have never felt so much space!   We have only been bringing over what we absolutely need to live with.  That has been such a great feeling....to leave behind the "things" we don't actually need.  If I am being honest...we are still swimming in things that we don't need around here.  But we probably downsized by at least HALF!  We are going to have a big estate sale soon to get rid of the rest of that stuff at the other house!   In the meantime, this is how I keep the stuff I still can't bear to part with from cluttering the house back up.    See those suitcases?  I have about 30 of them.  That is not a dramatic exaggeration.  That is most likely an understatement.  I do, in fact, have a little crush on vintage luggage.  So I am putting a few of my favorites to good use and selling the rest.  Simple as that!

How do you fit 5 people's "stuff" in 2 bedrooms with virtually no closet space?  Like this : )

 


So can I summarize all the things I adore about the new place? 

• CLEAN:  Every night  we have a clean house.  It is sparse, simple, and CLEAN.  (Maybe not your version of clean...but this is white gloves on my scale!) For those of you that know the tornado of a home I have historically kept....you can totally understand why this is a big deal for me!
•  NO MORE SHUFFLING:  I am no longer frustrated at myself, Tom and the kids over the amount of CRAP that just gets moved from this corner to that corner.  All. Day. Long.  I swear I spent every waking moment at the old place just moving stuff back and forth!  You know what I've learned?  If you don't have it....you don't have to move it.  Yeah.  It is actually that simple.   
•  RESOURCEFULNESS:  I am only bringing things into this house as I need them.  I am treating this as baby steps to the ultimate goal of learning to live on the absolute minimum. One day soon, I want us to have the confidence and freedom to put our lives in a backpack and meet some adventure.  So I am learning to re-think what we actually need around here. That means I might be making dinner and realize that I do, in fact, need salt.  But guess what you don't need? 
• A Microwave.  Stoves are really hot and I already have one. 
• Slotted Spoons.  Have you ever tried to drain liquid off the side of a TOTALLY run of the mill spoon?  Crazy...I know!  I challenge you to try it.  You will not believe your eyes.  
• 23 Cookbooks.  Years ago I copied all the recipes handed down to me in my own personal cookbook.  And the rest come from...wait for it....wait for it.......the Internet.  Call me new-fashioned.  Call me a sell out if you must.   But at the end of the day I want to know that 735 people have tried this recipe and gave it 4.5 stars.  Yes.  I am THAT dependent on your opinion people.  
• MY BACKYARD...AND MY FRONT YARD.  I have this amazing view of our crazy big and fun backyard from a massive living room window.  The kids have so much space to play and it makes me so happy to watch them from almost anyplace in the house!  And then...directly across the street is the perfect parking lot for riding bicycles.  And a rope swing that Tom hung from a big beautiful tree.  And the most amazing climbing tree.  And a swing set.  And best of all, a very random but perfectly placed STAGE in the middle of this huge park.  I've already been invited to a "performance" that they have been practicing this week.  

Yes...we love it here. We don't miss that extra bedroom.  Not at all. 

PLANS? WHAT PLANS?

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.” 

Henry David Thoreau

 

We haven't mapped out our adventure yet.  Tom and I are notorious fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of people.  We didn't know the sex of our last two children till they were born.  We didn't even discuss names till they were 2 days old.  Do you want a sure fire way to irritate your family?  Tell them you had a baby but don't give them a name.  Works every time.

People think we are crazy.  But we don't know how to be any other way.  We don't talk.  We have discovered that if you talk enough...you talk yourself right out of the most wonderful things.  We don't plan.  And not planning leaves our lives open to the most beautiful experiences.  We can say yes to anything we want and rarely even have to check a calendar.  We don't hold bedtime too seriously, which has resulted in lots of late night park excursions and shooting star hunts.   Our friends know that we throw a party at the last second and aren't the least surprised when we call them two hours before the affair and ask them to bring chips.  We go on vacation with no reservations.  Sometimes we don't even have a destination.  I have gone to work and come home to:

• A half-pipe built in the backyard

• A zipline installed in the backyard

• Tom telling me that he is going on a mission trip.  To Nicaragua.  Tomorrow.

   

  

  

 

So, no.  We don't have any preconceived notions about how this big trip is gonna go down.  Maybe we camp.  Maybe we RV.  Maybe we housesit for random families around the world.  Maybe we work on a ranch in Australia.  We are open and ready for anything.  It all sounds like an adventure to us.  

Obviously we will start nailing down a few specifics soon.  You know, just some minor details like

• What continent are we going to first?

• What homeschool curriculum will we use?

• How will we pay for it?

 

Fear not family and friends.   Those details are coming.  There is one thing I am certain of.  We are going to do this thing.

 

IN COMMON HOURS

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” 

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Mr. Thoreau, we will take you up on that challenge.

You see, something changed.  Something big.  A few weeks ago the unthinkable happened.  Tom finished our hardwood floors.  Crazy right?  If you know us, I can actually stop right here, because that speaks volumes.  But I will take a chance that at least one of you reading hasn't been on the "little house" ride with us for the past 10 years.

10 years.  We have been living in the "big house" and renovating "the little house" for 10 years.  Up until recently, it was a slow, even lackadaisical endeavor.  No worries.  No hurries.  Just the occasional ants in our pants that spurred us to take down a wall here.  Add a window there.  Dig a hole here, there and ....over there.  Then the inevitable happened.  We ran out of money.  Two house payments for 10 years will REALLY do a number on you eventually!  So we went into high gear.  And by we...I mean Tom.  Our son actually calls it "daddy's house" and thinks he lives over there.

For the record...I tried.
I lovingly showed up, work pants on, hair in a fashionable bandana, three adorable kids in tow.  I was ready to get my hands dirty.  One spilled can of paint on the hardwood floors and many regrettable words later and it was resolved.  NEVER AGAIN.  Since that day, I have assisted in the "little house move" by measuring and re-measuring every square foot of space.  Acquiring every possible piece of furniture or decor in anticipation of the move.  But mostly....nagging him about when it will be ready.  That is the truth that I am shamed to confess.

And finally, the home stretch!  The hardwood floors are sanded, varnished and ready for furniture move in.  Up to this point, every decision, fear, joy and dream was wrapped up in the finalization of that house.  Once it was complete, we could move in and sell the other house.  We would have some of our financial freedom (as well as our sanity) back.  We could FINALLY talk about something that WASN'T the "little house".  

So when the fumes of the varnish, the icing on our dream house, finally dissipate, do we breathe a sigh of relief and begin to celebrate?  Of course not.  Instead, we take a long car trip and confess every little dream and fear we have to each other.  We talk at length about how we want something new to marvel at....daily!  We want our 3 children to be fearless, wise, and crazy cool people who believe they can do anything they want to do.  We don't want to be financially or emotionally burdened by our "stuff" ever again.  We want to live on the bare necessities of life so that we are LIVING life and not just existing through it.  We don't want to sit in our new little house until age 65 when the pensions kick in.  So, naturally, there is only ONE logical result to a conversation like that, right?

Of course, we are going to take one year and leave it all behind. That's basically what we decided.  We are going to take our family and travel the world. THIS is what we have always wanted.  So....it was decided.  It was time to stop meandering around checking things off of our to-do lists.  It was time to buck up and create the life we had always imagined.  

And now it is out there.  We are weird wacky people.   We are going to buck this system just a little. We just want to know.  WHAT will happen if we reject every "norm" this world doles out and instead, focus every spare ounce of life on doing the ONE thing we want to do most? We figured if we went ahead and told you about it...we couldn't chicken out.  

There is sooooo much work involved in advancing this dream of ours.  We opened this blog as a record to our family, our friends, but mostly for our kids.  I want them to look back at this one day and feel the courage and resolve when it is time for them to pursue the one thing that stirs their soul.  

Is there something that you have always wanted to do?