Downsizing

There is a lot of buzz these days about "downsizing" and small homes.  HGTV even has a series about it.  Unfortunately I don't believe many people think through all that the concept implies.  True, moving from a 6,000 square foot home to a 5,000 square foot home is technically "downsizing", but it's hardly a sacrifice.  But what about cutting your space in half, or less?

For decades I've made a living by building BIG homes for others.  If you have a family of 4 or 5 or more, downsizing is hard to do.  For them, bigger is always better.  If you have a home stuffed with fine furniture you've bought or inherited over a lifetime, and if you're unwilling to part with any of it, downsizing is virtually impossible.  But if the kids are grown and out of your space, if you don't have a lot of overnight company, if you don't throw big parties, and if you aren't married to your "stuff", downsizing is a great way to de-clutter and live simply.

I can, and did, many years ago, and here's how it all started:  One evening (back when I was single) I noticed my closet shelves were dusty.  I took everything out, cleaned every surface, then started to put things back in.  That's when it dawned on me I had tons of stuff I never, and I mean NEVER, used or wore.  Like jeans that *ahem* must have shrunk in the dryer, and shirts that went out of style back during the Clinton administration.  And empty boxes that I kept in case the contents turned out to be defective and I had to send back, but of course never did.  When I put back in only those things I used, I realized my closet was waaaaaay bigger than I needed.

That got me to thinking about what else I might be holding on to that was just taking up space.  Soon I was like a commando on a mission.  Every closet, the linen cabinets, every chest and drawer, underneath every lavatory, everything got inspected and culled.  Then I began thinking about furniture.  Why do I need a sofa and 3 big chairs in a den when I only have one butt?  And what's the point of having bedrooms that never were used?  (I finally gave up on the Swedish Bikini Team ever paying me a surprise visit.)  Or a dining table with 2 leaves and 6 chairs...or was it 8 chairs?...and a hutch?

Then I put a pencil to what all this was costing me.  The payments for a large house that I didn't need, plus the taxes, utilities, insurance, maintenance and upkeep, that @%&# yard....it was depressing!  Eventually I met and married K and we decided (me enthusiastically, her grudgingly at first) that we could do just fine with half the space.  The "For Sale" sign went up, a deal was struck, and then it was time to put my money where my mouth was. 

By the time the movers arrived we had given some stuff away to friends and family, put some in storage (it's still there), took some with us, and sold some on Craig's List.  My moment of truth was when I was packing up my 450 +/- books.  K asked me if I ever re-read any of them, and I said no.  Then she pointed out that all I really had were 450 hardcover dust catchers.  *Hmmm, good point*  I kept a few volumes that were special to me and gave away/sold the rest.  Today I pretty much read only kindle books.

We moved into temporary quarters in a 2 bed, 2 bath apartment, but found it such easy living we decided to just stay put and let maintenance handle all those pesky old chores I so hated.  We have since downsized from even that as we still had more space than we needed.  I'm now thinking about 1000-1200 square feet, or about the size of the den and kitchen shown in the photo at the top of this post, would be perfect.

My friend who lives full-time on a 35' boat in St Pete, FL would be proud of me.  He taught me to keep only what I needed and nothing else.  That's only a slight exaggeration.  We do have to stay vigilant as it's easy to backslide and buy things that wind up stuffed in the back of the closet a few weeks later.

I would consider building a home again if I could ever find the right site to put it on.  Not to sound picky or anything, but I could probably be happy in a small, cozy little place like this, complete with a similar view, of course. 

S

The knee bone's connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone's connected to....

Yesterday, in the aftermath of a police shooting in Whittier, CA, the police chief said something that really stuck with me.  He said, "Police work has changed so much in just the past four years.  People today don't want to follow rules....people don't care for each other anymore."

There is so much going on in our society today that is interrelated.  The Whittier gunman had just been released from prison and was a known gang member.  Why do people join gangs?  I've heard it's because they want to belong....belong to a group, a family of sorts.  So where is their birth family?  Are they having to work multiple jobs to pay their bills and not have time to look after their kids?  Has dad (or mom) just disappeared?  Are the parent(s) trying to escape their own troubles by turning to drugs or alcohol?

Now let's connect some dots:  For many decades government statistics have proudly reported the increase in productivity for the last quarter or the last year.  This means the same number of people can now produce more with the help of new technology, or the same amount can be produced using less people.  What used to take 10 workers to do can now be done with robots being operated by just 2 workers.  So where did those 8 displaced workers go?  Unemployment statistics say they have jobs somewhere, but they're probably working for dramatically less than they were before.

To make up for the pay cut, and to be able to maintain the standard of living they were used to, many take on a second job.  Meanwhile they're being bombarded by TV, the internet, etc, urging them to buy even more stuff.  It's a viscous circle, everyone looking out for themselves, wanting more and more, while not even having time to love and care for their own kids.

Is our system of "capitalism on steroids" partially to blame for this decline in our values?  Investors, usually operating through their 401K-fueled mutual funds, and hedge fund managers, don't give a damn about the laid off workers.  They don't care about the product being produced by the companies they invest in, whether it's a quality product or not, whether rules have to be "bent" in order to squeeze out another $.50, or anything else.  All they want is maximum profits, no excuses.  If American workers can't come through for them, others somewhere else can.

What has happened to us?  Capitalism is a great system, fact, but somewhere we stopped working for the common good and started looking out only for #1.  One extreme wants others to give them something, while at the other end they yell "I've got mine, screw you!"

Rarely do we need much more stuff.  A coffee maker is a coffee maker.  If you can't see your 65" TV, you don't need a 75" TV....you need glasses!  There's no need to trade in your 3-year-old car with 40,000 miles for a new, shinier model.  We're being suckered by marketing.  We want our friends to look at us and think we're really "cool".  We've become narcissists to one degree or another.  "Look at me, look at me!"

Here's the final conundrum:  We can live very comfortably with less, giving us more time to care for our kids, hopefully keeping them out of gangs and off drugs.  But if we don't buy more and more stuff, more people will lose their jobs, and we begin the cycle all over again.  Productivity is good....to a point.  Then we must face the unintended consequence of being too productive for our own good.  That productivity sweet spot is elusive.

Problems are easy to identify.  Answers are hard to find.  *sigh*

S

How much is too much?

Yesterday my friend Joe Hagy, aka "Cranky Old Man", posted about all the things he didn't have as a kid growing up in the 1950's....things like color TV, Netflix, cell phones, FM radio, air conditioning, a car with power windows and lane departure warning, etc, mainly because those things hadn't been invented yet.  I grew up without those things, too, and we were still happy as could be.  Today we have two of everything, and lament the fact that we don't have three of everything like our neighbors, the Jones's.  'Merica!

Six years ago we sold our 3500+ square foot home and moved into a two bed / two bath apartment.  It was supposed to only be for a year until I could find a suitable lot and build us a home more appropriate for two people.  It turned out I / we liked the maintenance-free apartment lifestyle.  It didn't take long, however, for that second bedroom to turn into our catch-all / junk room, so after another "stuff purging" we downsized again into a smaller but nicer one bedroom.

Now here we are about to downsize again.  This time it was prompted by the fact that the $10 BILLION dollars worth of new construction going up within a mile radius of us, and the 8,000 new permanent jobs that will come with it, are making our little utopia a congested nightmare.  Plus, management seems to think that our community is now worth its weight in gold.  It isn't.

Last week we went through every box, every cabinet and drawer, every closet and nook and cranny, and simplified once more.  What we've found is that if you downsize in steps, it's much easier to accept.

We've gone in six years from one huge rolltop desk to two smaller desks, and shortly to just one.  Much of our furniture, none of which held any sentimental value, was given away to family and friends, sold on Craig's List, or put into storage for later use, except "later" never came.

We decided we didn't need that extra blender, or the food processor, pressure cooker, or the toaster oven that we only used twice to melt cheese on open faced roast beef sandwiches.  Ditto for the two extra coffee makers that were made obsolete (according to my wife) by the new model that George Clooney was hawking on TV, the extra set of cookware and dishes and drawer full of dull knives, and all those old towels that two people will never, ever need. 

Most of our books long ago gave way to Kindles, and a Bose radio brings us magnificent sounds that belie its tiny size.  I also finally gave up hope that all those pairs of jeans I saved that "shrank" in the dryer will ever somehow stretch back enough to fit my 2016 waistline.  And as much as I've cut back, K has cut back even more.  :)

This time we're giving up about 200 square feet, but because it's arranged much better, and without any long hallways, I think it will actually live larger.  Plus we'll now have an on-site dog park, a "pet grooming station", and a gym with actual instructors.  (And you know how much I love exercise....I could sit and watch it for hours!)

So how many more downsizes are there in us?  Where will this all end?  Maybe....  

Umm, probably not.  Looks like a lot of maintenance.   How about....

....the Ultimate Woodie?  No?  OK, I have it....

 Yup.
 

S