The Joy of Less

by Amy Newmark

  My first e-mail went out in September: “I’m starting a dialogue early this year. I know that we all have our own ideas about gift-giving but maybe we could try something different this year. Please share your thoughts.” I attached copies of the articles I’d read.

  As the weeks went by, e-mails flew back and forth. My son, who had recently discovered the joys of working with clay, wrote, “I think we should all give pottery!” I replied that I would welcome homemade gifts.

  My mother-in-law sent a lengthy e-mail about what she didn’t want to receive as a gift, including charitable donations given in her name. It didn’t seem personal enough, she felt. I affirmed her willingness to speak her truth.

  All of us chimed in with gift ideas that were both meaningful and simple. The declared winners were: (l) a family photograph from the past that came with a special memory, perhaps with a written explanation of that memory; (2) a used book that somehow expressed an attribute of the person receiving it; or (3) a special card. The only “ground rules” were that we could each choose any of the three ideas, and that no “store-bought” gifts would be exchanged or expected.

  I relaxed into the season in a new way, free from the gift-buying anxiety that had plagued me in past years.

  As the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas passed, I experienced a new spaciousness to the holiday season. Instead of making endless lists of gifts and trooping through malls looking for things my family might like, I roamed through my own bookshelves. Suitable books for various family members almost leaped off the shelves. I relaxed into the season in a new way, free from the gift-buying anxiety that had plagued me in past years.

  Three weeks before Christmas, all my “shopping” had been done and I had a wonderful time wrapping my selections in beautiful pictures saved from old calendars — just the right size for books.

  Inspired by my newfound freedom, I also decided to create a special booklet of favorite quotations for each family member, to go along with their books — something I had wanted to do in previous years but never found the time to accomplish.

  Finally the day came. Our gift exchanges were joyous and peaceful. Each book was a treasured gift. My mother-in-law gave each of us a handmade card and asked us to write in them a wish for ourselves for the coming year. She collected the cards and said she would give them back to us at the end of the year to see if our wishes came true. From my sister I received a beautiful framed childhood photo of the two of us that brought back special memories; from my daughter-in-law came a humorous book that recalled my Southern heritage.

  And my son… He gave us his best pottery creations to date — “memory bowls,” he called them, each uniquely created to hold whatever family treasure or written memory we wanted to place in it.

  Freedom from the tyranny of gift-buying — the tyranny of living up to cultural expectations of what Christmas “should” be like — also gave me freedom to experience the joy and diversity of who we are as a family. I can hardly wait to see what we’ll do next year!

  ~Maril Crabtree

  Downsizing to Our “Yacht”

  Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

  ~William Morris

  “What is all this stuff anyway?” we’d ask ourselves as we weaved in and out of the labyrinth of accumulated junk. After thirty years of marriage, with three sons raised and out of the house, did we really need all this “space” now, particularly since we tended to fill it up with things of questionable value?

  One day, as a pile of bills dropped through the mail slot, we realized we were paying separately for cooking gas, heating oil, electricity, water, sewage, and garbage removal, while our friends who lived in apartments or condominiums paid one single (and modest) fee for all of those. We started investigating apartments in our area, and found that we could live at a little over half our present housing costs if we switched lifestyles.

  But moving from a house, with basement, garage, and several bedrooms, to a smaller apartment would mean we’d have to cull through an entire adult lifetime of stuff. Did I really need to keep those college term papers on how Shakespeare influenced the poetry of Lord Byron? The answer was pretty clear.

  Much of what we had kept — and boxed up and moved with us several times from place to place — had no present purpose and no imaginable future use. Our guiding principle became a ruthless utilitarian assessment: will we ever use this again? If no, out to the curb with it!

  Week after week, for a month, the curb in front of our house on garbage collection day was lined with stuff. It was astonishing, like the parade of clowns emerging from a car parked in the middle of a circus ring. Why did we keep that stuff and how did it all fit in our house?

  Moving day came, and I had very carefully measured the apartment into which we were moving and planned every inch of book shelving and furniture placement. Bookshelves or tall wooden closets lined nearly every wall in the apartment, but one wall in each room was left “clean” and empty, a concession to our need not to feel “trapped.”

  If we were living in a space this size, and this well-organized, on a yacht, we’d think ourselves very fortunate.

  Now here is where we discovered the serendipity of our new home: the long living/dining area led up to an east wall that was almost entirely waist-to-ceiling-high windows. Thus, the place was flooded with light from dawn until mid afternoon. That was already a plus. Every other room in the place also had large windows facing either east or south, so despite the floor to ceiling bookshelves on most walls, we don’t feel imprisoned in our space.

  We also had brought with us our huge fresh-water aquarium, which further “opened up” the place so that we didn’t feel boxed in. There is nothing like a micro environment full of plants and moving, brightly-colored fish to avoid the closed-in feeling that an apartment can impose upon someone more used to larger spaces.

  Now that long narrow living/dining area that is the central space of our home feels like the carefully apportioned spaces of a yacht!

  We’re not wealthy, but had enjoyed the good fortune of others who were, and when we began to see ourselves as living “on a yacht,” instead of merely a small apartment, we had to laugh. We may not be sailing around, island-hopping the Caribbean, and the view out the windows only changes with the seasons, but still, we often tell ourselves: if we were living in a space this size, and this well-organized, on a yacht, we’d think ourselves very fortunate. So, why not enjoy it? (The fish, by the way, and their little world inside ours, contribute to the effect.) Sometimes how you feel about where you live comes from how you see it.

  ~Gene R. Smillie

  When Less Truly Is More

  Owning fewer keys opens more doors.

  ~Alex Morritt

  We stood in the middle of our living room, overwhelmed by the task of sifting through our charred belongings. The evening before, we’d returned from dinner and a show with friends to find two fire trucks and an ambulance in front of our house. The firefighter said he wasn’t sure how the fire started, but luckily our neighbor called 911. We had left the windows open and the fans running to help with the scorched smell, and we spent the night in a hotel.

  “Where do we even start?” Ed asked.

  “I guess we should start throwing stuff in these trash bags,” I ventured. “If there is anything that looks like it might be salvageable, let’s put it on the front porch.”

  I ripped open a box of trash bags and handed one to Ed. I put on a pair of disposable gloves and picked up what had been a photo of the two of us on vacation in Hawaii. How could I throw it away? Ed barely looked at an item before throwing it in the trash bag.

  “Maybe we should go through things together,” I said.

  “Honey, that’s going to take twice as long.” He gave me the “are-you-going-to-control-this” look that I’d gotten from him several times throughout our twenty-two-year marriage. It was usually followed by a comment about me acting like my mothe
r.

  “Okay, you’re right.” I went back to working on my own corner of the room while trying not to cringe every time he threw something away. He didn’t understand. Our house had been a great source of pride for me over the years. It was almost as if creating the perfect home was a way of creating the perfect life, even though real life had never quite matched the life I tried to create. We owned china and silverware for elaborate dinner parties that we never threw. There were extra bedrooms for children that we never had. Suddenly I realized how much of my life had been spent preparing for my life. I began to cry.

  “Honey, it’s okay.” Ed tried to console me. “We’re just lucky we weren’t here when it happened. They’re just things. They can be replaced.”

  He kissed me on the forehead and then looked at me tentatively. He was always visibly uncomfortable when I cried. I calmed myself and we continued to work well into the night and then headed back to our temporary home.

  Suddenly I realized how much of my life had been spent preparing for my life.

  The efficiency we rented was 500 square feet. Our house was more than four times that size and I couldn’t image how Ed and I could live here while the house was being repaired. For the first time in years, we’d have to share a bathroom. I looked at the tiny table that was so close to the stove; it would be impossible for both of us to share a meal there.

  “Do you want to go out for dinner tonight?” I asked.

  “Sure. I saw an Indian restaurant about six blocks away. We could walk there.”

  That night was the beginning of the end of our routine lives. In our home, Ed had his man cave and I had — well, I had the rest of the house. Often, after work and on the weekends, we would spend time in our house completely separate from each other, only meeting up at the end of the night when it was time for bed.

  In a four-bedroom house, it was easy to grow apart, but living in one tiny room changed that. We went to outdoor concerts, museums and new restaurants together. I no longer spent an entire Saturday doing housework because it took only fifteen minutes to tidy up the apartment. Getting dressed also became a breeze because I only had a fraction of the clothes I’d previously owned so I didn’t spend hours trying on clothes or looking for matching accessories.

  We spent almost three months living in what was essentially an oversized hotel room, but we enjoyed our time there. Learning to live without the items that we thought were essential helped us to realize that they weren’t essential at all.

  When the renovations were done, the house no longer looked like our home. The new paint colors, hardwood floors and appliances that I’d selected were beautiful, but they weren’t for us. I had no desire to begin filling the rooms again with stuff that we rarely used and didn’t need. It occurred to me that I had bought so many things that were supposed to make life easier and better, but they’d done just the opposite.

  Five months later we sold our house to a lovely young couple with two kids. Spending time outdoors was something that Ed and I discovered we loved, but brutal Chicago winters kept us indoors a lot, so we moved to Florida. The proceeds from selling our house were more than enough to buy a two-bedroom condo. The best part is that it’s within walking distance of the beach, which is where we now spend most of our time. I never thought I would be grateful for a fire, but I feel freer and lighter than I’ve felt in years.

  ~K.D. King

  Warming Up to Less

  What seems to us bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.

  ~Oscar Wilde

  Our nine-year-old refrigerator broke earlier this year — the second breakdown in two years — and we decided to buy a new one instead of paying to repair it again. Over the course of the next month, we ordered five different refrigerators from various companies, even an old refurbished model, and each one arrived shiny and spacious and ready to be filled.

  There was only one problem. Each time the deliveryman plugged one of the refrigerators into the kitchen wall socket, my wife had to retreat to our bedroom covering her ears, and I had to ask the delivery crew to take the new refrigerator away.

  Until then we had thought my wife’s hearing was as normal as any other fifty-five-year-old woman’s, just a little more sensitive to noise than most other people. As it turned out, she had developed in middle age an extreme sensitivity to high-pitched sounds — the kind made by the new, energy-efficient compressors that most new refrigerators are equipped with these days. (It’s a condition known as hyperacusis, and our attempts to replace the refrigerator were our first clue to this new stage in her life.)

  After failing to find a regular sized fridge to replace our old one — and not wanting to continue filling our picnic cooler with twenty-pound bags of ice from the grocery store every other day — we thought a smaller refrigerator might make less noise. So, we bought a mini-fridge, a 3.2 cubic foot model the size you might install in a dorm room, and put it in the garage. It’s now sitting plugged into the socket as far from the living area as possible, and my wife doesn’t hear its high-pitched sound in the house.

  At first we worried about how many times we’d have to go out to the garage every time we wanted something. But after installing the mini-fridge in the garage, we discovered something unexpected: we didn’t really need a large fridge, after all.

  Many of the items that we thought needed to be kept cold, such as onions, potatoes, tomatoes, mustard, jelly, ketchup, and salad dressing, didn’t need to be refrigerated at all.

  And now that our freezer, which is barely the size of a shoebox, can no longer hold a gallon of mint chip ice cream, we don’t keep ice cream in the house. If we want any ice cream, we go out to the local ice cream or frozen yogurt store.

  After installing the mini-fridge in the garage, we discovered something unexpected: we didn’t really need a large fridge, after all.

  But that’s okay. Not only are we eating less ice cream, we’re exercising more since each time we need to get something from the fridge, we have to walk an extra ten yards into the garage and another ten yards back to the kitchen again.

  The only real challenge to keeping a refrigerator in our garage, aside from having to walk the extra yards, is that my wife has to use noise-reducing earplugs or noise-muffling earphones each time she goes out to the garage to retrieve food from the fridge or to get in her car.

  It’s taken a few months, but we’ve fallen into a routine, and, much to our surprise, we’ve found that we’re eating less and fewer times a day, and what we’re eating is healthier, which means we’re making more nutritious meals. That’s because every week we buy fresh fruit and produce, and we plan our dinner menu depending on what is available at the store.

  Fresh fruit and vegetables — apples, grapefruit, peaches, peppers, tomatoes, carrots, and such — ripen on our kitchen counter and taste as if we had just picked the fruit off the trees or bushes, or pulled the vegetables straight out of the earth.

  Even better, from an environmentalist’s point of view, our energy footprint has shrunken since installing the small fridge. Each month I check my electric bill, pleased to find that we are using significantly less electricity than we used in the past to power the larger fridge (though it’s not always true that smaller fridges use less energy than larger fridges).

  Of course, there are some downsides. If I want a beer or hard cider or just a glass of tomato juice, I’ve learned to enjoy drinking it at room temperature, or else I need to plan ahead and put my beverage in the mini-fridge to chill.

  Warm cider, I have to admit, is an acquired taste. But I’ve discovered that I actually enjoy its rich, bold flavor at room temperature almost as much as I enjoy it cold.

  It turns out that my wife likes sipping it warm, too, especially now that she can remove her noise-cancelling earphones in the kitchen and enjoy her drink in silence.

  ~Bruce Black

  The Family Farm

  Where thou art — that — is Home.

  ~Emily Dickinson

  A few year
s ago, my in-laws made a big announcement. After forty years in their farmhouse, they were selling the house and moving to a retirement community. This came as quite a shock to us, not just because the house had become a family “heirloom,” but also because of my father-in-law’s packrat tendencies — none of us thought he could ever let go of the stuff he’d collected over the years. My in-laws’ farmhouse sat on five acres of land that had numerous structures, including two barns and a large workshop. And these buildings were stuffed to the rafters with the many tools, spare parts, old furniture, and other treasures my father-in-law had accumulated over the years. In order to get the apartment they wanted, my in-laws had needed to act quickly, and they left themselves only three months to sort through and pack up forty years worth of stuff.

  Over the years, I’ve found my mother-in-law to be unflappable, a strong and calming presence when life throws its curveballs. But the sudden rush of this move had even her rattled, as she wrestled with her emotions and worried about my father-in-law’s reluctance to part with anything.

  We were heartbroken to see the old house go, but despite this we put on smiles, wanting to make the transition smooth for the two people who had done so much for us over the years. Privately, my husband and I worried. This house had been a labor of love for my in-laws for most of their adult lives. They had taken it from a dilapidated eyesore to a magnificent dwelling, raising three boys (as well as one dog, two goats, and twenty-five chickens — but that’s another story) and holding down multiple jobs along the way. In addition, through their generosity and hospitality, my in-laws had turned the home into a sweet haven for the extended family, giving us many wonderful memories of Christmases around the fire, summer solstice celebrations, and explorations in the property’s woods and pond. So much of their life was tied up in that house, not to mention my father-in-law’s collections. Could they truly leave it all behind? And what would their life be like once they did?