contemplating a radical downsizing

[aslant]

kirk and i have been talking a lot about buying a house. or, scratch that, buying land, and what we might do with it. last night i showed him the tumbleweed houses, which he hadn't seen before. he was enchanted, as i was. but then we had a discussion about what it might actually look like to get rid of all of our stuff, and we started to run into problems and tricky questions.

what do we do with our treasured book collection? where does a sewing machine fit? would we sell the letterpress? (been thinking about that for a while, since we haven't touched it in a year.) store our video game systems at my parents' house? a tiny house is cute and all that, but it's essentially like moving into an RV. we'd bring the bare essentials: some clothes, reference books, table games, some cookware. there's not even an oven. and there is no space to store endless sentimental things. or even bulk things, like cases of glass jars for canning. or six amethyst cut-glass iced tea glasses from texas. or my old journals. we have boxes and boxes of this stuff, either in our cupboards or in the attic.

kirk says we could just rent storage space and keep things there that we absolutely can't bear to part with. but i can't help but think we would be storing away the things for our 'real' life. the life with a legitimate kitchen, an expansive bookshelf. the fact that we started to get kind of anxious or weirded out by this idea is a sign to me that maybe we're not ready. or it's just not the right step.

maybe homesteading is my calling, but it doesn't have to be combined with living in a minuscule house, or at least not yet. and we could still pare down a lot of our belongings in order to have less of this accumulated sentimental effluvia.

ETA: But also, what is the point of our treasured book collection? Isn't it essentially scenery, props, unless we re-read? I can think of a few to keep that I do constantly reread. The River Why. Wise Children. Good Omens. The Secret History. Middlesex. Almost everything else (save ref books on gardening, cooking) I think I could let go of.

Comments

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

i like tumbleweed! & trust me, as someone who lives in new york, i can tell you-- you CAN have your books. actually-- lining your walls with books? is super awesome insulation. no joke. good in winter & summer. so consider that. as for the rest of your belongings, well-- i don't know how much stuff you have. but "spaces" are always nice.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

ah, this is an excellent point re insulation. that is actually a good green reason to keep our books, for a slightly larger house.

we don't have tons of clutter in our house, but we do have unnecessary things. like, sentimental tote bags! a bewildering array of baking devices. extra spoons. toys that are special to us. we don't hoard, and we got rid of tons when we moved here, but if we moved to a smaller house i can envision only travelling with what would fit on a bed-sized raft. one box of cooking/eating stuff. one box of books. one box of games. one box of clothes each. two chairs, two lamps.

and is all the rest of it useful to us? more than psychologically useful? i wish i could catalog all i touch for a year, and get rid of the rest of it. but then i am not naturally a minimalist. (see, i am struggling here! that means something.)

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

yes, see! green is a good thing to think about, especially since it doesn't have to mean horrible sacrifice. books are pretty green! since anything put into their manufacture pales as you own them for longer & longer.

i horde. jenny doesn't. i like to put my horde to use in my hobby, though, so i rationalize it thus. also i don't horde badly in any way.

why BE a minimalist?

[aslant.livejournal.com]

fewer items to distract the mind means better relationships with people, with the environment. to me, at least. i'm trying to divine why exactly i like to have things around me. am i letting my self be defined by what i own? consumerism as a placeholder for identity?

i don't know. i see these questions as necessary if i eventually want to be a homesteader hippie type earth mama. which is pretty much my destiny, i think, even though i might first follow my other destiny, which is to be a money-maker in the nonprofit world for another couple years while we save money & pay down debts.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

hook me up with that latter destiny!

loots

[aslant.livejournal.com]

become a really excellent higher ed grantwriter!

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

You should ask a truckdriver- they live in their rigs for weeks on end?

I suppose you could use various campsites for special occassions? Like - you want to entertain so you rent out part of the park.

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

No house without an oven is actually a house at all - the kitchen is the reason for a house to even be - it's the center of any correct home.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

there is a heating stove! but not something i could, like, make a huge pan of lasagna in. a house without fresh baked bread!! well anyway, we could have them design one in, if we were going to pay the $50-$60k to have one designed & delivered.

but i totally 100% agree with your point, is the thing. fire is the house's soul. which is why maybe tumbleweed & similar are not really for me.

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

You know for 50-60 K you could easily buy a nice brick century home in or near my neighborhood- just saying. Sometimes, actually - pretty often - I've noticed that the downsize and the minimization are luxury expenditures - and it's never green to buy a new thing when there's an available used thing.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

well, i aim to stay near my immediate family, so i can't go too rural to buy in a cheaper market. a cheap house on viable growing land (we would only need 1-2 acres max, maybe 10 additional forested if we did wood fire heat/cooking) in oregon will still run us $150k+ if we're lucky.

it's a good point that we have to be careful not to overspend in the pursuit of a green result. we have to get there in a good and thrifty way, too.

i'm exploring other ideas right now too, such as not buying new things for a year (other than food), to train up. i feel kirk and i went through this period of needing more stuff (kitchen stuff, or adequate seating, etc) and we have slowed down a lot. major $$ still for books, meals out, and video games. couldn't we pare those down? library and gamefly? i dunno.

[radiosilents.livejournal.com]

Really interesting! I love the idea of those houses, and could see living in one by myself, but not with another person -- too cozy for someone like me who needs her space. I do admit I like to spread out as much as I can, though I don't subscribe to mansion living or anything. I love my house but wouldn't mind something one or two steps up, size-wise, someday. That's when you catch me daydreaming about living in one of the houses on my daily runs and walks! ;)

[aslant.livejournal.com]

i daydream about a lot of houses, too, though i am a big fan of small and cozy :) kirk is always bringing home for-sale flyers from his bike route commute home! i think it is hard because we are starting to think about ownership when we are about a year away from being financially ready -- no savings for a down payment, a few high-interest cards to pay off. nothing we can't handle within a year, but it's hard to think, oh no, i have to buy THIS EXACT HOUSE right now or i will never find another one as awesome! le sigh.

[mcfnord.livejournal.com]

2007 mortgages are defaulting much faster than 2006, so u have time.

retirement savings can be used as a down payment, if you've saved anything there.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

definitely lots of defaults, but the housing market is still doing pretty well here in portland. i'm sure we'll be in a fine position to get a good mortgage eventually.

i have a retirement account, but not enough. i think you can take out max $10k without penalties for a home -- i have around $7k but that won't get us anywhere near a 10% down payment for a house in town. if we go further out we might find something, but we'd be trading off commute time and gas money, etc.

[mcfnord.livejournal.com]

I've lived in a tiny house. Yes you get rid of stuff but no it's not a big deal. It's not necessarily like living in an RV. Like, what about one large room? High ceilings, perhaps a loft bed. That's like my house. 400 square feet, lots of shelves, lots of pretty angles. If you can get housing for $50,000, consider it. because that's the other aspect of housing: debt. yeah you wanna get it right regarding how much space you need. but you also want to get it right financially.

also, if you have a cement pad outside with shade, then perhaps you have even more room, depending on the climate of course.

i moved into a larger apartment recently. it's neat but not necessary. we have a 10x10 deck outside, and that's just part of the fun, too. we'll see how winter treats us there, though.

moving is the best excuse to get rid of junk.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

well, some of my stuff IS a big deal to me, which is why i'm thinking about all of this. i have to decide if this is legitimate or not.

but also, the $50k would be for only the house. that doesn't include the land (upwards of $100k for less than 3 acres), the slab, getting utilities hooked up, etc. i don't want to get saddled with a massive mortgage or land loan, but once you start downsizing i think about quitting my job, growing our food, and just supporting our long-term debt (education loans, car) with kirk's income. we could do it. but it's a big decision to make.

[rosesbruises.livejournal.com]

[ you're a better human being that i if you can part with your books. i am one of those people who cannot ever quite contemplate being without them. my mother doesn't understand this at all. if she read novels etc, she'd be the person who reads it and then sells it to a secondhand bookshop or gives it away. she is always asking me why i have so many books, saying, "why do you need all these books? you're never going to read them again," but what if i want to? i don't know. books are more than books to me. i'd build a house out of the bloody things if i could. haha. i dream of having a room (or, you know, ten) that is just wall-to-wall shelves. i'm a bit of a hoarder, i suppose, but not massively so, which is probably a good thing. thinking about owning property seems so foreign to me. i'd love to, but i don't really know how i'd ever afford to, which rather scares me, when i ponder it. do you get grand designs in the US? i have a feeling you'd enjoy watching it. ]

xo.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

you know, i feel like a horrible traitor to even contemplate getting rid of my books. i have always been a book hoarder, myself! you should have seen the look on kirk's face when i started to question our collection (which means more to him, because he constantly rereads certain books). and i have always wanted a house lined with so many bookshelves the walls were invisible! i'm not sure what inspired me to think otherwise. the more i think about it over the last week, the less i think we are suited to a super-tiny house, as adorable as they are.

i think my destiny is to live in a farmhouse of sorts, and farm enough produce that i can supplement our income and not have to work, but i don't think we'll be doing the radical downsizing. but we will be doing some downsizing, when we buy a house.

we don't get grand designs...sounds nice! all day long i am sketching my own house plans and layouts. not good :(

[rosesbruises.livejournal.com]

[ and ps, this is hardly surprising, but we have several favourites in common ... the carter, the tartt, the eugenides. ]

xo.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

i think you would love good omens...it is a nice, english, satyrical take on the apocalypse. seriously it is really funny, but also just plain good. the river why i bet you would like, though it does have a bit of god in it....it is set in oregon in the 70s, and it's all about salmon and rivers and things like that, though a young man's eyes.

if you could keep only five books, what would they be?