Simple
Life
“Life
is to be lived, not spent; to be faced, not ordered. Life is not a game of
chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of cards, one’s hand by
skill to be made the best of.”
Jerome
K. Jerome
I just
discovered the writing of Englishman, Jerome K. Jerome. He died in the second
decade of the 20th century and seems to have been a little like G.K.
Chesterton or Mark Twain—a humorous critic. In the introduction to Elaine St.
James’ book Simplify Your Life, she quotes him: “Let your boat of
life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures,
one or two friends worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a
cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little
more than enough to drink, for thirst is a dangerous thing.” (p.3)
Did you
know that in the 1950’s, houses were, on average, around 900 sq. feet, with two
bedrooms and one bath? By 1973, that was up to 1,525 sq. feet for a newly built
house. By 2010, it had grown by almost a thousand square feet. And by 2018, it
had gained another 500 sq. feet—2,435. As we know, most newly built houses now
are more than 3,000.
There is no mention in
these statistics of the significant gap between rich and poor which grows wider every day. For example, there is a house just down the hill from me,
ranch style, with a full basement—built in the 1960’s. It has been “flipped” and
is on the market for $545,900.00. This house likely cost less than $65K
to build, and will now sell for almost10 times that amount, not because it’s worth
it, but because the market will bear it. There will be a bidding war and the
one with the most money will get the house. And so it goes, and so it has
always gone.
I am acutely aware of
this now because I’m having work done on my house so that can live on one
level. When the painters began work, they took all the furniture, and everything on the walls
and stacked them in the middle of the floor, and when they wrapped up, they
started to put everything back as it was. I stopped them. I plan to clear the
rooms of extra “stuff.” I’m having difficulty putting nail holes in the new
paint and rearranging my clothing to accommodate a washer/dryer stack in a
bedroom closet. I now have clothes and shoes in 3 closets in 3 rooms—clearly, I
have too many clothes and shoes. So, now my mission is to pare down to what I need.
Rather than expanding the size of my house, I will downsize my “stuff” until it
fits.
The business of
simplifying life takes a lot of work! Most days I work a few hours and then nap
on the couch a bit. But as I clear out and clean up, I realize how little I really
want or need: “a homely home, simple pleasures, one or two friends…a cat, a dog…”
and, of course, a laptop, and a few folks who read and respond. Thanks, y’all,
for being an important part of my simple life.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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