dreaming little

[constance]

You know, when some people dream of buying a new house, they dream big. Twice the size, twice the amenities. Luxury fixtures, state-of-the-art systems, swimming pools, hot and cold running champagne from every tap. A McMansion in the suburbs, maybe, or a glamorous deep-woods retreat. Me, though. When I dream, I dream Tumbleweed or Chapin, in terms of my bungalow court, which many of you have heard about many times now, but also in terms of paring down. You know, somehow finding something acceptable to do with the spare dining table, one that doesn't involve having two dining spaces for one person. Getting rid of the entire cabinet of stationery, and the thousand and one perfectly ordinary t-shirts, and the extra set of dishes that never gets used. Fitting everything in to a thousand square feet with room to spare, which let's face it, a thousand square feet is as much as one person really needs. Even someone with a fair number of books, none of which I ever dream of tossing over the side of the basket.

You wouldn't think it'd be so hard to do, would you? Maybe you're the sort of person I envy, the sort who gets rid of that superfluous stuff without a pang or a second thought. But I'm not that person -- even though I've purged before, it'll never come naturally -- and so I look at the tidy plans and sigh wistfully over the cleverness of them, and I look around at my pretty cottage which while definitely a cottage is on the large end of the cottage spectrum, and I do love it painfully much, but I still wish, sometimes, that my life were more compact.

Comments

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

Thirteen years in a two-room apartment that is about 400 square feet. It was challenging when it was just me, but with Leit here it is FULL. We'll never find another place we can afford with this great of a New York location, so we are sticking here, but it's difficult. The unexpected thing is that the small space is actually difficult to keep clean because there is no place to put stuff while you are cleaning out a cupboard or shelf. Lack of swap space becomes a real issue. I love where I live now, but I will never do this again.

[wishwords.livejournal.com]

I had to leave everything in storage for two years while I was overseas before I realized I could get rid of a lot of it. Kind of a drastic way of going about it though. I get very attached to my stuff.

[tilney.livejournal.com]

It's weird, because I've just moved to flat consisting of one room, a kitchen, a bathroom and a hall. Everyone who visits is like 'Look how little people need, that's amazing" and leave vowing to make their apartments more spare. In the room there are two desks, a bookshelf, two armchairs, a sofa which turns into a bed, a coffee table and a chest of drawers. Nothing else. It's 40 square metres and it's perfect.

[ainsley.livejournal.com]

I'm at the beginning of the journey, with an overstuffed bedroom and a packed offsite storage unit (mostly of stuff I could get rid of, at this point, but unfortunately not at all organized so the few gems are totally mixed in), but YES on the dreaming small and simple.