My Path to Minimalism

I live in a beautiful newly constructed home on three acres of land, right across from a golf course.  Sounds great, right?  While I appreciate and am thankful for the ability to live comfortably, I just don’t feel like this is right for me.  I’ve owned three homes in the last three years, and each one has gotten progressively smaller in square footage.  And I like that.

In my first year out of college, having finally achieved my goals of financial stability, I married my high school sweetheart and we bought our first home.  The house was a great one, and it featured all of the suburban buzz words. Before moving in, we lived in a tiny 1 bedroom apartment barely large enough for the two of us and the cat.  We went from laminate to granite, peel-and-stick to tumbled ceramic, aluminum to vinyl, ramen noodles to risotto, and from about 500 sqft to about 2100 sqft plus a yard.  It was quite a change.

At first it was all very exciting, and in my monthly budget I included a hefty portion to be set aside for furnishings.  Having all those extra rooms setting empty started to eat away at me, and I felt a strange sense of urgency to fill them up with stuff.  That’s when the trouble started.  Beds, mattresses, dining tables (yes, multiples), area rugs, coffee tables, couches… so many couches.  Thankfully I had not developed an appreciation for quality yet, and was content with getting most of the furniture from Ikea.  But still… it was a lot of stuff.

Minimalist Art at the Rothko Chapel which we visited recently.

Towards the end of the first year, I started feeling strange about our house and all the stuff in it. My contemporary tastes didn’t sit well in our traditional suburban home, and neither did my happy hour, yoga class, farmer’s market lifestyle.  I would sit in meditation practice and feel weighed down by my new world of stuff.  This was the first time in my life that my burdens were not financial… they were material.  I felt pressure to buy more stuff, and yet I resented having it.  The line between “need” and “want” became grey for the first time, and I started to lose sight of the frugal, practical girl I was in college.

So I decided to move, and my poor husband went along with me. (This was after all a completely insane idea, and he hadn’t lost his frugal, practical self.)  I moved to the other side of town, where there were less small children and less retirees.  More yoga, more cocktails, more me.  Our new-old (new to us, but built in the 1960’s) house would have much less space, forcing me to really take inventory of all the stuff I had acquired.  It felt wonderful.  I realized that when I move, I purge.  Suddenly those bottles of nearly empty bath products don’t seem so valuable. That old chair from college wasn’t worthy of my new space.  By choosing what to take with us, it was like re-defining who I was going to be in my new home.

Sadly, two short months later we were asked to relocate and leave our fabulous new-old house.  And while I was again able to downsize in square footage, I gained three acres and went back to traditional new construction.  Even after two months, I managed to do some purging to squeeze into a slightly smaller space, but we had failed to apply the lesson we had only just learned the year before. We shopped for resale, not for us.  As I look around my home, I realize how little of the space I actually use.  I have an entryway, but I enter through the garage.  I have a guest bedroom, but we rarely have visitors.  I have five different sinks for two people. I have ample storage space, much of which is empty, and some of which is full of stuff I don’t want or need.  I have stainless steel appliances that attract slobbery puppy nose marks and sticky husband handprints. I have a garage that houses two vehicles which we have to drive 30 minutes to get to town.

So now it’s almost moving time again, and I am trying my best to consider the lessons learned.  I am a happier person when I live in a smaller space, with less stuff.  I don’t want to live in a large new house in the suburbs, however beautiful, clean, and tempting it might seem.  I don’t want to live on land, where I spend ridiculous amounts of money watering, plowing, mowing, spraying, and maintaining space I don’t use.

I want a home where my hubby and I can walk the dog to a local market, buy some local food, and eat it in the shade of a tree in our own yard.  I don’t think there is any material thing in this house that I would want more than to spend a morning that way.  Minimalism, to me, is about shifting my focus from materials to experiences.  And when I have an opportunity to make that happen, I'll have to remember to keep that in mind.

The Morning After... Spin Class

*Warning, this entry is borderline graphic and certainly TMI.*

Each day that passes sets a new record for consecutive days over 100F, with highs reaching up to 110F.  With temperatures like those, our evening family walk has become too miserable to keep up.  So I did that which I've been avoiding most... I joined a gym.  And now I have no excuse not to get my lazy rear into gear.

Group fitness classes have always worked well for me, because they force me to overcome my two biggest obstacles: (1) getting started and (2) quitting early.  A class means that I have to start at a particular time, which eliminates the procrastination factor.  Most classes are about an hour long, with peer pressure to boot, which keeps me going til the end. The system works for me.

For my first class at my new gym, I wanted to try Spinning.  Known primarily as a challenging cardio workout, with killer buns as a bonus, I thought it would compliment my established Yoga routine.  The instructor was gracious, helping me adjust my seat and handles, and trying to remind me not to be discouraged if I couldn't keep up at first.

The workout proved to be challenging, but not for the reasons I expected. It was cardio intensive, yes, and my thighs felt like jello when I tried to walk away.  But the body part that really hurts might surprise you, as it did me...

This was not the bike of my childhood memories.  This was the most uncomfortable, torturous contraption I've ever used. Normally when you sit, your weight is supported by your entire rear.  When I sat on this bike, my weight was only supported by my... lady area. My crotch. (Can I say that? It's really most accurate.) The pressure was balanced between my ischium bones ("sit" bones as we call them in yoga) and pelvic area.

Quick lesson from engineering school:  Pressure = Force / Area.  That means that the less area that is supported, the more pressure you feel.  So when you sit on your entire rear, the pressure is minimal.  But when your entire weight is supported by a very tiny area (the tips of the sit & pelvic bones), the pressure increases and is not comfortable at all.

The instructor did mention something to me about padded shorts or a padded seat cover, which I always thought was ridiculous.  I was wrong.  Now on this morning after, my butt is literally bruised.  I may even have a blister.  Is that possible?  And when I say "butt" I am really referring to a very small area... underneath... parallel to the floor.  Not a comfortable area for bruising.

My instructor also mentioned that serious bikers/spinners tend to develop a callus down there. And she said it as though it were a goal I ought to work towards.  Sorry, but I don't really want to callus my lady area.  I think I'd rather endure the embarrassment of padded shorts.

Or maybe I'll try Zumba.

Helpful products:

An Unexpected Addition

Little Kitten @ 8  Weeks Old

Several weeks ago, I woke up at 6:40am to start my groggy morning routine to get the hubby off to work, starting by letting the dog out to do his business.  As I opened the back door, the dog ran out and something else ran in. My eyes were still hazy with sleep, but I knew it was very small and fuzzy and fast.  Maybe a baby bunny or a tarantula. Garth, our dog, came immediately back inside after it and scooted it around with his nose, pushing it into my dining room.  My hysterical screaming only added to his excitement (hey, I thought it was a tarantula!).

Upon closer inspection, I discovered that draped over my labmaraner's nose was a tiny baby kitten.  She was so small that Garth had inadvertently scooped the kitten onto his head while attempting to sniff it. Still unsure of how Garth would react, I lifted all 2.5 lbs of her up and out of his reach.  She was slobbery, but safe.

Now, a quick background about me... I was born a crazy cat lady.  Even as a child, I would collect strays (and even not-strays that I stole from my neighbors). My husband claims to have been unaware of this fact until after were married, but by then it was too late! I adopted our cat Puddin Paws immediately after securing our first apartment together, and it would be four years until our next fur baby, Garth.  My husband, Allen, who isn't animal-crazy like me, was just beyond his comfort zone with two pets and had only recently adjusted.

So you can imagine how Allen felt when his crazy, cat-loving wife wandered into the bedroom holding a sweet, baby kitten.  I could see the fear building, as I held up the kitten saying, "Garth found her... I had nothing to do with it!"

Despite my craziness, I made a solid attempt to re-home the intruder who we called "Little Kitten".  After all, we had a 60 pound puppy who wasn't quite well-trained enough to keep his cool around such an exciting new toy.  ( I am very proud that he made no attempts to eat her, but he desperately wanted to play as if she were another puppy.)  I called every shelter in a 200 mile radius, but each of them was at full capacity.  I reluctantly told my husband that we may have to hand-pick a family for her.

All three fur babies!

In the meantime, Garth & Puddin were adjusting to Little Kitten. I created a "cabitat" in Garth's old crate where she could live safely, but still see & smell the resident critters.  I was taking her for her vaccinations and developing a new routine at home.

When Allen told me that he had found a good home for her, it was difficult to hide my disappointment.  I knew in all practicality that Little Kitten would be perfectly happy with her new family, who had recently lost their very old family cat.  So we packed her up and made the four hour drive to her new home, where we spent with weekend with friends, watching Little Kitten get settled.

Two weeks later, I received a message from the new family to let me know that Little Kitten could no longer stay with them.  She had attacked their youngest baby girl and was just not good around the children.  My reaction was inappropriately overjoyed.  I approached my husband, whose eyes filled with fear once again, and suggested that we had a responsibility to take her back.  He reluctantly gave in, knowing that he had lost the battle long before the conversation began and would have had to put considerable effort in convincing me to give her up twice.

So I made another long drive, although it didn't seem as much, to reclaim our little intruder.  Allen, who has naming rights to all animals as compensation for allowing me to have them, decided to appropriately name her Bunny.  I'm just happy he chose that over Tarantula.