The Stuff Gifts are Made of
‘Tis the season, not just when the amount of catalogs coming to Our Little House increases, but the amount of boxes and cards that show up do as well.
In addition to friends and family wishing us well and sending us gifts for Christmas, I celebrate a birthday in this month also, so we typically get more cards and boxes in December than we see throughout the rest of the entire year.
The issue of dealing with gifts becomes even more of a tricky thing when one lives in such a small home.
The first year or so we lived here, I don’t think our friends and family understood just how limited 480-square foot can be when it comes to stuff.
Mail and the Role it Plays in Clutter
Since we’re on the topic of clutter, I have to share with you that after years of working to remove our names and my parent’s names from catalog mailing lists, I’m still spending time doing it.
As I’ve shared before, my mother’s mail was forwarded to us after her death and yes, after nearly 30 years after his death, we even received a solicitation for life insurance – of all things – for my dad.
As Gail commented on the Living Large Facebook page, in a small home, there just is no room for yesterday’s mail to be lying around, so we’ve done what we can to eliminate all unnecessary junk mail from our lives.
More on Stuff and Simplicity
Based on a couple of comments regarding “stuff” last week, I wanted to follow up my list of the Top Ten Reasons to Live in a Small Home.
Jessica was pretty passionate, feeling I had lied about the ease of cleaning a small home. She commented she lives in 600 square foot house and finds that she is cleaning all of the time. “It is so much harder to stay organized in a small house. The bigger the house, the more room to organize and store your stuff,” she wrote.
Kathleen also wrote, “What I've discovered in moving from a smaller house to a larger one is this: it is easier to keep things tidy in the larger house. There is a place for everything and I don't mean the wanton accumulation of junk, but just the regular amount of clothing and linens and towels, keepsakes and etc., within reasonable limits.”
My mother also said the same thing after up sizing from about 1,000 square feet to 2,500 or so square feet.
I agreed with her until we completed our own downsizing. I agreed with her because, well, I was much like her, I had too much stuff for the size of home we had.
Top Ten Reasons to Live in a Small House
When I’m being interviewed by the media about living in Our Little House, the reporter will always ask me what are the advantages of living in a small home.
I thought I would put together a Top 10 Reasons for Living in a Small Home for our community and you all are so great, I bet you will add to it!
1. Smaller Footprint on the environment: There are two people and an always-changing number of dogs, but we still don’t need multiple bedrooms, baths and space.
2. Less Room for Clutter: Our house in the city was packed with stuff. We didn’t even know what we were doing with all of that crap! At Our Little House, we have room for the necessities and only the things we love. This, of course, helps us save money on buying more stuff!
3. Lower Utility Bills: Who likes dumping their money into the utility companies. We would like to be completely off the grid, maybe someday. In the meantime, we pay a 12-month average of approximately $50 a month for utilities.
4. Less Time Cleaning, More Time for us: I can clean my house and studio top to bottom in about 2 hours. What more is there to say about that?
5. Less Maintenance: Doing yard work, landscaping, painting and cleaning gutters in our 20s was fun for maybe the first 5 minutes as homeowners. We spend a lot less time doing all of those things here, giving us more leisure time.
