Living Large In Our Little House

One of the pieces I didn't want to part with

Stuff.

We buy it, we find room for it in our homes, we clean it, pack it, move it, store it and sell it.

For most of us, stuff becomes an obses­sion until we no longer own it, but it owns us.

When we moved to Our Little House from a 1,100 square foot house packed with stuff, we real­ized just how lit­tle room we needed once we got down to it.

We were acci­den­tal in the Small House Movement, find­ing out through liv­ing it how free­ing liv­ing with­out our stuff could be.

The prob­lem became what to get rid of, as I not only had our stuff we had accu­mu­lated through 21 years of mar­riage, but we had my mother’s stuff, some of it sen­ti­men­tally priceless.

Here’s the process by which we elim­i­nated (and con­tinue to elim­i­nate) stuff from our lives:

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The Belle Writers Studio in the early morn­ing mist

I started mak­ing my list for spring clean­ing yesterday.

After all, when it feels like sum­mer out­side, I feel like I’m run­ning behind.

Dale actu­ally began the spring clean­ing two weeks ago. I was work­ing one week­end day, so I took the dogs over to The Belle Writer’s Studio so he could pull out the stove and fridge and vac­uum the top of the cabinets.

He also came home from work the other day and cleaned the ceil­ing fans, as it was hot and we needed them.

My list is still pretty long:

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Dale is doing more with wood than stack­ing it these days

We had an inter­est­ing week­end at Our Little House.

Dale is get­ting into wood­work­ing, so we spent part of the week­end going to the Big Box hard­ware stores where he could find the tools he needed to start a project he’s been yearn­ing to do since we moved.

He’s wanted to build a util­ity table for the deck, one I could use as a pot­ting table and that we could also use when we’re cook­ing outdoors.

He received some money and gift cards for Christmas, so he pur­chased some wood­work­ing tools and went to work.

And he did an awe­some job, although he didn’t want me to take any pho­tos of it. He built it out of old pal­lets he had stored from our move, so it isn’t very pretty, but it is sturdy and functional.

A hobby for even­tual retire­ment? Definitely.

A poten­tial source of sec­ond income? If he con­tin­ues on this track, most def­i­nitely. I hope he main­tains his interest.

It was cer­tainly great see­ing him so con­tent work­ing in his garage on Sunday and then rush­ing home from work Monday night to get back at his table.

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You know how when a project or two is haunt­ing you and it dri­ves you crazy until you can get it complete?

This was how it was for both of us at Our Little House this past weekend.

Dale has been wait­ing since spring for the per­fect week­end to stain the Party Deck. We had an unusu­ally cool and wet spring fol­lowed by an ungodly hot sum­mer. We had per­fect weather this past week­end and time is run­ning out before it gets cold again.

I had been wait­ing for time, mostly, to orga­nize my office once again. I wrote pre­vi­ously about find­ing the per­fect lit­tle mail­box to put on The Belle Writer’s Studio, so mail wouldn’t be over­flow­ing on the table at the house.

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