Changes in Lifestyle #1 - The House

Changes in Lifestyle #1 - The Not So Big House

As we began to come to terms with the changes our world is undergoing, the first major change in lifestyle we made was to sell our large home (approximately 6000 square feet) and buy a small home (approximately 1500 square feet). It sounds so simple to write about in one sentence, but in fact, it was DRAMATIC!

I should say that much of this process began when we took a course in Voluntary Simplicity. Richard Gregg, a student of Gandhi's teaching and wrote the following about voluntary simplicity:

Voluntary Simplicity involves both inner and outer

condition. It means singleness of purpose, sincerity

and honesty within, as well as avoidance of exterior

clutter, of many possessions irrelevant to the chief

purpose of life. It means an ordering and guiding of

our energy and our desires, a partial restraint in some

directions in order to secure greater abundance of

life in other directions. It involves a deliberate

organization of life for a purpose...The degree of

simplification is a matter for each individual to settle

for himself.

During the Voluntary Simplicity course it became clear to us that we needed to simplify our life, but it has taken us years now to figure out how to do that in a practical way because life - in so many ways - isn't really simple. As a part of the course, a man named Pat Murphy came to talk to us about Peak Oil and about what his organization, The Community Solution, in Yellow Springs was doing about it. It was a very interesting talk that peaked our curiosity and, to make a long story short, Saul became a board member of The Community Solution. Through Pat, his wife Faith Morgan, and The Community Solution organization we learned more about Peak Oil and Climate Change. This added to the urgency to simplify our lives that we were already feeling as a result of the Voluntary Simplicity Course.

So...what to do? We were 3 people living in a huge house with 2 kitchens, 4 bathrooms, way more space than we needed, and WAY more stuff than was necessary for a life of simplicity. We loved the house and it had a 1000 square foot studio space that I used for my artist studio, so it was not an easy decision to let go of it. Our daughter, Mollie, was born at home in this house, so it was difficult for us to give up that memory and her childhood home as well. Before deciding to sell the house we looked into what we needed to do to retrofit it, but in the end the expense of retrofitting was going to be more than we felt we should spend. Even if we did retrofit it we realized that with the rising costs of oil, gas and electricity the house was going to be very expensive to heat and cool. We finally decided to put the house on the market and went through the painful process of selling it.

In addition to selling the house we went through months of getting rid of most of our STUFF! We sold some of it, gave away some of it, made many trips to Goodwill, put it out at the curb for people to take (a long-standing tradition in Yellow Springs), and threw some of it away. Again, in a few written sentences it sounds simple, but it took months of work to lighten our load. I think we, as human beings, tend to expand into whatever space we live in, so we had filled up our large home. We had to sort through what we really needed, what we wanted, and what we could let go of. Some things were really difficult to give up, we had to sort through lots of old memories, and then we had to let a lot of things go. We did this voluntarily, but that didn't mean it was easy.

I found, once we moved, that I was somewhat identified with living in that large - and very groovy - house. It was quite unique, it had huge rooms and, as I said earlier - a large 1000 square foot art studio. It was a great space to host parties in, and to have lots of kids over to play. We had wonderful toys, doll houses, a puppet theater, and beautiful play spaces for our daughter. When we left the house I felt my identity shifting a bit - but I couldn't really put my finger on the change...

Once we sold the house we then needed to purchase or build a smaller home. Our original intention was to build a passive solar house, so we began to look for lots to build on in Yellow Springs. This was difficult to find, so we also searched for energy efficient houses to buy. In a progressive town like Yellow Springs, we thought it would be easy to find what we were looking for, but we were a bit ahead of our time - this was in 2004 - and we couldn't find homes that were built or retrofitted with energy efficiency in mind. There were a few, but they were too big, too small, or too expensive. It was a frustrating process. Any time our realtor called with a house to look at we asked questions like: "How well is the house insulated?", "What are the heating/cooling bills?", "Is it a passive solar house?" Our realtor became frustrated with us, as well, because there just wasn't that kind of information to be had about the houses in the village.

Finally, in 2007, we found a small house with an extra lot and we jumped on the chance to buy it. Saul had known the owners for many years and knew that it was a good solid house, so we made an offer immediately and bought the property - thinking that we would build a passive solar house on the extra lot and then sell the house. However, life doesn't always go the way you think it is going to go, and after retrofitting the house we began to question the need to build another house. To retrofit, we put in an on-demand hot water heater, we thoroughly insulated the house and put in a woodburning stove (bringing our gas bill to $10/month with level billing). We remodeled the house for aesthetic purposes to some extent and have plans to do a little more remodeling, but in the end it is a good house and we decided that we wouldn't get all that much benefit from building a brand new home.

About my identity...Our new home is much more humble than our huge, unique, 6000 sq. ft. home with beautiful poplar floors and large open spaces. It is a small, brick ranch home in a less expensive neighborhood. People aren't impressed with our new home in the way they were with our other home - and you can't really tell what we have done with it because retrofitting isn't really all that exciting or interesting aesthetically. I think part of what we gave up in our "voluntary simplicity" process was the identity of living in an impressive home. That shouldn't really matter, but in our culture where large homes ARE part of our identity that did mean something. As Richard Gregg said about Voluntary Simplicity, we had to have restraint in some areas in order to "secure greater abundance of life in other directions." We did have to give up a part of our identity in order to simplify our life and to lead a richer life in other ways. I do feel that our life is much richer than it was in many ways, but it took making deliberate and conscious choices about what we wanted.

There is enough in the world for man's need,

but not for man's greed.

Civilization, in the real sense of the term,

consists not in the multiplication,

but in the deliberate reduction of wants.

M. K. Ghandi