A simple living update

I started this blog about a year ago because my husband, Ryan, and I were starting to make some major life changes and I wanted to document them. In October, we sold our house in Groton, Massachusetts, and half our stuff, then packed up the rest and moved into a newly renovated 1,000-square-foot loft in an old mill city, Lowell.

Now, 10 months later, I'm doing a little check in. For starters, we are so happy about the choices we've made. Leaving homeownership and Groton behind was absolutely the right thing to do.

As I write this, I'm sitting in my apartment and looking out over the Merrimack River.

I see trees and rocks and men wading out into the water with fishing rods. I hear the river as it moves at a lazy pace. I love the sound of moving water.

We gave up a beautiful little New England town with rivers and meadows, but got this gorgeous river view and walk in exchange. We exchanged beauty for beauty. By moving to Lowell, we also got easy walking access to the restaurants and venues downtown which includes sense of community that we didn't feel in the suburbs.

I frequently walk into Lowell and hang at a local coffee shop or stop at my favorite wine store or grab a glass of sangria at the Italian cafe. With these trips comes great conversations with my neighbors and with the store owners - there's a real sense of community here. Not to mention, when we need to go to the "big" city, we can get there in just over 40 minutes.

One of the nicest things about our new lifestyle is that we have more time for each other and to do the things we love.

We haven't added the time savings up, but owning a house meant that every weekend in the summer there was something that we needed to do. Ryan was regularly mowing an acre of land and driving to the dump to unload the grass. In the winter, he was shoveling or snow-blowing a long driveway over and over. We had a house that was two times the size of our living space which meant more to make dirty and more to clean. Now, we can knock out in a deep cleaning of our new places in just a few hours.

Then there's the money savings...

I'll admit, we haven't saved as much as we had planned to. That was part of the motivation for moving was to do a better job saving. The temptation when you have more disposable income is to spend it. But we are on track now. Everything is in place to have a great year of saving - and that includes a mindset about money that we are working on.

If you look at our fixed expenses, they've come way down. Our rent is about $800 less than our mortgage + taxes were. Our electric bill is very modest. We don't have to pay for any upgrades or repairs to our place. It's painful to think how much we spent on our house, including a new furnace our last winter there (ouch!).

The area of food is one we are looking at now. We spend SO MUCH on food. And I don't just mean eating out. We try to be careful with that (could be more, I'm sure). It's also the cost of the way we are eating these days - mostly fruits and veggies - and we try to go organic as much as possible. We've got more work to do in that area, but we are on it!

We do spend money on travel. We like to take trips. We been staying super local since our trip to France last summer. We just went away for July 4th and have a trip to coming up next weekend. We are very conservative and always look for good deals. We also eat cheaper meals and do whatever we can to save while still having a great time. This area is a priority for us, but strive to do it responsibly.

We are driving a lot less these days too, which means more savings of money and time. I did work a 5-minute walk up the road until I was laid off in June. From October to June, I only drove on the weekends. Fortunately, I immediately got a new job and it's only a 12 minute drive away, so that still keeps driving to a minimum. We do pay more than two times as much for car insurance. Ouch!

We still have too much stuff.

For all we got rid of, we still have too much. I'm reading a book on living simply that I will blog on soon. It got me motivated to get rid of more stuff and even be more focused on NOT bringing in more stuff. I did a sweep yesterday and found several boxes worth of stuff that we do not use and do not need. It's all going to the Lowell Wish Project. The items are in great shape, we just don't need them and they are taking up space. They include pairs of shoes, a down comforter, a volleyball, an extra place setting of our dishes, and a huge bag of clothes.

The fact that we are getting rid of a bunch of perfectly good stuff challenges us to think hard about what we bring into the house going forward (another blog post, I suspect!).

Living simply is a great challenge and one that feels very worthwhile. 

I find that as I clear away the clutter, what I have left is what's most important. Life is short, I don't want to waste the time I have on things that don't really matter to me.

Simplifying can be complicated

As much as the goal with this whole downsizing thing was to make our lives more simple, it hasn't happened yet. The business of closing on the house and moving (as I wrote in my last post) was highly complicated and stressful. But I have moved on (in case you were wondering). Really, I have. : )

Now the focus is getting our new place in order. We are in a much smaller space now. We went from three bedrooms, a family room and an additional office to two bedrooms. Ryan and I are, of course, sharing the master bedroom (even after the move we still like each other) and we are sharing the other room as well. We are NOT calling it an office. There are two names we are using to describe this room. One is "the creativity room", CR for short and the other, which I think might be my favorite, is "the playroom."

How many couples do you know who don't have children but still have a playroom. Exactly! THAT is the very reason I like the name the playroom. Why is it when we grow up we don't have playrooms any more? We exchange a playroom for an office. No fun! The idea is this room is a place for inspiration, fun, and creativity.

In order to make this special space all that it needs to be (we have high expectations) we made the drive to Ikea on Saturday. We had never been. What an experience. I think we spent just under six hours there. We even had an idea of what we were looking for before we went.

We started with an incredibly hearty and inexpensive meal of meatballs, mashed potatoes, chicken, mac and cheese, apple cake and sparkling cider (see photo that does not include the chocolate bar). We needed our strength. Upon filling our bellies beyond their capacities, we began our journey through the countless displays in the vast showroom. Hours later, when we were finally done wandering through, debating (the good kind) which table was the perfect one for our creativity/play room, trying every chair in the joint, scrutinizing what piece of furniture we wanted to put the TV on and on and on, we headed down to the warehouse to find the pieces we chose.

As we located the flat boxes of items we would later assemble, we found that our eyes were a little bigger than the back of our Toyota Matrix. It became clear that two trips would be required (Ryan is heading back tomorrow). Getting our purchases in the car and the back tied down was its own ordeal. Thank goodness for the $1 frozen yogurt treat we helped ourselves to at the end as a reward for all our hard work. Food is a such a great reward.

Upon our arrival in Lowell we made numerous trips from the car to the elevator and down the very long hallway that leads to our apartment. It was reminiscent our of 3:00 a.m. load-in the week before when we made about 100 trips, but this time we had about 90% less stuff. Thank goodness.

We spent all of today assembling shelves and chairs. The place is starting to come together but we have a ways to go before it's a peaceful place to live. Boxes still line the walls and my clothes are in bins (no room for dressers here - working on an alternative solution). But it is starting to show great promise. It's going to be an amazing space to live and play in when we are done.

Little by little. That's what I keep telling myself. It is coming together, and when it does it will be the perfect home base for doing more to achieve the simple life that we are shooting for.

Can a simple life also be a busy one?

In my day job (and sometimes night job) I am a marketer for a software company. I’m one of three people on the marketing team and most days, my job feels anything but simple. There are so many moving pieces. So many things I’m trying to keep up with.

This sounds a bit like my life outside of work as well. Case in point: A few days ago, I was telling my VP of HR about my new blog, which included mentioning the title. I quickly moved on to tell her that I had two shows (with my band) coming up that weekend and the following week I would be in the studio two weeknights working on a CD. She knows that I’m also in the process of selling my house and moving and is very aware of the work I’m doing at the company.

She started laughing. And it only took me a few seconds to figure out why. She saw the irony: I’m writing a blog about simplifying life and yet I have so much going on (including writing my blog!). My life can sound pretty complicated when I talk about everything I’m doing.

How does all this activity fit with my goal to simplify? Good question. I’m naturally a person who can do a lot at the same time. I’ve always gotten comments from others about the amount of things I take on. And I’ve typically been able to recognize when I was doing too much. Emotional breakdowns can be very telling. That's a joke (kind of).

Here’s a thought: Maybe simplicity in life doesn’t mean doing as little as possible, but instead, making sure you are choosing to do what’s most important to you.

I don’t have children and that’s a big part of why I have the time to pursue the things I do.  But even so, I find that there is always one more thing that “has” to be done.  Last night I told my husband, “I just need to write a few emails” and promised we would watch a show together. But two hours later, I was still on the computer because I’d discovered about 10 other things that I really “had” to do. Fortunately he was fast asleep on the couch so no harm done there. Phew!

Am I trying to do too much? Probably. Maybe all those super stressful dreams I’m having should be an indicator. I suppose that just because we can handle a lot doesn’t mean it’s good for us to do so, huh? We have to be careful not to unknowingly burn ourselves out in the process.

BUT (and that’s a big but) part of sucking the marrow out of life (which I want to do) is getting involved in life. Making things happen.  It feels good to make things happen, doesn’t it?  I love all of the activities I’m currently involved in (my family, my work, my band, my blog, etc.) and am looking forward to some I recently committed to (being the co-chair of a marketing committee and  helping a friend start a book club for professional women).  Will I run myself ragged trying to do all of these great things? I certainly hope not. As I write this tonight, I’m thinking that slowing down just a little might be a good idea.

I’m putting a lot on this upcoming move (let’s hope it actually happens!). I’m counting on the simplicity that apartment living brings and the fact that I will get almost eight hours back per week (wow!) with my almost non-existent commute. It will be easy for me to use that time up with everything I listed above. My challenge is to figure out how to make sure to save a little time to do one very important thing on occasion: absolutely nothing.

Setting the stage: Why I am blogging about simplicity

Wow, I can't believe I'm really sitting down to write this blog. I've been wanting to do this for at least six months and am finally making it happen. The truth is, I have several ideas for blogs. One would be a good career move - writing about what I do for a living - marketing. But right now, I have a burning desire to write about this new adventure that my husband and I are embarking on. We are simplifying our lives.

If you've started a blog recently, then you know what I learned today. Pretty much every good URL is taken. You really have to get creative to find one that conveys your message and doesn't sound stupid or isn't too hard for someone to remember. My plan was to name this blog "The Pickle Jar" (I will share why in a later post) but, nope! That was taken. So was just plain old "Pickle Jar." I could have gotten "A Pickle Jar" but for some reason I didn't like that as much AND I don't want others to confuse my blog with someone else.

After much rejection, I finally was able to come up with a name that I liked. One that really fits what this blog is all about. And one that doesn't sound stupid (at least, I don't think it does). Shooting for Simple.

One thing I know for sure is that in this quest for simplicity, I don't ever want to claim to have the answers, to know the right way, or to be perfect in my pursuit. In fact, I can think of a blog post that I will write at some point about my indulgences. These are some perfectly wasteful behaviors that don't fit at all with being simple. "Shooting for" says that I may be shooting for simplicity, but I'm most certainly not always going to hit the target.

My father is a minister. He was all my life. And I grew up steeped in Christianity. One thing I learned early on is the definition of that scary word "sin." It's not as scary as it sounds. It means "to miss the mark." Like, you shoot at a bulls eye and you miss it. That's like me and simplicity. While I will certainly hit the mark most of the time, there are times I will miss it, whether purposely or accidentally.

I think of my blog title as a bit of a disclaimer. For those super-duper-radical-simple-livers out there who may read this blog - just know that I'm doing my best, but will probably never do as well as you do. But you will remain my inspiration! : )

What do I want to accomplish with this blog? I want to chronicle the shift that my husband and I are making in our lives. We've made some pretty big decisions that involve getting rid of half our stuff, selling our house, renting again, and looking for ways to conserve. We have future plans that I will write about someday on this blog. Bottom line is, we want to live simply and responsibly. We want to buy what we need and use what we have and recycle (all the ways possible) what we no longer need. We also want to take care of the people around us and give of our time and ourselves in this way.

I'm writing this blog so I can process what we are doing and keep a record of it and so I can invite others to take the journey with us. Even if it's vicariously, we would love to have you along for the ride.