The recent story about tiny houses in the New York Times makes me smile. After living in a space the size of an office cubicle for a year and a half, any living space where you have room to take a few steps seems large.
The article neglects the obvious: that our friends the Japanese have always lived in tiny spaces. They do not complain. They find ways to conserve space: storing the bedding in a closet and rolling it out at night; building closet-like prefab fiberglass bathrooms; cooking in a kitchen barely large enough to turn around in. Thanks to that tiny kitchen, you might run down to the grocer for meal ingredients. Your limited private space makes you more likely to use public space for relaxing and general living; an evening stroll in one's pajamas is common in Japan. Tiny living space synergizes with ready access to public space to create a lifestyle where the personal and the communal are interwoven.
I don't mean to suggest that Japan is a utopia; it's just different. One lifestyle issue that plagues everyone who tries to live in a small space is CLUTTER. Those of us who enjoy acquiring meaningful (at least at the time) objects, know the depressing stagnation that can come from having a messy space. And those of us with children are in awe of our babies' magical powers when it comes to generating new possessions.
Some rules of thumb that have helped me in my quest for freedom in a small space:
Unbroken lines of sight are important.
Do not fill every inch of space. You need an open stretch of floor. A bare wall somewhere. These provide a visual cue that somehow relaxes the mind.
By the same token, do not spread objects out if you can cluster them instead. For example, if you arrange your potted plants in a clump on the windowsill, there will be plants and there will be the visual relief of windowsill. Plants that are spaced along the sill appear to fill the area, and your windowsill will appear cluttered.
You must arrange furnishings so as to optimize the square feet you do have. Perhaps the arrangement should chage depending on time of day. The Japanese stash bedding in a closet during the day, and set up futon on the open floor at night.
Reduce paperwork.
Ideally, you may not need a desk at all. Think about it. You can pay bills online; tote your laptop out when you need it; and stash it when you don't.
When you do get paper bills, don't 't keep them around; pay them and dispose of them. Paying over the phone using a credit card is quick and easy; if you choose instead to mail a check, do so at once.
Reduce the amount of mail you receive.
Register for the national "No Junk Mail List" (its actual name is something more poetic). Unlike the national Do-Not-Call registry, which is administrated by the Federal Government, and which telemarketers can be fined for disregarding, this is a private service that mail marketers can voluntarily access. So why would they take your name off their mailing lists? Because direct marketing to someone who doesn't want it costs them money. It's worth a try; you certainly won't receive more mail because of it! Of course, those pesky flier addressed to "Occupant", "Resident", or "Esteemed Neighbor" will probably continue.
Do your mail-order shopping online. When you place an order, request not to receive paper catalogs, and specifically request that the company also not share or sell your name. Similarly, when you subscribe to a magazine, remember to ask that they not share or sell your name. When stray mailings do arrive, immediately call to have them canceled. It's worth a minute of your time to prevent your name being sold to the next catalog, and the next.
Stash. But Wisely.
Small items you need ready access to can be stored in a cabinet. It can be a built-in cabinet, say in the kitchen; or a separate piece of furniture. Whatever you choose, it must have doors (or drawers) that close completely to present a clean uncluttered front. envelopes and arch supports and cloth napkin collection need to go somewhere. I'm currently using sleek-looking sideboard. Each shelf or drawer has its theme. For example: "personal health" (arch supports, first aid, extra ointments and lotions); "correspondence" (envelopes, stamps, address book, greeting cards); "gifts" (tchotchkes for regifting, pretty boxes, wrap, and ribbons); "dining" (cloth napkins and tablecloths). In a small house, there's no reason not to store your extra toiletries near your office supplies. Your storage area is never going to be far from the kitchen, or the bathroom, or the study.
Store it? Or send it to the store?
Small items you do not need ready access to are objects that your life in its current form probably doesn't require. Some people suggest putting these items--old clothes, old files--in opaque boxes or bags, mark them with a "dispose-by" date, and chuck them when you've lived that long without requiring the contents.
Especially if you are paying for storage, consider the monthly cost of retaining things you do not use, versus the value of the items and the trouble to reacquire them. A year's worth of storage costs at least $600. Are your unused treasures worth that?
If you don't need it, and it's small, it's probably an item of sentimental significance. Is there some way--besides entombment in a storage box--to memorialize the camp T-shirt you never wear, or a decade-old crumbling art project? I took digital photos of many of my crumbling childhood mementos. That made it easier to part with them, and I find that I don't miss them at all. If I'm feeling nostalgic, I can always call up the photo on my computer--where it takes up virtually no space at all.
If you live simply and are not afraid of second-hand items, it may behoove you to dispose of things and repurchase similar ones, rather than storing your treasures or letting them clutter your living space. I do this with clothes I'm tired of. I donate old shirts and skirts to the second-hand store where I bought them, and come home with "new" items. Essentially, the second-hand store functions as a sort of giant closet, from which I rent this season's outfits.
So donate what you aren't using. And when you do need something, you can often find it at Goodwill or a local thrift store for pennies on the dollar.
Clutter is just part of the story
Controlling clutter is an important aspect of living in a small space. But it's not the only consideration. Living in a small space entails a certain creativity. You will be forced to question your assumptions about what a living space needs, and what you need to live in a space. What do I really have to keep, and what can I digitize? What can I donate? What can do double duty?
Living a simple, ecologically-aware lifestyle means being unafraid to recycle and reuse objects. Controlling clutter means becoming free from bondage to your stuff.
P.S. ...a word on antiques
When the time does come to buy something, consider whether a new item is really necessary. Even discounting the issue of sustainability, used items are often superior. I have found that antiques are generally more sturdy, attractive and economical than new furniture. They retain their value well. And they are built to a scale appropriate for smaller spaces.
Relevant advice on life in small spaces from Treehugger here.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Generations
Being human means enjoying the ongoing love of our mothers and grandmothers, in the form of "advice" and general worry.
I've talked to a number of mothers of grown children, and they all say the same thing: you never stop being a mom. You never stop worrying about your kids.
My own mother certainly feels free to contribute her opinion about what I should be doing, as well as what I might like to do, and what I should not do. Example: Me: I've been thinking I'd like to have a bed and breakfast. Mom: No you wouldn't! Thanks mom. I guess that concludes that conversation! I didn't appreciate this as a teenager, but in the intervening 15 years or so, I learned not to bother taking offense; it's just the way she is. As the years wore on, I didn't really understand her intrusiveness. But then she didn't really understand me either. So we were even. And a growing confidence in my own abilities came to displace defensiveness in reaction to her pronouncements.
Now, as I look at my own little baby, and feel the enormity of a mother's love, I can even begin to understand what would compel a person to contribute her own passionate but highly subjective advice to her otherwise perfectly competent grown daughter. There is nothing more important than this person I have given birth to. And look, they're an extension of me! The stage is set for years of delightful worrying and prodding and nagging--all those things that make having a mother so memorable.
And of course, the stage is now set for years of grandmothering. My mother's advice to me on raising my son is predictably just like her.When he cries with teething pain, I should give him whiskey! When he's fussy at the breakfast place, I should feed him a homefried potato!
My mother isn't even particularly serious about these things: she's just feeling a certain joyful subversive desire to shake up my careful parenting plans. In my world, a five-month-old baby does not need to be eating off his mama's plate. Which is exactly why my own mother wants to shake things up.
When you stop poking fun and look at is seriously, this inimitable mothering--and grandmothering--style, is a kind of transmission of wisdom. I may roll my eyes at my mother's advice, but I do in fact come from a long line of women who have put whiskey on their babies' gums and fed them whatever they were interested in eating. Generations of grandmothers have weighed in on how to hold a baby and how to feed a baby; they have spoken up and given their opinion on how to dig the roots, how to harvest the fruits, how to tan the skins, how to preserve the food for the winter. Evolutionary biologists call this the Grandmother Effect. Without these fearless old women, human societies would not endure. It is because of the wisdom of the elders--old women in particular, actually--that human lifespan extends so long beyond our most fertile years. We need the old ladies to stick around and tell us how they did it in their time
The reason that my mother, and the generations of grandmothers the world has seen, do what they do is simple: love. They love their children intensely. They delight in their grandchildren with a profound passion. Now I feel what a mother would do for her child, and I witness the joy of the grandmother.
This ongoing devotion is a very human endeavor, when you compare us to other mammalian groups. As a child, I knew dozens, maybe hundreds of mothers, whose devotion faded very quickly. I grew up on a sheep farm, a small back-to-the-land fantasy turned all too muddy and real. We had from fifty to one hundred ewes who every year gave birth to baby lambs.
Like the ewes, of what we do is instinctive, beyond conscious control. The milk lets down. The mother wakes half a minute before they happen. Her voice soothes him. Her hand comforts him back to sleep. Like a mother sheep nuzzling her lamb's tail, I like to pat my son's bottom as he feeds. Baby lambs and baby humans are linked to their mothers with bonds far more ancient than they are different. We give birth and nourish our little ones in remarkably similar ways.
Which is why what happens next is interesting. The baby sheep gradually drifts away from its mother's side and, it would seem, out of her heart. Aside from a similarity in their overall dispositions--a calm mother has calm offspring; a flighty mother raises flighty progeny--there is no social link between a ewe and her grown progeny. In general, sheep don't maintain bonds. They don't have friends, they don't seem to associate preferentially with certain individuals, and they certainly don't continue to take a familial interest after babies are weaned.
Although every sheep has a grandmother, just as we do, there are no Grandma sheep. There is no older ewe instructing, challenging, worrying over, and cherishing her daughter and her daughter's babies. The ongoing devotion that mothers and grandmothers feel is what binds us into families and cultures. To ever stop fretting, to ever stop "being a mom," would mean losing that precious heart that remembers--and the precious heritage of our humanity.
Do you see the Grandmother Effect in your own life? What gems of advice--helpful or nutty--have you received?
I've talked to a number of mothers of grown children, and they all say the same thing: you never stop being a mom. You never stop worrying about your kids.
My own mother certainly feels free to contribute her opinion about what I should be doing, as well as what I might like to do, and what I should not do. Example: Me: I've been thinking I'd like to have a bed and breakfast. Mom: No you wouldn't! Thanks mom. I guess that concludes that conversation! I didn't appreciate this as a teenager, but in the intervening 15 years or so, I learned not to bother taking offense; it's just the way she is. As the years wore on, I didn't really understand her intrusiveness. But then she didn't really understand me either. So we were even. And a growing confidence in my own abilities came to displace defensiveness in reaction to her pronouncements.
Now, as I look at my own little baby, and feel the enormity of a mother's love, I can even begin to understand what would compel a person to contribute her own passionate but highly subjective advice to her otherwise perfectly competent grown daughter. There is nothing more important than this person I have given birth to. And look, they're an extension of me! The stage is set for years of delightful worrying and prodding and nagging--all those things that make having a mother so memorable.
And of course, the stage is now set for years of grandmothering. My mother's advice to me on raising my son is predictably just like her.When he cries with teething pain, I should give him whiskey! When he's fussy at the breakfast place, I should feed him a homefried potato!
My mother isn't even particularly serious about these things: she's just feeling a certain joyful subversive desire to shake up my careful parenting plans. In my world, a five-month-old baby does not need to be eating off his mama's plate. Which is exactly why my own mother wants to shake things up.
When you stop poking fun and look at is seriously, this inimitable mothering--and grandmothering--style, is a kind of transmission of wisdom. I may roll my eyes at my mother's advice, but I do in fact come from a long line of women who have put whiskey on their babies' gums and fed them whatever they were interested in eating. Generations of grandmothers have weighed in on how to hold a baby and how to feed a baby; they have spoken up and given their opinion on how to dig the roots, how to harvest the fruits, how to tan the skins, how to preserve the food for the winter. Evolutionary biologists call this the Grandmother Effect. Without these fearless old women, human societies would not endure. It is because of the wisdom of the elders--old women in particular, actually--that human lifespan extends so long beyond our most fertile years. We need the old ladies to stick around and tell us how they did it in their time
The reason that my mother, and the generations of grandmothers the world has seen, do what they do is simple: love. They love their children intensely. They delight in their grandchildren with a profound passion. Now I feel what a mother would do for her child, and I witness the joy of the grandmother.
This ongoing devotion is a very human endeavor, when you compare us to other mammalian groups. As a child, I knew dozens, maybe hundreds of mothers, whose devotion faded very quickly. I grew up on a sheep farm, a small back-to-the-land fantasy turned all too muddy and real. We had from fifty to one hundred ewes who every year gave birth to baby lambs.
Like the ewes, of what we do is instinctive, beyond conscious control. The milk lets down. The mother wakes half a minute before they happen. Her voice soothes him. Her hand comforts him back to sleep. Like a mother sheep nuzzling her lamb's tail, I like to pat my son's bottom as he feeds. Baby lambs and baby humans are linked to their mothers with bonds far more ancient than they are different. We give birth and nourish our little ones in remarkably similar ways.
Which is why what happens next is interesting. The baby sheep gradually drifts away from its mother's side and, it would seem, out of her heart. Aside from a similarity in their overall dispositions--a calm mother has calm offspring; a flighty mother raises flighty progeny--there is no social link between a ewe and her grown progeny. In general, sheep don't maintain bonds. They don't have friends, they don't seem to associate preferentially with certain individuals, and they certainly don't continue to take a familial interest after babies are weaned.
Although every sheep has a grandmother, just as we do, there are no Grandma sheep. There is no older ewe instructing, challenging, worrying over, and cherishing her daughter and her daughter's babies. The ongoing devotion that mothers and grandmothers feel is what binds us into families and cultures. To ever stop fretting, to ever stop "being a mom," would mean losing that precious heart that remembers--and the precious heritage of our humanity.
Do you see the Grandmother Effect in your own life? What gems of advice--helpful or nutty--have you received?
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