Maximum Gratitude, Minimal Stuff

My husband Jon and I are both teachers.  In fact, he just retired this June after teaching 6th grade for 42 years.  We've lived by the school calendar since we started kindergarten more than 60 years ago.  So this year it's quite different.  In our house, no one's going back to school. That doesn't mean we're immune to the changes taking place around us.  It's still blazingly hot and bone dry here in the Sacramento Valley, but harvests are happening – peaches first, and then plums.  Home gardens are bursting with tomatoes, zucchini, and melons. So, yes, changes in nature make us long for changes everywhere else.  And getting reoriented to the school routine has us wanting to get organized and cleaned up in our homes and offices, too. And that might lead us to the store. New clothes.  New shoes.  New décor.  New organizing solutions.  New tech.  New tools.  And all of those end-of-summer sales!  The doors are open, and...

My husband just retired after teaching 6th graders for 42 years.  Congratulations, Jon!  We're retiring on his pension and an IRA I contributed to for almost 15 years.  Plus about $350 per month I'm getting from Social Security, which is what happens when you  teach for two years homeschool your kids conduct church choirs become a freelance classical singer work as a bookkeeper for a non-profit organization tutor adult English language-learners at a community college Small income, small benefits. Today, we're being told we need between $1 and $2 million to retire comfortably.  And maybe that's true if we keep living like middle-class people do now. But here's what I keep coming back to:  In the 1990s, most of us weren't living luxurious lives.  At least not what would be considered luxurious by today's way of thinking.  We were just paying our bills. Full disclosure:  In the 1990s, I had a problem with constantly buying new stuff for my house...

It's fairly easy to appear to live simply.  I just need a tidy home, a small wardrobe, a well-planned schedule, and a balanced budget.  Right? But I've had weeks where everything looks fine on the surface, and yet I'm exhausted underneath.  I'm overscheduled, juggling bills, and hiding clutter in a drawer or behind a door.  Or I'm emotionally overwhelmed – lonely, angry, worried, stressed.  Running on fumes.  Can you relate? True simplicity Here's the truth:  Simplicity is not a look.   It's not a home that both Martha Stewart and Marie Kondo would love.  It's not an Instagrammable pantry or a neatly written, bullet-pointed to-do list. No, simplicity is a feeling.  It's the feeling of having space – in your room, in your day, in your mind, and in your chest when you breathe. If your house looks super-neat on the outside, but you're still having to find places for way too many things, still organizing and reorganizing to optimize space, ...

Downsizing isn't about organizing.  It's not even about your stuff.  It's about control. When your house is crammed full of stuff you don't need, don't use, and can barely keep track of – when it's hard to clean, hard to get around, and hard to keep up with everything – what you need is control. If you don't take control of your house and make it look manageable, acceptable, and safe, then at some point your children will decide they need to do it for you.  And then you'll spend the rest of your life in a place that smells like disinfectant, without enough privacy. What no one tells you about getting older I'm not quite 66, so I'm not yet "old."  But I've seen my parents, my parents-in-law, aunts, uncles, and older friends go through this.  Things get harder, yes, but that's not my main point.  People start watching and evaluating you, looking for signs that you can no longer cope, that they need to step in and start making your...

Do you ever feel like escaping? Maybe you have a trip planned.  My husband and I are going to the coast soon, and I know we'll breathe more deeply in the cool, moist air, take peace from the views of redwood forests, oak-sprinkled hills, and the uncluttered Pacific Ocean, and relax on a bluff overlooking a nearly-deserted north coast beach .  (The north coast is too cold, foggy, and hard to access to become crowded or over-developed.  Thank God.) Our need for relief But maybe you feel like escaping today .  The times oppress us.  The news brings shock, anxiety, and even despair to our days.  It's exhausting. There have been other bad times in our history, of course.  I can only imagine how upsetting the late 50's into the 60's must have been for my parents and parents-in-law as they raised their small children and wondered what the future held.  Along with the wonder (and sometimes tragedy) of the Space Race, there was the Cuban Missile Crisis and...

With the world in as much turmoil as it is today, we all need a place we can truly relax.  Yet for many of us, home isn't a very relaxing place.  Instead, it's a place that makes us feel stressed, overburdened, and inadequate.  Why is that? A peaceful home isn't cluttered.  It's not a place where it feels like our belongings are filling the spaces we need to sit and put our feet up, work at a creative project, entertain guests, or even lie down to sleep.  Visual clutter gets in our way, but so does stuff that's tucked out of sight, filling our closets, cupboards, and even under the bed. Now, you might think that getting organized is the answer to this problem.  Just figure out how to store and arrange stuff and everything will be fine!  However, if we don't reduce the clutter and remove the items we don't need or even like, organizing won't work.  We could spend a lot of time trying it, but our overloaded storage spaces will always return to a sta...