Living Simply?

When Jon and I got married, one of the things we said we valued was living simply. To us, living simply meant not getting caught up in materialism, not believing that we needed the newest, shiniest things, not trying to keep up with the Joneses. It meant trying to avoid debt, especially credit card debt.

We wanted our lives to be filled with the richness of friendships and experiences. Of good conversation and lots of laughter. We hoped our home would always be a place of hospitality, even if we didn't have fancy furnishings.

It was easy to live simply in our first year of marriage. In some ways, we didn't have much of a choice--we were broke grad students. Our first apartment was a tiny basement suite in Vancouver. It was basically a rectangle: you walked through the little living room to the galley kitchen to the bathroom to the bedroom. (That's right, you walked through the bathroom to get to the bedroom). We had such little storage that we built an extra tall bed frame so that we could put a few boxes underneath. We didn't have a dresser or a closet in our bedroom, but we did have a few shelves with baskets on them. And we had a tiny little deep freeze in our bedroom because that's the only place it would fit.

Our little home was a few minutes walk to the beach and two blocks from all kinds of little local stores and restaurants. We started playing tennis that year because we lived across the street from some tennis courts, and it was a free date.

We turned a falling apart Ikea dresser into a shoe rack and a very small coffee table.

It was a great little place. And we tried to fill it with friends as often as we could.

If we were to try to move back into that place at this point in our lives, we would have to sell most of our stuff. And figure out where Laurel would sleep.

We've noticed that the more stuff we acquire, the more difficult it is to live simply. The easier it is to believe that we need more and better stuff.

To Be Continued...