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There’s plenty of room in a coffin.  Unless you want to Live. Because you CAN’T take it with you if it’s tangible.  This is so entirely true that some hoarders are compelled to reverse their habits so as not to leave unwanted items as a sad inheritance .  Shortly before tossing something in the trash, I sometimes have to ask myself not only the usual questions – do I want it or need it or love it?  But: will my kids want it or need it or love it?  And then: would ANYbody want it or need it or love it?   Clearly, everything once passed the litmus test; otherwise I would never have owned it.  Life is not static though, and the past is too crowded for everyday living, as is a coffin.  Or an urn.  Or an ashtray.

Eight years. 116880 cigarettes not smoked, saving $33,427.68. Life saved: 1 year, 5 weeks, 6 days, 20 hours, 0 minutes. 

This is what I was thinking when I saw the dog at the Tiny House Meetup (thank you, Liberation Tiny Homes): for a pet, these Tiny Houses are huge…..Perspective.  That’s what it takes to evaluate space.  I live in a three bedroom 2 1/2 bath house with an attic and walkout basement.  It’s in sub-suburbia, where there are still no sidewalks and you can’t see your neighbors until the leaves have all fallen off the trees.  But indoors, as a hoarder, you sit in one spot and Live in only a tiny portion of the space you paid so dearly for…and why?

Because you were going to give great dinner parties and all the kids would hang out in your basement playing board games.  And you were going to have a huge wall of books and treasures and art that people would gaze at so lovingly that they’d forget why they were visiting.  And there would be sports equipment and a sewing room, and each child would have his own bedroom.  And there would be space to homeschool if you had to, and you’d have a separate closet for clothes that were going to fit again someday.  And the dining table was the one you sat at as a kid, and it was really quite beautiful.

But the kids are all gone, the spouse is a shut-in, and none of those things is ever going to happen.  You don’t need the table for dinner parties.  It’s used for sorting, when you can get to it.  You haven’t sewn for so long that you don’t know where the pedal to the sewing machine is.  The kids didn’t play sports.  The books were never read.  The extra bedroom was never built.  But somehow there’s nowhere to Live, and the Stuff is sucking the very breath out of you, and you know that an eight by twenty foot home on wheels is huge when you think about it.

It’s taken three days to pack for a three-hour event.  The event?  A Tiny House Meetup; or as I like to think of them, “Huge Rolling Duffel Bags”, or “You-never-know-if-you-might-get-a-splinter-or-something First Aid Kits.”  This eastern PA weather is also fickle, so outerwear and umbrellas are always in the van.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When it comes to trying on a new lifestyle, I sometimes have to jump in with both feet and then dash back to dry land.  In this case, the idea of going tiny after accumulating enough machinery and paperwork to overfill a house, I packed my oversized vehicle and took myself to the mountains.  I saw exactly one tiny house on my adventure, but for a couple of weeks I lived in a hotel room, a cottage and a trailer.

First discovery: I can only stand my own company for a limited time.  It rained pretty much the whole time I was holed up in these places.  With wet sneakers and a fisherman’s hat, I found all sorts of places to mingle with humanity.  But once back at my homestead-du-jour, I had to turn on the TV to drown out any semblence of lonliness.  I was completely at a loss as to how to discuss anything with a chipmunk, moose, deer, bird, snake or squirrel.

Second discovery: your car can be a very large pocketbook.  At least half of the things I brought with me never left the vehicle.  Perhaps this is the reason I thought I might enjoy living in a tiny house on wheels.

Third discovery: No moose ever wants to hire you so that you can live in the middle of a blueberry patch in the mountains.  By it’s very nature as a vacation spot, nobody lives there in order to work.

Fourth discovery: no matter what you pack, there’s something you wish you hadn’t left behind.  This was pretty much expected before I even left for my trip, and likely the reason I still live in a home surrounded by things I might need someday.

 

 

 

It was a big day when I finally let go of the Pack Rat article.  It was from the Boston Globe, and it was 35 years old.  Never mind that I had never quite figured out what to name the file folder I was going to keep it in, or that it had peanut butter on it, and the lady in the picture had moved far away.  I had discovered in my mind that glitch you see hoarders have, clinging to your stuff as if you'd otherwise fall down a cliff.  That was a big day, all right; but many more big days had to come before I could go from FullHaus to EmptyNest.  And it's still a work in progress.