Voluntary Downsizing

This new blog is about my adventure of downsizing into a very small, off-grid, renewable energy house. I have lived in conventional houses most of my adult life. I did a little wandering in my younger years and lived in some very cramped spaces, such as the piano-like crate in Seattle. It was in a blackberry patch along the railroad tracks and nobody ever discovered I was living there. I had a wonderful time, but life eventually got its hooks into me and dragged me off.

I have always wanted just a little more house. There was a wife and three children and there just never seemed to be enough room. My wife was killed in a traffic accident and the children all grew up and moved out. I moved from where I was living with one child still a minor, to Oregon, where I currently live.

I bought a three story , burned out commercial building. Over two years of constant hard labor, my son and I renovated it. We built a shop, a three bedroom apartment and a store front all in this one building. It is still not finished, but quite livable. For a short time, I had enough space. Then my elderly mother moved in and brought all her stuff. It was fun having her here and getting to know her again, but she had a lot of stuff. Once again, not enough room.

Then my mother got ill and died. We distributed her stuff to my siblings and things got a little roomier. Then another relative moved in, who liked to collect stuff. Same thing, no room. Then the relative got married and moved out. Then my son got married and moved out.

At that point, it was just me and a three story building. Guess what? Too much stuff! No room to put it all! I was getting more than a little frustrated with the situation. Here I was, with more room than I had ever had, and it was crammed full. I couldn't find anything! I made a decision to fix the situation, so I made three rules (the only exceptions were tools):
Rule 1: Don't get anymore stuff, unless it is absolutely vital.
Rule 2: If I hadn't seen an item or used it within a year and a half, bye bye item.
Rule 3: Everybody elses stuff has to go away, now.

I began to burn loads of wood stuff, leftover lumber scraps, old rotted pallets, a big pile of brush.
Then I took all recycle stuff except project stock to the recycle center, newspapers, magazines, cardboard of all kinds.

Then I insisted to every one who had stuff stored at my place that they remove it post haste. There was a lot of resistance to that concept and some of the stuff just magically appeared on the sidewalks in front or their various living places. That process is almost done. There is only one pickup load of "other peoples stuff" left here and it will go away next week.

I then went through all my stuff and applied rule no. 2. That process is about three quarters completed. I sold, gave, donated, dumped, etc. all the stuff I would never use. I abandoned all the thousands of project that I wanted to do and just retained the ones for Winter Lake Research Center. That let me clear out a tremendous amount of just stuff, not needed stuff. I began to have some room to breathe again. I could find everything I needed and I could keep the place clean. Then I made a mistake. I had so much room, I put beds in the spare rooms to let people use in an emergency. Guess what? There are a lot of emergencies! Once again, no room!
So I closed the free hotel and took most of the beds out. I made an announcement at church that I had free beds and they disappeared quickly!

Once again, I had plenty of room. But I discovered something surprising. After I had disposed of most of my stuff, I now had too much room. I was only living in three rooms and there were seven rooms total. Plus I was beginning to have some extra room in the downstairs workshop.

I could see that I would be rattling around like a little dipper in a big water pail. I decided to move to smaller quarters. I began casting about how to do this. I really don't want to move away from this spot, but what to do? There is not much property here to build a small place and it is very expensive to build.

Ah-ha! All at once it hit me. I had just kicked the chickens out of their house. They had a fine house, but I didn't have time to properly care for them, so I gave them away. I decided to live in their old house. I did some measuring and it is only a hundred square feet smaller than the actual space I am using now. Problem solved! I just have to rebuild the chicken house into a people house! Since this post is way too long, I will break it up some. So goodbye for now.

www.winterlakeresearchcenter.org