About two years ago my husband, daughter and I decided to downsize our life. We took a family retreat to a little farm in eastern TN and talked about what we wanted our future to look like. Lots of different thoughts and ideas always lead us back to one common idea - simplicity. In nine years of marriage (to that point), our life had somehow come to feel quite complicated. We had a great deal of things, relationships, accounts, aspirations, etc. to maintain and although much of it was good, it was simultaneously disconnecting. On our little farm oasis everything seemed so beautiful. Even the nothingness was beautiful. And so on that weekend retreat we decided - we were going to change our lives, no matter the cost, to embrace that beauty.
When we got back from the farm, I called a realtor and we got started. The house was the first thing that had to go. Our 2500+ square feet home gave us each plenty of space, but it also felt lonely. Zillow became my obsession. We told our realtor about our desire to downsize and probably shocked him when we found our house one week later. As a matter of fact, I think we shocked everyone. But my husband and I have always worked that way. We’re slow to decide, however once we pick a direction, we pounce.
The space we picked was 1400 square feet - 3 bedrooms, two baths and a free flowing living space that offered plenty of connection. We almost instantly fell in love and knew this was the next step for us. But downsizing by 1000+ square feet means you’ve got to downsize your stuff as well. And did we ever. We got rid of about 50% of our things - anything from shelves to clothes to beds to books - anything that did not have a designated place was on its way out to find a new owner.
To this day I’m still not completely sure how we decided to downsize our life, found a home, got rid of 50% of our things, packed and moved into our new space with two full time jobs and a toddler in tow in a little over a month, but we did. I suppose when the pain of not changing becomes greater than the pain to change, you do whatever it takes.
The day we moved in, I hung a sign over our fireplace that says, “Love grows best in little houses, with fewer walls to separate. Where you eat and sleep so close together you can’t help but communicate. And if we had more room between us, think of all we’d miss. Love grows best in houses just like this.”
Fast forward two years and that sign couldn’t have been more profoundly prophetic. Our life has changed dramatically since that time - my husband has quit his corporate job and now shares with me one of our three bedrooms that is used as an office, our toddler now stays home with us rather than going to preschool, we’ve welcomed beautiful baby number two and we are currently quarantined from all of our normal people and activities in the heat of summer. I recently told my husband that my brain feels like its living in a pressure cooker.
Our living room is a collection of the aesthetics that bring me peace and multiple open paint bottles with sticky streaks covering the white board of our art easel. There are dishes stacked so high in our sink that I have to play a game of twister just to get a glass of water. The laundry is piling in the hallway and the clean clothes somehow never seem to make it to their drawers. And yet...
When I sit on the fireplace in our living room and take a second look, I can see the overflowing smiles of self-confidence that resulted from those sticky streaks on the easel. I can hear the laughter shared at the counter as jelly dripped all over the floor from the spoon our toddler was holding. I can see happy snuggles savored as another spit up rag conquered laundry mountain.
I can see the fingerprints of life.
The thing about living small is that everything is in your face - constantly. You can’t escape each other. You can’t escape your mess. You can’t escape period. But that’s exactly how love grows - roots so closely entangled together that they culminate in the blossoming of life.
On most nights I sit on the couch and watch my daughter’s head pop in and out of her doorway as she asks, “Where are you guys?” (as if there’s anywhere we could possibly go that she wouldn’t be able to see). It’s in those moments specifically that I’m brought back to the prophetic nature of the sign hanging above my fireplace, “And if we had more room between us, think of all we’d miss. Love grows best in houses just like this.”