Tag Archives: Tiny House

Collecting Furniture: One Family’s Story

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Living Room Furniture

The velvet chairs, an antique oak coffee table, and my mother's buffet.

We have a problem here at The Cunning Plan household. This is going to be a sticky one, taking all of my resolve and much of my energy in terms of putting the proverbial money where the mouth is, if you get my drift. I may have to rely on Mike for strength. To be succinct, our problem is that our daughter,Claire,  is moving home for awhile as part of her own cunning plan for the future. It’s not what you think. This isn’t a ‘rebound kid’ situation. She has a great job and is a fully formed grownup. We welcome her back and look forward to having her. But not her stuff. We don’t look forward to her stuff.

Actually, to be brutally fair, it’s not really HER stuff we’re not looking forward to. Oh, sure, there will be the usual transition time where we all learn to live differently in the house once more and people wrangle for personal space for their belongings (NOT in the middle of the sitting room, okay?)  But we’ll get through all that. After all, we’re all adults here. The real problem is that she is bringing home more of OUR stuff in the way of furniture. Claire has the most adorable apartment in the world. It’s in an old Victorian house, has a bay window, hardwood floors, and an exquisite little fireplace. And it’s almost completely furnished with our furniture. Ouch. She’s going to be bringing an apartment full of furniture back home. Do I need to explain this further?

How does a mild-mannered family of 4 collect this massive amount of furniture (asks the curious reader)?  Here’s the gist of that:  Mike and I have been married for almost 30 years. Most people collect a myriad assortment of furnishings over that amount of time. In addition to the sheer number of years, I have a tendency to be somewhat…’creative’. Yes. That’s the word. Creative.  And while I love really good, solid furniture that stands the test of time,  I am pretty frugal when it comes to purchasing furniture. Okay, fine! I’m cheap when it comes to purchasing furniture. There is something about putting down several thousand dollars for, say, a couple of chairs, that just gives me pause. I’m getting better about that as I get older, but for the greater part of 3 decades I have had an alter ego that has landed us in this mess. Who is this alter ego, ask the inquiring minds among you? Melissa White: Furniture Stripper!

So much of the furniture we now own are pieces that I found for almost nothing at a rummage sale, or thrift shop, or the like and then nursed back to life. Pieces like the solid maple gateleg table I bought for $25 when Claire was about 5. It had several layers of paint on it. I stripped it, sanded it, stained it and painted the legs black. It’s beautiful. Or how about the solid maple dressing table with Queen Anne legs that I bought from someone for 20$ when Claire was 3? It’s heavy as all heck and has graceful lines. Again with the stripping, sanding, staining. It’s a fantastic piece of furniture and has been used as her dress-up table, my desk, and a sofa table over the years. It’s very versatile.

Then there are the two overstuffed chairs with rolled arms I bought because I knew they were quality pieces. I paid the best upholsterer in town to do them in taupe velvet. They are classic. I probably cannot buy chairs of this quality anywhere. And there is the very old steamer trunk I bought when I was in highschool. It was my first ‘antique’. I refinished the wood on the outside, wrote my name on the inside, and took it to college with me.

More furniture

One of the many upholstered pieces I've resuscitated, and old chest that will likely go, and a corner of the steamer trunk.

This is only a small sampling of the pieces I must decide about. (Oh, those velvet chairs are staying. Let’s be clear about that right now.) So much of our family’s history is represented in these pieces. Many of them I bought when the children were young. We couldn’t afford to buy nice furniture without going into debt, and we didn’t want to do that. But I wanted nice things. So I became pretty good at something I enjoyed anyhow. And we ended up with a home filled with priceless pieces that are personal and lovely and somehow make our home warmer than new furniture ever could. I have an oak dresser that belonged to my parents when they were first married. I have two large book cases that my mom got in the early 1970’s. I have a solid wood buffet that my mom got when I was a young child, now refinished with funky green glass handles.  I grew up with those pieces, and they are really nice. I would choose them again today. They are irreplaceable. How could I possibly part with them now? These choices are going to be really hard.

I had a dream a few nights ago that I was back in college somewhere and someone had stolen my bike. I was late to class and arrived pushing a shopping cart with only one item in it: a bike lock. I pushed that cart across the front of the class, in front of the teacher, and then all the way to the back of the class before being seated.  That dream is pretty clear to me. I do feel as though I am learning new and hard things, lessons for which I am only marginally prepared. I have no idea how I’m going to get from one “class” to the next, as though somehow I’ve been too cavalier in protecting what is mine. I am left with the lock, but my bike is gone.  It’s apparent that between releasing myself from the ownership of things that are intimately entwined with my personal history and publishing this blog to share that process, some part of me is beginning to feel like a homeless person on parade.

I know this feeling will pass. I realize it’s all a part of the process of letting go. But I’m reminded, once again, that reading about something is so much easier than doing that thing. So Peter Walsh, if you are reading this blog (as if…) please be gentle with me. Because I’m not going to promise that I can let everything go in one fell swoop. Maybe there is a reason why this is a 4 year plan.

 

 

Organizing My Kitchen: Getting Rid of Clutter!

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Just because I’ve posted about the concepts of living in a ‘tiny house‘ and ‘visualizing your life‘ doesn’t mean I’m not doing the work! This plan is all about the work of organizing my house so we can live on board a sailboat. I’ve started in the kitchen and I’d like to share with you the ‘before’ photos of my cabinets. Mothers and grandmothers everywhere are shuddering bleakly as I open the dark recesses of my kitchen cabinets to the curious public. But, hey, whatever it takes to keep me focused and on-task. I ask only that you be kind in your comments. I’ve been living this way for years and have only now understood how I’ve created my own stress. It’s a significant blow to the ego and I need time to recover.

getting rid of clutter

It looks like I need help organizing my house!

Looking at the first photo, on the left, you will see a cabinet that is being used as a bookcase, a medicine cabinet, and I don’t know what else is on the top shelf.  Down below there is a basket of miscellaneous stuff that doesn’t have another home, some jars of home made jam and salsa, and way in the back, my box of cookie cutters, which I use approximately every decade.

Now lets turn around to get a load of the glassware cabinet, which is supposed to ‘add’ to the decor of the kitchen. Martha Steward I am not. (Although I could be if I had her staff.) On the top shelf are champagne glasses we use on Christmas day only. They are too tall for the shelf so you can see only their red bottoms.  Then there is the lovely teapot given to me by my daughter several Christmases ago and our good glassware.  On the bottom is more of our glassware, some cups (hanging) that I never use but like anyhow, and our tea boxes. There is also a tea canister with the word ‘Paris’ on it. Very chic, to be sure.

Organizing the kitchen

Organizing the kitchen will make me happy!

The cabinets below the glassware were equally ill-used. Heavy corning ware was stored with the waffle iron, crock pot, hand blender, and rice cooker, among other miscellaneous kitchen-related ‘stuff”. The snap-ware was jumbled in a basket. Suffice to say that whoever did the dishes on any given day used this cabinet as a catch-all for things that had no other place.

Clearly the only solution was to dump everything on the floor and start over.

I was ruthless when clearing these cabinets out. I completely emptied them, tossing things in the garbage or Goodwill box as I went. Peter Walsh was right. The garbage can IS my friend.  Out-of-date medicine? Gone! Broken binder with recipes printed out on computer paper with the little perforations on each side? Trashed! (For those of you too young to remember, computer paper used to come in one long sheet, with perforations on each side and at top and bottom. This kind of paper came along right after mimeograph sheets, which also no longer exist.) Stacks of dishes I found on the top shelf? Half in the staging area in the garage, half stored neatly in an appropriate cabinet. I tell you, I was without ruth!

Astute readers caught the illogical use of this cabinet for medicines. What you didn’t know is that the medicine chest in the main bathroom stood literally empty. I know, I know. Don’t hassle me with your logic, okay? I’m baring my soul here.

I got side tracked for a couple of hours while I searched for materials and then constructed another shelf for the medicine cabinet, but in the end, all the medication and first aid stuff fit very nicely, with room to spare. Between the two sets of cabinets I got rid of two large boxes of stuff and filled a huge trashbag. Misson accomplished!

The next question was how to restock the cabinets in a more organized way. This is where The Book comes in.  Because of internet information overload, I’ve chosen to stick with Peter Walsh’s book It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff.  There are many books out there, but I’m happy with this one and don’t want to clutter up my mind with extraneous information. So, in the chapter on kitchen organizing, Peter talks about the ‘magic triangle’ concept. I was familiar with the concept, but not in terms of organizing, only in terms of working. So when he said that the things you use most often need to be inside the triangle and the things you use least need to be way outside of it, that helped enormously with decision-making here.

The first set of cabinets is just outside my work triangle, so things I use but not very often can live there. I also needed a place to store all the canned goods I’ve been making this year, and it’s been a handy place for the cookbooks I do use.  At the bottom will go kitchen gadgets that I use rarely but still enough to keep them, like the waffle iron and the heavy casserole dishes.  We’re not living on a boat yet. You can see the results in this ‘after’ photo. I am determined to keep those voids empty! In the end there was plenty of room for the little red toolbox, which we keep handy with basic tools for quick jobs. Potatoes and onions and the like will be stored in the basket.

Clutter free and logical, too!

The second set of cabinets said goodbye to the crystal glassware, which was moved to another space. I had to put the cute teapot in the Goodwill box, with a slight sigh of pain, because we have an electric tea kettle we use all the time, several times per day. The teapot is pretty, but I can’t take it on the boat, and I never use it anymore. Gone, too, is the ‘Paris’ canister. Clearing this cabinet out gave me room to store the large pasta bowl that has lived above the refrigerator for 10 years. I use it infrequently now that we’re gluten-free, but it also serves as a good salad bowl. And I like the way it looks.

organizing kitchen cabinets

The organized cabinet.

This cabinet is not being put to its best use yet, but at least it’s cleared of clutter. I may put a door on one side and store my baking supplies here because this area offers much more counter top workspace than the area I generally use. This would also create more food storage space in the kitchen, a constant irritation. I’m going to save that for phase 2 of the kitchen reorganization.

The lower cabinets are now holding only the things we use frequently and need easy access to. Of course being easily accessible also means they will be easy to put away, a constant challenge in my family. The snap-ware is all organized and on one shelf, although Mike made a valid point that we likely could get rid of some of it. That could happen.

This organized cabinet is with arm's reach of the work triangle.

Mission accomplished in this cabinet.

Mission accomplised! With room for the Vitamix.

So we’re off and running with this whole ‘staying organized at home thing’! The hardest part so far is going to be finishing with one room before I go on to the other. Can you say “Attention Deficit Disorder”? I have a new mantra: “Must finish what I start. Must finish what I start. Must finish what I start”.  I might be losing that battle because I started on the closet in the family room already, and the kitchen organizing is still underway. I’ll do the walk of shame later, I promise.

 

Pretending To Be Small

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Reading in the cabin of our tiny house, S/V MoonriseThere is a ‘small house’ movement afoot in this country. It’s incredible. Creative, brave people, mostly young people who will change this world, are leading the way living purposeful and fulfilling lives as they redefine the ‘American Dream’. You know that dream: the one about home ownership that turns out to be a nightmare for so many. I’m glad I’m alive to see this happen. These are people who are changing the rules that define ‘success’ in our country. Take a look at these sites if you want to get a taste of what is in store for the future of home ownership in this country: TinyHouseBlog.com, Tumbleweedhouses.com, TinyHouseLiving.com, ThisTinyHouse.com.

This is part of a larger movement to live more simply, with less ‘stuff’; like what you have to do when you live on a boat. In a way, it’s literally a counter-culture attitude that is 180 degrees from what constitutes ‘normal’ in our country. These people live in small spaces, with few things to weigh them down. I’ll bet they don’t shop till they drop, either. Sorry, Wall Street. It’s never going to be the way it was before. We all know it. Some of us are just better at saying it out loud than others.

We don’t live in a tiny house. We live in a 3000 square foot rambler built in 1964. It was the definition of the word ‘fixer’ when we moved in 11 years ago.  The only thing tiny about this house is the size of the closets. People just didn’t have the same level of stuff in 1964 that we have now. I’m pretty sure there were no Walmarts or Dollar Stores on every corner back then. If part of our plan is to rent out the house and live on a boat, we have a LOT of stuff that needs dumping first if we don’t want to spend money on some huge, ridiculous storage space. Which we don’t.

To that end, it helps to pretend that we’re going to be living in a tiny house. And this is true in more ways than you think. A boat is basically a tiny, floating house. Also, when we move to our final home, wherever that is, that house is going to be much smaller than this one, although the closets will definitely be larger.  Finally, although we plan to rent our house furnished,  we’ll want to store selected personal possessions in our attic while we’re away.  So we’ll pretend that the attic is a tiny house and that’s all the stuff we can keep.

In preparation for The Great Purging, I’ve been reading Peter Walsh’s book It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff. Apparently this guy has had a TV show on which he helped people de-clutter their lives. Who knew? It’s not a bad book, really. As self-help books go, it has some meat to it. One of his main ideas is to focus on the life you want to lead, not on what he calls ‘the clutter’. And he gets into the emotional holds that ‘stuff’ has on people and how they get stuck in these emotional contracts with their possessions. As a psychotherapist, I can appreciate that. His idea is that every time you are confused about whether you should get rid of something, you should ask yourself whether that object helps you get closer to the vision of the life you want to lead. Pithy stuff. Halfway through the book I could envision myself tossing those old college yearbooks into the Goodwill box. Holy crap, Batman!

So with that in mind, I’ve created a staging area in (where else?) the garage. One corner is for stuff that is leaving this house forever, one way or another. One corner is for stuff that will fit in the tiny house in the attic. It will be packed and labeled. And one corner for stuff that my kids need to make a decision about, unless they want me to make the decision for them (said in the sternest possible ‘mother’ tone).

I enter this Great Purging with fear and loathing, but also with hope. I fear the moment when I will have to release the hold some sentimental item has on me. I loathe the fact that I have to spend all this time and energy sweeping things out of my life in order to create space both emotional and physical. And I hope that all those people who say that this process will give me a profound feeling of freedom and peace are completely correct.  Otherwise, this is really going to suck because we have some cool stuff and we’ve had a lot of it for a long, long time.