Good Lord I hate cleaning… The  bonus of living in a tiny house… less to clean…. You would think.. But it seems the suggestion of a place for everything and everything in its place only works if there is a place to put things.. and we don’t… Downsizing has been going on for three years and we are down to the bare minimum… But we still have a ton of books… a few of which are sitting in our bedroom on bookshelves made from bricks and boards.. again!!!

The first ten years of our marriage we moved our bricks and boards with us from rental to rental to rental… Then we bought our first house and bucked up for nice book shelves.. Every room had book shelves with somewhere to put our favorite reads and other treasures… When we moved to the townhouse we had custom-made bookshelves which stretched throughout the whole main floor… we had a lot of books…

Now most have been donated or are in boxes. The nice book shelves are in my Moms garage and a new set of bricks and boards are in my bedroom. They mock me…. Forty years after moving out of my mother’s house and I haven’t made any progress at all.. Our bedroom is used for wine making, as an artist studio, a laundry room, book storage and a little bit of sleeping… There is no lovely artistically staged bedroom design. Sigh, we had to give up bookshelves to move here.

Giving up things. I had this discussion with MB the other night.. What we have to give up to live off the grid? Even though we love it here and feel it was the best choice for our happiness, we did have to give up things to live here…  Opportunity costs.. One of the only things I remember about first year Economics..

In microeconomic theory, the opportunity cost of a choice is the value of the best alternative forgone, in a situation in which a choice needs to be made between several mutually exclusive alternatives given limited resources. Assuming the best choice is made, it is the “cost” incurred by not enjoying the benefit that would be had by taking the second best choice available.

To live here we had to give up my garden, my baths, storage, unlimited water, proximity to my Mom… But those are the opportunity costs for living off grid on the nature channel. I am good with it.. I am great with it really, but I do recognise that we are doing without some of the creature comforts that we used to take for granted and enjoy.. But we are confident the best choice was made.

Our life here isn’t easy. There are no stores, or take out. I can’t have three baths a night to soothe my arthritis, We can’t go to the theatre or a hockey game. If I am out of a key ingredient for a recipe… I make something else. But the choice was simple… Living here isn’t just our first choice.. it’s our first, second and third.. Sometimes giving up things, the opportunity costs… are an easy decision,

There was a time as a teen when I was the chief in charge of cleaning at the family home.. Mom was at work.. Cleaning was left to me. I liked to clean in my teens, it has grown boring over the last forty years. Mom called me one day in high school to make sure I had been cleaning the house as expected and not out fooling around with my friends. In exasperation I said to her   “If cleanliness is next to Godliness, then Jesus is in our bathroom… ”  Living here on the nature channel, I have given up on cleanliness, and Godliness and don’t worry about Jesus.. But I sure would like

my bathroom cleaned….