A 3 bedroom home – for 2 people?

Posted on May 28, 2008

200805272057.jpgMy wife and I changed country recently. Before shifting, the two of us were fairly cramped in a 3 bedroom + garage home.

I’ll say that again. Two people. No kids (unless you count the three cats). 3 bedrooms.

Now, admittedly we both worked from home, so we could justify using a bit of extra space, but still – 3 bedrooms for 2 people is rather excessive.

Did I mention we had a garage, with no car in it?

Now, we’re in a 1 bedroom + study apartment. Neither of us work from home, but the way our new place is laid out, we could do so quite comfortably.

For me, the biggest thing I didn’t bring over was my library. 20+ years of CDs, DVDs, records books and comics. I’m not quite ready to part with them yet, so they’re in storage. Similarly, some of our larger items of furniture are in storage.

We also threw out a lot of stuff, although arguably, not enough – we still have things that are surplus to requirements.

Mostly, we decided we could live without these things to save money – international shipping ain’t cheap, and our budget to shift over here was fairly light.

What we’ve come to realise, however, is that we felt weighed down by our ‘wealth’ of possessions. Having a large house full of Stuff and Things felt like an anchor, it was psychic clutter.

Now, we live in a 1 bedroom apartment. Now, admittedly, there’s a semi-separate study area which also functions our main living space, but there’s also a dining area, and a living-room area, as well as the obligatory bedroom and bathroom and kitchen and the like.

How did we do it?

I’ll admit that I cheated. I did it the easy way. I left the country (to find a new place to live, and a job) while my beloved other half did the hard work, selling off and storing the ‘wealth’ we’d accumulated, and shipping over those things we wanted to bring with us.

Once we got over here, we had to wait a month or so before those possessions we decided to bring over arrived. During that time, we bought some of the basics – a bed, a desk, some chairs, a couch. This was an educational time for us – apart from a mild lack of variety in clothes, here was really nothing we went without. Since everything else arrived, we’ve added a dining table, and a couple of bookshelves, and arranged what came over to make the most of our small space, and we’re still feeling pretty much uncluttered.

How do we avoid the clutter?

Firstly, we put some rules in place. We have 2 bookshelves, no more. One of those is dedicated to my books, the other to sundry paperwork, cookbooks, that sort of thing. If we run out of space for books, some of them have to go into storage. We have limited space in the bedroom, if we use all of that, we have to find some things to remove. The same applies in the kitchen, in the living room, in the bathroom. We can’t add more without finding space for it.

We both have a certain tendency towards hoarding, by putting some rules in place, we hope to avoid that.

One of my mother’s mantras used to be “A place for everything, and everything in its place”. That’s our aim, and we’re getting pretty close to it.

What we have learned, is that we didn’t need everything we had. The wealth that we built around our lives didn’t hold the value we thought it did.

Now, we’re actively avoiding adding to what we own. What I’m finding most interesting, is that this is helping me curb my spending. I don’t buy that book, that DVD or that CD that catches my eye, because I know if I do, I’ll have to find somewhere to put it.

Now, I’m almost to the point of slightly regretting what I have bought. There are a few impulse buys (Damn You Borders!) that I could live without having to store. I’m looking forward to being able to conveniently buy books in an electronic format (if I was in the US, I’d SO have a kindle right now)

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