Buying Stuff Thoughtfully

Let me set the record straight. I am not globally against "stuff". In fact, some stuff is great stuff. Where would the world be without the automobile, dental floss or the Slap Chop? I myself own two of the three. And while I do roll my eyes at excessive consumerism and eschew the annual onslaught of Christmas presents and yes, I won't set foot inside a Walmart, nonetheless, I do have to admit that everyone has a right to determine how much stuff they want cluttering up their lives. If a person's debt-ridden credit cards require them to work 50 hours a week at a job that they hate, then that's their business. If another's raison d'etre is to acquire the best gadgets that money can by (even at the expense of enriching social experiences) then who am I to judge? And it's certainly not my place to comment on the tendency of people in this country to drive rather than walk to the local store for their gallon of fat free milk and a corn syrup-laden snack to tide them over.

Okay, that's crap. I do judge, I do comment and for the love of God, put down that sugar-laden soft drink and go for a walk, why don't ya?

Grouse as I may, everyone wants a certain level of stuff in their lives, and I must come to terms that everyone's definition of minimalism is not the same as mine. Okay, so I'm a work in progress so don't judge. (Apparently, that's my role, anyway.)

The one thing I've discovered in this quest to simplify is how it has changed my own shopping habits (Es tu, Brute? Yes, I shop) and in ways I never expected. I knew I would become more invested in the quality of the products I buy. Therefore, I anticipated that I'd spend more money for certain things. What I didn't realize was just how much time thoughtful buying takes. Holy moly, this could easily become a part-time job!

It all started with backpacks. No, actually it started with the computer. I already have a laptop, but Jeremy's desktop computer was going to have to be replaced by something portable if a mobile (a.k.a. lighter) lifestyle was our goal. Once he did the research (how much time that took, I have no idea) and purchased the computer, we were then confronted with the best way to carry the thing. And then there was my beat up briefcase style laptop bag--fine for the short jaunts of my past life, but wholly unsuitable for the nomadic lifestyle of my not too distant future.

Enter the hunt for the backpacks. For me, it had to be lightweight, be classified as a "personal item" per TSA regulations, have ample padding to protect the computer, have straps that didn't dig into my delicate flesh, and it has to hold a TON of crap. It had to be stylish, last-forever sturdy, easy to clean and a pretty color wouldn't hurt either.

Jeremy's backpack had to exhibit much of the above, but it also had to serve as his "man-purse" that he totes nearly everywhere and since he also actually hikes, the backpack had to fill that role as well. So, ventilation was important.

I'll spare you all the gory details, but it took us over week to find my backpack and Jeremy still doesn't have one.  There have been countless trips to REI, the weighing of the pros and cons, hours of online research and the purchasing and subsequent returning of items that didn't make the cut after all. I have ended up with a North Face Overhaul which in spite of its lumberjack-sounding name meets most of my requirements (with its dull brown color, it does not rate a Perfect 10, but everything else is there).

We've learned that when one simplifies, one gets very persnickety and thoughtful about those products that one does buy. And the more purposes one item can serve, the better. Try going up to the shoe salesman at REI and telling him you want a comfortable shoe that serves as sneaker, hiking boot and day shoe. It must look good with pants and skirts and oh by the way, I wear a size 10 1/2 (virtually unheard of in women's shoe sizes). See where that gets ya. Hint: let's just say I walked out without making a shoe purchase.

Jeremy has ended up buying a real man-purse (oh excuse me, I believe the PC term is "day pack"). I liked it so much, I decided to ditch my lady-purse and buy a similar one for myself. And he did pick up a protective computer sleeve for his laptop. So he has the backpack accessories, it's just that he has yet to find the backpack with which he has the perfect first date chemistry.

It's a process that apparently cannot be hurried.

This would be little more than an amusing story if it didn't apply to all of the following that we have either purchased or sought to purchase in the past three weeks:

• Hiking boots (Jeremy)
• Tennis shoes (Maureen and Jeremy)
• Cosmetic case (Maureen)
• Plastic TSA-compliant squeeze bottles
• Air mattresses
• Pants (Maureen and Jeremy)
• Jackets (Maureen and Jeremy)
• Suitcases and the assorted paraphernalia that accompanies them to make one's packing life easier
• Plastic storage boxes
• Camera (Jeremy)
• iPhone (Maureen)
• Wallet/passport holder (Maureen)
• Shampoo bars (as an aside--who knew there was such a thing? There is! A bar of shampoo to avoid the whole "flying with liquids in your carry-on" issue)
• A couple of scarves to jazz up my mostly black travel wardrobe (Maureen)

And those are just the things I can remember!

In the past, my shopping strategy has been more of need it, find it, buy it. I've never been a social shopper. If it was a big ticket item, then I'd do my research and then, without much agonizing, buy the product. But now it feels as though every item is big ticket. It has to be compact, be multi-purpose, be made to last, be environmentally friendly and it really should be made in the USA (although adherence to this last criterion has been difficult).

I guess this is what being a thoughtful consumer means--taking the time to get it right the first time. I'm hoping it will save money, resources and time in the long run as these items shouldn't have to be replaced for a long time. But the initial time investment is astounding! I thought simplifying was supposed to give me more time, not suck it up reading reviews on Amazon, trying on 37 pairs of black pants to get the exact perfect pair, and buying and returning things all over town.

My God! I'm acting like a shopaholic!

Hopefully this phase will be over soon and my "spare time" will be more like I envision: having cocktails in the tiki hut with my husband in the early evening while we toast our good fortune and cast aspersions on those who spend too much time watching TV and shopping.

But for now, (Gulp!) you can find me at the mall.


Maureen Thomson and Jeremy Myers are a husband and wife team offering professional housesitting services worldwide. Visit our HouseSitting Couple website for more information.

Lightening the (Book) Load

In my last blog post, I mentioned, among other things, that in my about-to-be acquired nomadic lifestyle, I'll have no designated spot to place my library books. My friend, Dixie, (undoubtedly the most avid book lover I know) expressed concern--no--alarm at the fact that a life spent roving would mean that (gasp!) I'd not only have to lighten my book load, but that, without an address, I would not have a library card! Who in their right mind would voluntarily choose a life devoid of literary delights?

Dixie's question was one upon which I'd been reflecting (okay--obsessing) deeply. I, too, love to read, although I am not nearly as much a collector of books as Dixie, whose comfy-cozy home has numerous bookshelves all overflowing with much-loved reads. On my part, my aversion to clutter and my frugal nature generally means that my thirst for literature has been quenched by the library rather than the bookstore. Of course, this means that the books I do (er...did) own were ones that passed the test that catapulted them from borrowing to ownership status and earned the coveted position of permanent placement on my bookshelf. And believe me, a book had to be damn good to be given this honor.

The paring down of my books has been a four step process. Two years ago, when we sold the Victorian, I eliminated many volumes. With this most recent endeavor, on the first run-through, I eliminated about half of what I had. A few days later, I went through the remaining pile of about 15 books. Many of them were business and marketing books, each with a nugget or two that I planned to implement in my wedding officiating business. With a shrug, I finally acknowledged that my business has been steadily growing over the years without utilizing these strategies, and I'm going to be traveling too much to really take the time to implement them anyway. Besides, if I haven't done anything with them by now...So, out they went.

I left myself with three books:

The Pink House--probably an unremarkable story to most, except for the fact that it is the first book I ever experienced being read aloud (to and by my mother when I was about 12 or 13). It instituted in me a love of reading aloud and being read to that continues to this day, I love being read to--especially by someone I love. It allows me to not only delve into the story, but also hear the familiar voice of someone I care about in the process. Someone who reads well aloud is worth their weight in gold.

Whispers of Inspiration--a collection of poems that I refer to often, not only because they are beautiful, but because a contributor is one of my oldest and most beloved friends. I'd forgotten that Bob had inscribed a note to me on the inside cover when he gave it to me years ago. When packing up my books, I spied his familiar left-handed scrawl and it made me smile. Thanking God for the gift of longtime friends, I put the book into the "keep" pile.

The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted and Other Small Acts of Liberation--this one has twofold significance. First of all, any woman who has ever dieted will appreciate the enormity of the sentiment expressed in the title. But more important, the last story in the book, Sin City, has special meaning to me. The story is about a woman who musters the courage to step out of her comfort zone and seek out a new and exciting life. (Sound familiar?) The fictional woman's name in the story is Rita Thompson. That was also my mother's name (minus the "p"). I read the story for the first time (knowing neither the plot nor the main character's name when I began it) the day after my mom's funeral. A message from the Universe? Not an ounce of doubt in the world. That book goes where I go.

And as for my thirst for additional reading material? There are always e-readers and downloadable audiobooks, used bookstores and the borrowing of library cards of others when I am in their neck of the woods. I am not concerned. Also, I tend to read less when I'm exploring new places. And I intend to do lots of exploring!

In a pinch, I can always Skype Dixie and have her read to me!


Maureen Thomson and Jeremy Myers are a husband and wife team offering professional housesitting services worldwide. Visit our HouseSitting Couple website for more information.

And a good time was had by all

It's the morning after. The moving sale dust has settled. All is still. It was an uphill battle for a bit, but after three days of tagging, schlepping, Craig's List updating and yes--merchandising, all is quiet. The hoards of bargain hunters have left, bringing more stuff into their (for the most part) overstuffed homes.

And the house is...eerily still. No clocks tick. There is no sound of a chair scraping the floor. Dishes do not clang together in the kitchen sink. No smell of burning toast emits from the toaster. Netflix movies do not appear on the television. Even the rain has stopped drumming incessantly against the roof. All is quiet.

And in the stillness of the silence, the reader asks, "Why? What is the source of this almost reverential quietude after such boisterous and hectic activity?"

Well, gentle soul, all will be revealed in time. First, close your eyes...breathe in...breathe out...enjoy the silence...revel in the glory of the anticipation. Namaste...

Because...

WE SOLD ALL OUR FREAKING STUFF!!! WOO HOO. HAPPY DANCE!! Oh yeah, yea us. Nice Stupid auction lady said we wouldn't be able to do it on our own. Ha! She underestimated the power of the dynamic duo! Ha ha. We rock!!! We are like the best, the most superlativeness, sumpremo can't-stop-us-so-don't-even-try yard sale gurus on the effin' PLANET!!! We totally freaking rule!!!

Okay, let me compose myself. That felt so good. All this silence was beginning to grate on my type A nerves.

Yes, dear friends. We are down to one new Weber grill, one chair and ottoman, a couple of desks and a handful of boxes of kitchen items. We've got a wad of cash in our pockets and nothing to dust for the foreseeable future. Plus, we feel good knowing our high quality junk (seriously, it was some great stuff) has flowed out from us to others who will make good use of the things and to whom these items will hopefully bring comfort, ease, and maybe even some happiness. Plus, PLUS, we made some new friends in the process--two couples with whom we sat at length and talked and talked. More on them in another post.

The location independent light at the end of the tunnel grows ever closer.

Maureen Thomson and Jeremy Myers are a husband and wife team offering professional housesitting services worldwide. Visit our HouseSitting Couple website for more information.

And so the Craig's List madness begins

Whenever I'm faced with a large or quasi-unpleasant task, I ask myself, "Do I have more time or do I have more money?" The answer to that question indicates whether I'll do the task myself (a.k.a. DIY) or hire someone else to do it for me. Usually, the answer to this question is all I need to point me in the right direction.

Usually, but not always. In the endeavor to wrap things up at our Portland house and get outta Dodge by the end of the month, the term "March Madness" has been given a whole new meaning. Jeremy and I are still running our wedding officiating business (brides don't care that we're undertaking an entirely new lifestyle change--as well they shouldn't since they're about to make a pretty significant lifestyle change of their own). So, since that show must go on, we have to squeeze in the rest of our lives--no matter how unmanageable--around that.

Ergo, the answer to the question, "In regard to selling our crap, do we have the time to list everything on Craig's List/Ebay and have an estate sale or do we have more money to give the whole kit 'n kaboodle to an auction house?"

No brainer, thought we. Time is at a premium. Money less so. On Tuesday, I placed a call to the auction house. On Wednesday, the nice auction lady came over. Bear in mind that our house is full of new furniture and other items that we have purchased within the past six months. Our receipts show the new stuff totaling close to $10,000. Throw in the stuff that we already had and I figure we're conservatively looking at about $12,000 worth of some primo booty. We figured we'd settle for an offer of $3,000, and eagerly hoped for something closer to $4,000 from the nice auction lady.

Apparently, I don't know horse manure from shinola when it comes to used furniture values. The nice auction lady offered us $1,250 for our stuff. I thought Jeremy was going to go into anaphylactic shock on the spot. Bad auction lady!

So, after reviving my husband, we decided that maybe we have more time than we thought (or less money than we thought, depending on how you look at it) so we began the process of Craig's List posting. And as usual, this is bringing us into contact with all the interesting, fun, thoughtful and crazy people of the greater Portland area. The first guy that came over spoiled us. He was an absolute sweetheart who ended up walking through the house with us to see what else we had that he might want in addition to the item for which he originally came (which he did buy). We ended up having a great conversation (his wife is expecting a baby and her due date is the same date as my daughter Alyssa's birthday. What are the odds? We're practically soul mates!) and he picked up some tools for a song.

Life was good...until prospective customer #2 blew us off for his appointment, then finally showed up three hours late, asked a bunch of nosey questions and tried to get us to sell him our brand new dining room set for a pittance (after telling us what a POS it was).

Yeah...Jeremy firmly escorted him to the door.

Ya gotta love the world of Craig's. It's such a microcosm of our society. And since Jeremy and I met on CL, we do hold a special place in our hearts for it. And the good news is that we've already sold enough stuff to make the $1,250 that the auction lady would have given us so anything over and above is profit...well...sorta...

If nothing else, dealing with the "public" (as Jeremy often says, always with air quotes) is allowing me to focus on something else (like is the next CL joker that comes through the door going to be an ax murderer?) rather than my ambivalence at getting rid of some of my favorite pieces. No kidding, if Jeremy says, "it's just stuff" one more time, there's going to be a serious accident around here. Last night he dared to refer to my Serta Perfect Sleeper King Sized Royal Comfort extra Firm mattress as STUFF!!! Can you believe it??? The first mattress of my entire adult life that is Goldilocks-just right for me. And he called it "just stuff"!!!

Yeah, all I'm sayin' is, "who's the crazy one now?"



Maureen Thomson and Jeremy Myers are a husband and wife team offering professional housesitting services worldwide. Visit our HouseSitting Couple website for more information.

What's wrong with this picture?

Every person in every relationship has certain roles that they fulfill either consciously or unconsciously. These encompass both personality attributes as well as tasks performed. These roles can be a source of comfort. In an ever changing and chaotic world, predictability in one's home can be a good thing.

Or, to put in another way, when my world has been turned on its ear, it's reassuring to know that I can still count on the fact that as long as Jeremy lives and breathes, I will never have to take out the garbage.

Prescribed roles and personal rituals might be the one thing that secures my hold on sanity during this period of dishevelment and upheaval. So, imagine my chagrin as Jeremy has single-handedly decided to change the rules of our marital game over the past few days. In our relationship, my role has always been that of the go-getter. I am the one who concocts the ideas for the life-changing scenarios, then goes balls to the wall to make them happen in record time. While the rest of the world bemoans about how they hate to move, for example, I can categorize, list stuff on Craig's List, box, pack and load faster than you can say "U-Haul." Next!

Jeremy's job is to shake his head in amusement at my ideas for adventure but then ultimately come on board for a good time to be had by all. When the process of bringing the concept into reality begins, I am the fast one, the leaper, the let's-get-it-done-and-relax later person. Jeremy takes a more languorous approach. It's not that he's not into the spirit of things, it's just that he--as does the rest of the world--tends to move a bit slower than my warp speed. It's a problem sometimes. I bite my tongue when he takes a dog's age to get something accomplished. He keeps his lips sealed as I flutter about "in that way I have."

It works for us (most of the time).

In spite of the irritation we sometimes feel with each other's speediness (or lack thereof), it has come to define who we are. We've not only adjusted accordingly, we've learned to embrace our differences. When we are piled into the car and realize we've forgotten the cell phone, it's assumed that it will be me who dashes in to retrieve it. It's just easier than drumming my fingers impatiently on the wheel, while Jeremy maneuvers his 6'3" body out of the car, lumbers into the house, hunts around for the phone, goes to the bathroom, blows his nose, stops to watch an episode of Jeopardy, grabs a snack, reads War and Peace and then eventually emerges without the cell phone. In a fraction of that amount of time, I'd be in, out and halfway to our destination. Conversely, if something needs to be researched before making a decision, then Jeremy is the go-to guy in the relationship. He'll spend days or weeks checking out every resource imaginable and then present a full report, complete with editorial comments.

I am the hare, he is the tortoise and we like it that way. 

How can I say goodbye?

But, I gotta tell ya, something has gone horribly awry in the normalcy department. The last week has been for me, a daily series of false starts, laments and frustrations, whereas my husband has been Craig's-listing, moving out and eliminating his stuff with a joie de vivre that is usually...well... MY personal style. I, who have been the spokesperson for living a life of simplicity and non-attachment to stuff stood in the kitchen and cried (and I mean that quite literally) over the prospect of having to sell my antique postal-boxes-converted-to-a-storage-bin that I just LOVE. It is I who has picked up items over and over again during the past three days, only to move them to another part of the house to deal with "later." (Note that there is virtually no "later" as estate sale is to be held in three days!)

Jeremy even sold his favorite chair--the ugly one that I hated and he always claimed he'd take to his grave. And now, sweet Jesus in the morning, he's listed all his camera gear on Ebay. WTF!!! There is something very wrong with this picture.  When I fake-casually mentioned that his unprecedented zeal is ummm......"different," he responded, "it's just stuff," followed by, "Anything you need at Home Depot? I'm making a quick trip to pick up hang tags for the estate sale."

It's just stuff! Running out the door for a "quick trip?" Who is this alien creature and where did my husband get off to???

My style has been like yesterday's example. I begin going through paper files to see what can be tossed, what can be scanned and what originals need to be kept. After a few minutes, I come across our tax folders. Realizing I should file our 2010 taxes before we hightail it out of here, I flit over to the computer, praying to the tax gods that we won't owe much. My piles of papers litter the floor behind me, but I'll get back to them "later." I work on the taxes, stopping occasionally to deal with a Lyssabeth's issue. About halfway through Schedule C, I recall that I had wanted to make some homemade yogurt, so out to the kitchen went I. Back to the taxes 30 minutes later, stop for lunch, check Facebook (while I eat so it doesn't count), finish taxes, make phone calls to clients, call my son-in-law to ask which Ipod I should buy, call daughter to see if she wants our television set, call other daughter to see if she wants my sewing machine. Lament to both girls about how frustrated I am that I can't get anything accomplished and Jeremy is making me look bad. Get up from chair, trip over pile of papers on the floor.

At least I didn't cry. And I did get the taxes done. And we only owe a couple hundred dollars.

I guess it's good for couples to exchange roles for a while--see how the other half lives, so to speak. I'm not sure what the deeper meaning of all this is, but at least one of us is getting stuff accomplished.

Hmmm...maybe I should call one of my daughters and talk about if for a while...


Maureen Thomson and Jeremy Myers are a husband and wife team offering professional housesitting services worldwide. Visit our HouseSitting Couple website for more information.