Take it to the limit … then a little bit further

As usual, I went overboard.

I don’t mean to, but I always overdo whatever I do. I can’t seem to help it. That’s just the way I’m made.

Twenty years ago I had a baby. I liked having a baby. So, I did it three more times. That’s a lot of babies.

I like ice cream, so I have a bowl after dinner most nights. And then most of the time, as soon as I think I can do it without anyone noticing, I have another big spoonful or two. That’s too much ice cream

I took a pilates class. It turns out that exercise is the one thing I don’t overdo. Wouldn’t you know.

Anyway, when we decided to move to Spokane, I went looking for a house. I wanted a big house with enough room for my big family. We didn’t know another soul in this part of the country, so I wanted a house that would be roomy enough to give us all a little space; big enough to hold friends and family when they visited.

I got lucky. It only took a few days to find the right house. A good house. A house with big rooms, a big yard and big potential. For seven years that house did everything it was supposed to do. It kept us warm and dry in the winter, and cool and comfortable in the summer. Like I said, it was a good house. We even added a couple of rooms and made it bigger and better.

But, eventually, we didn’t need so much space. We weren’t home all that much. We were at school and work and the mall. Eventually, the house outgrew us.

Then, I got a job writing about homes and gardens and a funny thing happened. You’d expect to get a little jealous when you get to go in homes that are beautifully decorated and well designed. Right? And I did. But the crazy thing is that I didn’t want the spacious, grand houses.

I admired them. I appreciated the size and scale; the enormous bathrooms and kitchens big enough to feed an army, but it was the little houses, the tiny cottages, the little bungalows and barely-enough-room- to-turn-around downtown lofts that made me pea-green with envy. That’s what I wanted. The tinier the house, the more I wanted it.

So we went looking for a little house. And we found one. Or it found us.

Then I went overboard again.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the little house we bought. It’s compact and convenient. It’s exactly what I wanted.

It has a big garage. That’s what my husband wanted. The children didn’t get anything they wanted, but they’ve got the rest of their lives.

And, as usual, I got so excited about everything that I got a little carried away.

I started handing out my belongings like I was Noah and knew that what wouldn’t fit on the ark wasn’t going to be worth keeping when it was all said and done so I might as well lighten the load.

I downsized like a wild woman.

Don’t let anyone kid you, downsizing a big life is hard. It’s a lot of work. It gets uncomfortable.

When you think about it, childbirth is downsizing a pregnancy, right? And, trust me, I know because I went a little crazy and did it four times, childbirth is hard.

So, now a little family lives in the big house in the suburbs where we used to live, and my family is getting used to life in a little house in the city.

I don’t miss the big house at all. I do, I confess, still daydream about buying one of those little condos downtown; about fitting everything we own into a single room.

But that would be going overboard.