Living light

“I’ve been downsizing for about eight or nine years now,” Samantha Jenkins says from a cozy chair in the living room of her apartment in Browne’s Addition.

Although the hip, just-turned-40 mother of two teenagers seems an unlikely candidate for empty-nest syndrome, Jenkins expects to be living solo before the decade is out. So while many of her peers have spent their 20s and 30s accumulating material wealth, Jenkins has been gradually shedding it.

“I’ve been a single parent for a long time,” says Jenkins, a real estate agent with RenCorp, a development and brokerage company in Spokane. “It just became cumbersome with all of the things that we had.”

A former first-grade teacher and Navy veteran with more than 20 years of service under her belt, Jenkins has moved approximately twice during each of the past four years, a situation that has allowed her to “weed out the things we don’t need,” she says.

What remains is a spare but colorfully eclectic assortment of antiques, art and a few select knick-knacks from the family’s world travels.

Sipping on a steaming mug of tea while her youngest, 14-year-old Madison, perches on a nearby ottoman, Jenkins says she is grateful for the opportunity to simplify her life, though the process hasn’t always been easy.

Over the past few years Jenkins and her family migrated back and forth between Spokane and California, where she taught first grade after completing her masters in education at Whitworth College. But in 2005 she was deployed to the Middle East for a year as part of her Navy service during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

“I downsized so much that I ended up living in a tiny cubicle in Kuwait,” she says. “My belongings lived in a tiny storage facility in Deer Park, my oldest lived in a tiny house in South America and my youngest lived in a medium-sized house with my sister in Browne’s Addition.”

Jenkins’ daughter Miranda, now 17, spent a year abroad in Paraguay as part of a school exchange program. Today all three are living under a modest roof in a vintage 1960s flat, complete with pink Formica bathroom counters, a wet bar with mirrors, glass shelves and a gold sink, and a stunning view of the city, including the MAC, the courthouse and Mount Spokane.

“I love apartment or condo living because you can just pick up and go,” Jenkins says, adding that once Miranda and Madison graduate from Lewis and Clark High School, she sees herself returning to teaching and living in a studio or one bedroom in an urban area. “I love urban living, just because it’s so convenient.”

And safe.

“Many people seem to have a problem with moving their families into ‘this’ environment,” she says. “I was robbed twice in six months and that is what started my lean towards downsizing.”

Jenkins points out that the robberies occurred when she and her daughters were living in a residential community with lots of neighbors nearby.

“I never had any crime or problems in an urban setting,” she says.