Wednesday 13 June 2012

How much space will provide comfort!


I heard a quote not so long ago that said, “I don’t look forward to more space, I look forward to needing less,” this touched me.  Currently my family and I are down sizing, we are converting our shed up at our second property into a humble LITTLE home.

We currently live in a roughly 35 sq, tall ceiling home with 4 bedrooms, 2 lounge rooms, formal dinning and rumpus room… oh and did I forget a big pool… Your probably thinking   “ is she crazy”… When my husband and I brought this house we thought it was going to be the home that we stayed in our whole lives, have a big family with lots of space and room to move.

Don’t get me wrong, our house is lovely, it has served us well and will serve a new owner well… It has brought us great memories of living in a great street, we have shared our neibours children and they have shared ours, the school is walking distance and the walls speak many of stories of nerf wars in the big rooms, hide and seek in the dark and many pool parties that were noisy and boozy…

We do intend on building a new house on our block, but not for quite some time.  We don’t know if we are going to have another child or if we will wait till we retire and build when kids leave home.  But we know that it is where we want to be for quite some time.  But our needs for today will be different to our need for tomorrow.

Our shed conversion is small, all council approved and legit… but small… the 4 boys will share and room and play space and we will only have 1 lounge room.  For us this will be a big change, but one I am yearning for… We are joining the Tiny Home trend.  We can’t fit in a “genuine” tiny home but for us, it is tiny.

Our reason for this life style choice is space.  As my children grow, it would be easy to grow further apart, so my hope is it will draw us closer together when we are united by close walls, financially we estimate to cut our out goings by at least a 3rd and finally at least ½ our house does not get used. It is a wasted space for us, but another family who will use the space should and use it well.

4 Boys in one room, what am I thinking…I have come up with a design that will share space but give each person their own little nook, this I believe will teach my children the importance of boundaries and how to live with others harmoniously, BAHAHAHA I laughed as I typed that, so I thought I should let you know that I do genuinely hope this, but realize there a strong possibility that it wont work.  I hope it does not turn out a disaster,  but if I don’t try I will never know.

My dream at this current time is to waste less money on power and rates and have more money to go on family holidays.  We can rent a Mc Mansion for a weekend if we like, or as my friend does, go on a holiday in a caravan that will make our tiny home feel bigger when we return.

How much stuff do we really need to fill us up, currently we are spread over such a massive space and use barely use any of it, I have a utensil for everything, this makes a lot of washing up, I have a good lounge and a play lounge, this makes for a lot of vacuuming, I have a spare guest room, it gets slept in for about a week a year, so heating it is basically pointless.

I am not saying life will be beer and skittles with the 6 of us and perhaps 7 if we go for our little Ruby.  But I feel good about the prospect of living a greener life that is less wasteful and getting out side more with the kids, rather than pushing them into the back room of the house thinking they need more time on their own.

I will post again 6 months after we have live in our shed, I will of either A.  Already have the plans for the Mc Mansion being built or will have settled into our new little life.  The kids are all on board with the dream, my husband is eager and I am daily orchestrating what it will take for the massive change. 

We have planted our orchard, planning our gardens and have a little hobby farm with goats, alpaca and sheep… with lambs on the way, this is a far cry from the life style I ever thought I wanted, but as I get older and life gets more complex, I seem to have a desire to find quieter things to softly fulfil  my passage through life.

Our current lifestyle is one where children are entertained by TV, X Box,  psp and phones, I want to teach my children that simplicity is an important virtue and hope the hills they cart down and trees they climb in, on weekends now,  will bring a new daily life that that  brings them fond memories as an adult and also a bit of Vitamin D in their technology "off" time.

We have our critics don’t worry and I really hope we prove them wrong.   We are not doing what the conventional big family do, by up sizing to fit us all in, but I feel really good about it, like we are making a conscious decision about our future and heading in a direction that will help us to achieve it.  I dream of holidays that will give us experiences that our big house currently does not provide us, only time will tell how it pans out “but I am definitely loving my big family”. 

Sunday 10 June 2012

Messages from the soul


I read a book recently that said something to the effect of;

Follow your heart, it is essential to listen to it’s messages, these messages are your souls desire, they communicate to you what you are meant to be doing, if you don’t follow these messages you will inevitably be straying from your life’s path.  If you don’t listen to these messages negativity constricts the flow of grace into your life, causing pain and emotional starvation.

That is exactly how I have been feeling.  I know for those reader who don’t think like me it sounds cooky, please just read on…

I will go back a few month, to December last year, my excellent University results flashed on the screen before me and tears were streaming tears down my face.  My mother walked in and found me inconsolable and was terrified that something serious had happened… I calmed down enough to mutter, “ it was so hard mum, and I cant do that again”…

I cry thinking about that moment now, because it was then that I gave up my only dream that I had for me….  I was studying Environmental Design with the hope of becoming an architect.

The New Year came and semester 1 started and I travelled to Launceston with my travel partner, as we had done at least once a week for the last two years.  She enquired on why I had seemed so unmotivated and said she was worried by my face book updates if I was going to give up…  All of sudden it was there, the truth had surfaced, I explained to her I just did not know what to do, I was so tired after working so hard last year I knew I could not do that to myself again. 

We made a commitment to each other that we would stick out this semester; she had just become pregnant and was taking second semester of anyway… We travelled again and I knew I could not do it.  My first assignment came in, one that was not hard but I could not focus and just felt I was floundering…

I am very fortunate to have some wonderful support networks in my life, one in particular that I can trust with anything, he steers me in the right path when I need guidance and his values in life are similar to mine, so he can speak to me on the same spiritual path…

He has been my counselor for many years and to be honest I had not been to see him about myself for a few years, I think he was rather shocked to see me in such a state, I explained to him that I know if this is my only problem in life, how lucky am I that life is so great… 

I cried to him saying that I knew my children were suffering because of my commitments in life, in fact my whole life was suffering and as much as I wanted it, I knew life had to change.  He told me not to make light of my problem; it indeed was a hard place to be to give up something you love, knowing it is the right thing to do, he also asked me to ask myself why was it so important to me.

When I look at the defining moments in my life one of the biggies was a teacher in high school telling me I would never make it to University.  And the whole reason I enrolled in Uni was to prove to her and to my self that I was worthy of degree…

I went away from his office knowing what I had to do… I could no longer go to a school so far away with 4 children and a husband needing me, I softened the blow by telling myself, “this is my sacrifice as a mother for my children”.  The truth was that as much as I wanted it, I did not want it at that cost.

I came home and pack up my pencils, advertised my drawing table and pushed my tears down, I would no longer dream of such things again….  My heart was broken and it was for me something I could not explain with out feeling I had failed.

As the next couple of months rolled on, I enrolled in an online degree studying Literature and writing, I was eager for it to start but I was not on fire about it.  I am two weeks into it and to honest the fire is out, there is not even an ember inside of me burning… I keep saying to myself it will pick up, you love writing and it will assist that… but the truth is I gave away my only dream… No one else can give me dreams or make them happen only me and I broke my own heart.

I am in the midst of self-contemplation because doing a Uni degree that your heart is not in, Is not only expensive, hard work and pointless, it will be murder to find the motivation.  I would be better to invest my time in my children for the next couple of years, it wont take long and they will all be at school and then my days are my own.

So I am trying to trust myself, that my dream is real, to keep it alive with short courses that are industry related or even perhaps try and find a small job in Design Company in admin… dreams that are worth having usually take a long time to come to fruition…

My mentor who is an architect and has no children told me once, it has taken him a process of his whole career to become fully qualified, so if it took him that long with no children then maybe I am being hard on myself to think I can do it all at once now. 

I pulled my pencils out yesterday, I have been scribbling and drawing and I can’t keep my thoughts on anything but my current design  (a bed) and I know that is where my heart wants me to be… My dream is alive again and with that I know I am being true to my life’s path.

I have decided that even with out a degree I am designer, not everyone find his or her gift but if you do every time you deny it, it depletes you a little bit at time.  This blog has no “whilst I am loving my family, ” today I am going to say, Life is a journey and mine seems to change from week to week but if I am trying to get it right, surely it doesn’t matter if I back track and do circles  “whilst I am following my heart”…