when you own so much stuff that you get injured

Unfortunately my first post about downsizing and small-space living was prompted by a small kitchen accident this week (certainly an effective way to convince me to get rid of stuff, but not exactly something I’d recommend…)

The basic problem: the husband and I both love to cook. The husband and I each owned the full complement of kitchenwares BEFORE we moved in together. Not only didn’t we get rid of anything at that point, it only got worse after the wedding registry yielded its fruit (I still have no idea what I was thinking when I registered for 14 place settings of china and crystal when we already own two sets of dishes.)

So the baking dishes piled up, and up, and up. And finally, when the mountain of glassware and baking sheets on the top of the fridge was too much, a 9×13 glass baking dish came crashing down. On my bare foot.

Somehow there were no broken bones, no cuts, not even a scratch (how did I manage that?!) But it finally made me realize that something had to be done about the kitchen.

The little accident did manage to eliminate one dish that we had a duplicate (or several) of, but I still have a lot of bakeware that I don’t want to get rid of. I also have three (three?) old-fashioned drying racks that I’ve given up in favor of a drying towel. Put these together and voila! Instant bakeware organizer.

It’s not ideal because some of the deeper pans and muffin pans don’t fit neatly into the slots. But at least it’s not a pile anymore. This also might be a great solution for pan lids.

Now, to figure out what to do with the other drying racks.

learning to live smaller, cheaper, leaner, and greener

One of our first “reality bites”  moments of living smaller, cheaper, leaner, and greener came when we started to go house hunting back in April. We quickly discovered that in the DC area there are five big problems with finding a home to buy:

Problem 1: houses start at half a million.

Problem 2:  houses that are a half million dollars are generally falling apart and need lots of money and resource-intensive repairs.

Problem 3: even two bed/two bath condos don’t seem to get much bigger than 1,000 square feet before they start to cost more than houses or are two hours outside of town.

Problem 4: trying to pack two bedrooms and two bathrooms into less than 1,000 square feet = super tiny rooms.

Problem 5: you’re stuck with your building manager’s choice of energy sources when you live in a condo, and putting solar panels on a house (if you can afford the house) can cost upwards of $20,000.

This all wouldn’t be too much of a problem except that when we lived apart we had a total of 2,100 square feet of living space and all of the stuff we bought to go with those 2,100 square feet of living space.  That’s added up to a lot of financial and environmental damage over the years.

If we want our own place, we’ve got a lot to do! I’m super late getting on the blogging bandwagon, but here goes.  This blog is my little place to share and get ideas on ways to have less stuff, live more cheaply, live a bit more green, and have fun along the way.