Space, simplicity and budgets

 Most of the time these days I don't think very hard or very often about my space and my belongings — but that's because I now live in a 3-bedroomed house with only one other person, so I don't have to.

Every now and then I look through what I own or cast an eye over the arrangement of our belongings, to see if there's anything I can move on or if I can dispose our furniture to better facilitate how we live and what we do. For instance, now the summer has come and we like to have the doors to the garden open through the day, I've moved our table and chairs nearer the door so that when we sit down to eat or chat or have our morning prayers, we are right there by the fresh air and looking out at the trees and the flowers.

Before we lived here, my allocation of personal space was very small. This wasn't a problem most of the time because I loved my little room, though I do feel able to breathe easier in my larger room here; but there were some challenges to having only enough storage for what I actually used. The biggest difficulty was that in the last five years while I've been ill, trying various different modes of eating to fix my health, and being less active because of pain and tiredness, my weight fluctuated quite a bit. I went through several different sets of clothes because garments no longer fitted or that type of garment no longer looked good — and then guess what everything changed again and I had to start over. Even though I shop on eBay and buy secondhand clothing very cheaply, I spent a lot of money that way. I would say I wasted that money, but I don't think that's true. If I hadn't been content with such a small space, meaning I couldn't store clothing in case I came back to it again, we might have needed a bigger house with bigger rooms, or not been able to accommodate so many people in the house we did have. Instead of renting space I rented clothes, in effect. That's okay.

But during that time, and the many years before when I had only a small allowance of space, there were some principles I found helpful in living frugally and simply and owning few possessions.

I had what I thought of as the Moon in the Sky principle, which is that you can love the moon, admire it and gaze at it, but you don't have to own it or try and bring it onto the earth. It's better to just leave it where it is in the sky. If you are in the homeware department of a store — or the stationery department — you might see many objects you fall in love with and want to bring home. But unless you are actually looking for a colourful mediterranean salad bowl or a hard-backed journal, it's probably a good idea to categorise it along with the moon in the sky, and leave it right there where it is.

My daughter Fi helpfully identified another principle — I consider this a very shrewd observation. She said that if she goes into a shop with lovely clothes or jewellery or other beautiful things, often what she wants to do is show her sisters or friends — to call them over and say, "Look at this!" They would admire it together — and then move on. She realised that there were times when she bought something not because she needed it or wanted to keep it, but to take it home and show everyone. After that it was more or less redundant. I suspect that happens to us quite a lot, and probably has roots in our hunter-gatherer past, when calling the tribe over to look at these juicy berries was part of living effectively and successfully.

And the third principle I want to mention (and then that'll do, I don't want to overwhelm you) is having a financial reservoir. In effect it's being your own overdraft or credit system. A separate bank account where you keep a pool of money to dip into if you run out. So in your main account you have whatever is there to last however long it has to, but if — as so often happens — it doesn't stretch or something unexpected comes up, instead of a credit card or an overdraft you have your pool of money in the separate account, to dip into and then return later, just the same as if you'd used a credit card or an overdraft but with no danger of incurring interest payments. I find it important to keep this reservoir in an actually separate account, because I tend to spend up to whatever limit I can see is in my current account. There are more things I want to spend money on than I have money to pay for, but it puts the brakes on psychologically if I can see it running out in the current account. I also have a third account for savings. All three are empty right now, but no worries — it's nearly the end of the month and we have everything we need. I do also have a back-up fourth option, the joint account I share with my husband that we both pay into each month, saving up for annual costs (like house/car insurance, road tax, etc) and from which we pay the monthly bills like council tax, internet, electricity and so forth. We pay in a little more than is budgeted, so an amount accumulates there as well, for repairs and unforeseen expenses. Right now I owe it £100, but tomorrow is the last working day of the month so I can repay it and get some groceries too.

Please do say in the comments your own strategies for budgeting space and money. Maybe in a separate post we could also think about budgeting time and energy, because those too have limits and require strategies.

Meanwhile, I thought you might enjoy this YouTube video from Madeline Hegedus — I always enjoy listening to what she has to say.

In the video she mentions two things I want to follow up — Becky Truda's excellent channel Minimal Ease, and Adam Grant's book Think Again, which looks really interesting.