Well, it came up again at dinner last night. And the conversation went something like this:
"My blog is called Halving it All," I said.
"Halving?" someone echoed.
"Yeah, like cutting things in half," I said.
"You haven't gotten rid of half our stuff," the oldest boy said.
"Yes, I have. Not in every room, but in a lot of them." (Doesn't he remember counting the books and splitting them into two piles in our living room?)
I go on to explain my grandiose plans - I'm going to blog about getting rid of half our stuff, cutting our bills in half, eating better, having more time for togetherness and fun. I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy. My family studies me, looking for evidence of impending insanity.
My husband catches my attention. "You realize we already halved our bills, right?"
"What? When?" Now I sound like one of the kids.
"When we moved here four years ago, remember? When we lived in California we needed $7500 a month to pay our bills. Now we need between $3500 - $4000 a month. That's half."
I'm stunned. I forgot all about that. He's right - we already halved our bills. And when we moved here from California we sold just about everything we owned. So we halved our stuff, too.
"Well..." I falter. "We're going to halve it all again! Most people don't have $7500 dollars a month worth of bills."
"Yes, they do," he says. "Both adults work, they have a mortgage, they have medical costs and expenses." He goes on, "What we really need to do is get the living part of it right now that we've already halved. That's what you should blog about."
Damn it. This is why husbands should be seen and not heard.
3 comments:
LOL!!!!
Oh my! I'm sorry. I hate that they are right so very often. And yet, that's why we love them so much. We need that reminder that we don't know it all.
So glad, though, that your family is on the same page as you, for the most part.
Oh, and good job on the bills. That is an amazing feat in itself. We cut our bills, but not by our own choice. We had to claim bankruptcy and return some items that we were paying on. Now, we live without credit. We love it. We have no extra bills after Christmas. No cc payments to make to pay for Christmas. It's wonderful.
LOL! I think your husband wants to look at this issue "by the numbers" because that way is concrete and measurable, while you are looking at the heart or spirit of the matter. Even if you did halve your bills and possessions when you moved four years ago, it doesn't take long (four Christmases, birthdays, and a few good sales) for all that to creep back into your life.
Maybe your next family meeting should feature the "Limbo" dance. When people go under the bar, everyone else chants, "How low can you go? How looooooow can you go?" Then you can explain to your hubby that this is what you are trying to see: how to enrich your life with less. But, Living the Limbo is not as cute and catchy for a blog title as Halving It ALL! lol
You guys are so right: We have accumulated an AMAZING amount of stuff in four years - there is plenty still to "halve".
This morning, though, I woke up with a revelation I'll explain more in a new post. Dh and I have been batting around the idea of blogging together but I couldn't figure out how we'd do it.
Now I know. Two blogs - this one here can keep being more day-to-day about how to simplify so you can spend your time the way you reallly want to. And then another one I can do with dh for people who are actually ready to give up their day jobs and change their lives radically. Because that's really our backstory....
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