Here We Go Again!

We finally did it!

We found our forever home; a 1950s house built by its first owner on a 1-acre plot of land. We are within walking/biking distance of every store I frequent. The kids can get themselves to school with one exception (during winter months this next year). It is one-third smaller than our previous home - about 2300 square feet counting the basement and attic - and much more efficiently laid out. All six of us still fit! We soon will have an orchard, chickens, gardens and lots of berry production (that's what grows best here).

Older, wiser (I hope) and with renewed enthusiasm, I return to this blog prepared to face the hard questions. Questions I've been struggling with for longer than I care to admit:

How much money is enough?
What is my "share" of the world's resources?
How do I motivate myself to choose the sustainable path when it's hard?
How do I short-circuit my desire to purchase and "own"?
How do I function in my society while making choices not condoned by my society?

Here's the thing - I should be in the perfect position to live a low-footprint life. I am relatively affluent, educated, motivated, and live in a fairly progressive town that is very easy to negotiate without the use of an automobile for at least 6 months out of the year.

But I don't find it easy at all to downsize my life. I find that everything around me and in me pushes me to buy, want, accumulate, and so on. So here we go - let's not sugar-coat things any more; let's get into the nitty gritty details.

Think of this as "Halving It All" part 2: