The First Step
Last fall I moved from the 3,000 square-foot house built in 1910 that you couldn’t have told me a year ago I would leave. Five fireplaces, beautiful hardwood floors, a southerner’s front porch to die for complete with a wooden swing to pass the time on a lazy day, and electric gates that opened with the touch of a remote button each time I returned home. I loved that house. It was fun to live there.
Until I realized I was just treading water trying to stay afloat of increasingly high utility bills. If I just worked more, I told myself, I can make it here.
It’s quite stressful to tread for too long.
I was driving somewhere one afternoon last summer and saw a “for rent” sign in the front yard of a little house. I couldn’t do that, could I, I thought, move? Why of course not, after all, this was my dream house.
Yes, it was.
But I could still move, couldn’t I? Yes, I can move, I thought, why not?
And so I moved.
The house I found to rent is newer than the dream I left. She was built in 1920, a Sears Roebuck Catalog made-to-order house with a bit of history to her; 1,100 square feet, two bedrooms, one non-working fireplace, hardwood floors too, pull chains from lights in the ceiling instead of light switches (there’ll be no dimming here unless a bulb blows), what looks like the original sink in the only bathroom with a spicket for hot, and a spicket for cold, running water.
And I can afford it. The first step in getting back to the basics, finding those pennies again for peace, those simple things we seem to crave nowadays, for me was moving my dream just a bit.
Actually, just a couple of blocks over.
— Wendy
