On Learning To Live Small

I am in my late 50s (though if we ever meet in person I will try to deny it), and I was brought up with The Australian Dream. My parents moved from England to Australia when I was 10 years old. Immediately our world expanded; in a number of ways obviously, but specifically the space we were afforded to live in. A house in the suburbs with not only a back garden but a front garden! This was unheard of in our previous existence. This was Australia.

While I do not recall it ever being specifically spoken about, there was always this idea that if you were ‘successful’, you would live in a bigger and better house than your parents. I have come to see success as something quite different. When I left home at 18, I moved into an enormous terrace house with four big bedrooms and a motley crew of people at varying stages in their lives. There were always at least five people living there, and depending on the ever changing relationship status of the inhabitants, as many as eight. Okay, sometimes 10. The crazy shared house situation was, for better or worse, a rite of passage. I didn’t know anyone who lived in an apartment.

Let’s fast forward through the next few decades (my face sure has). My places of abode have included a number of largish homes, some rented, then some owned (partially and in a tenuously unequal situation with the bank). All with gardens. All with either friends, partners, children, pets or, occasionally, all of the above. The last one of these homes was mine for over a decade and had been in my partner's family for three generations. I loved it. I loved the garden particularly. I planted trees. Trees I will probably always miss.

But circumstances changed, as circumstances are wont to do. Like many women of my age (one in seven in fact, but that’s another story), I experienced a life changing ‘event’. Now, I’d love to tell you that I had an epiphany that inspired me to strongly and decisively take charge of my life with a new-found purpose and joie de vivre… afraid not. I did, however, realise in some nebulous and internal way, that this was an opportunity for change. That I wanted to simplify my life. In true Virginia Woolf style, I needed a Room of My Own.

I was overwhelmed. By maintenance of self and home and chores and treatments. Cleaning. Gardening. Bin nights. Bloody bin nights! That experience of waking up reluctantly at 5am on Wednesday morning to the sound of the rubbish truck… the moment it takes you to groggily realise that you forgot to put the bins out last night that prompts you to leap out of bed, throw on a robe, run around the back, manhandle the overflowing green bin as fast as you can – dead branches and weeds flying everywhere – only to realise they did your side of the street first and now it will remain overflowing for another fortnight.

And stuff! My God, was I overwhelmed with stuff. Because I had space, I didn’t really consider everything I brought in, from clothes to art to ephemera to kitchen stuff to books to more chairs than you could shake a stick at. Just thinking about it almost makes me hyperventilate, even now. It was time to reassess and re-write The Dream. Bigger doesn’t equal better. More things does not equal more joy. Success is not measured with status, but in who you are at the end of your day. And so I moved to my first ever apartment. Not a high-ceilinged, spacious old one, with a charming Art Deco sensibility in a block of only four. No. A smallish, low-ceilinged, neither-new-nor-old generic box in a block of more than 300, built originally as student accommodation.

I immediately freaked out (here enters the kicking and screaming moment). Surely I couldn’t be happy here? Where would I put everything I had so carefully and carelessly collected over the years? How could I make this box uniquely mine? It was my son who said to me: ‘You know what? This could be great for you. You have always been burdened with too much stuff. You can do this and make it work. Time to let go.’ And so I began the, at times, excoriating process of letting go – of thought patterns as well as possessions. I got rid of clothes, books, furniture, and a million bits and pieces. I began to feel a sense of liberation.

Don’t get me wrong – I am still (and always will be), surrounded by a lot of stuff, but it is a tightly edited curation of what I used to have: only the things I love or need or have a place for. An emotionally resonant collection that illustrates who I am at this point in time. With these treasured pieces and a few licks of paint, the generic box is no longer. It is 100 percent unique to me. It will be an ever-evolving and ongoing process of ‘in’ versus ‘out’, but I’m getting the hang of it.

What I have gained from apartment living is so much more profound than I ever would have believed. I have gained time – our most precious commodity. Less space means less maintenance. I have gained headspace. Fewer possessions and less maintenance really do release your mind in a positive way. I have gained security. I can lock and leave and not worry for a moment that anyone could break in. I have gained my own unique and essential balance between solitude and community.

And the greatest gain – the unexpected gift of going through this, at times, confronting change from big to small – was that I rediscovered how to be happy. Not exuberantly, loudly joyous. Not all the time. But quietly, peacefully, inwardly, happy. I have moved from overwhelmed to content. While I confess I do sometimes miss gardening, I have put that green energy into my pot plants (you may remember my very high-maintenance maidenhair fern from the last issue of this magazine). 

And not once have I missed having to remember to put the bins out on a Tuesday night.

Eryca Green is co-owner of Smith Street Bazaar

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