Introduction (Adina)

I am Adina, mama to Brigit, wife to Gary. We moved to Portland in 2005 and had our daughter in 2006. Before that my husband and I lived in Boulder, Colorado. The change to Oregon has brought us to a place that is more in tune with our ideals and goals as a family. We miss the mountains in Colorado, but love the community we have found here.

Keeping it simple was most decidedly not something I have "always" been into. For a long time I was very much subscribed to the bigger, better, more philosophy of life. As I grew older though, I found I hated moving the crap of decades around, and was even more sick of dusting most of it. I discovered that I gravitated toward pictures of rooms which were simple, clean and spacious. So, for me that is where it began.

I have always had trouble paying for something that I can make myself. And with the amount of crafts I have accumulated over the years, that is a lot of things. Soon that ethic turned to food. If I could make the jam, canned peaches, spaghetti sauce, bread, yogurt, etc. - then why would I buy it.

All of this has wrapped up together with the birth of my daughter in 2006 and made me even more interested in keeping things simple. I feel there is less stress in your day to day when you choose simple living. I also feel that it reminds and teaches us appreciation for simple things.

In addition to the challenges we already face, our family has an additional challenge. Where we live. While we own our own home, we live in a townhouse. We don't have a yard, we don't have control over the outside of our home. Growing a garden is chancy here, as our landscape company is not always gentle, nor organic in their tending. We still have a garden, and are planning on expanding, but while we are here, it will not be the sole source of summer produce. We live in a very urban part of town, and there is a lot we can't really control, such as trash pickup, or disconnecting our downspouts, or the people jumping our back fence when drunk and peeing in our backyard. ;-)

Recently, my husband's hours at work were cut to 80% time. So, now in addition to the voluntary simplicity we seek, there is an added pressure to simplify to save money.

I hope that as we continue on this journey, we can teach our daughter the right things about living simply, and that we can learn to let go of the driving American industry of buying stuff.

Our journey is certainly not anywhere close to complete, and we fight every day to remove the clutter from our home. We are very much still learning this as a family, how to have enough, to be satisfied with what we have and only purchase what we need. It isn't always easy. And sometimes, it isn't fun. ;-)

You can read more about us and our journey at Simply, Happily Living.