Living the Simple Life

Steve

Our clothes get a dousing as an unexpected storm rolls of the sea.

One thing that has made an impression on me since we came to Italy is how my life has been simplified.  Now I know what you're thinking.  This guy has no job.  Of course his life is simple!  I must admit, not having the responsibilities that come with a job does lessen the load a bit.  (It certainly opens up your weekly schedule.)  But there is more to it than that.  Downsizing to a small apartment in a small Italian village has simplified our lives in ways that I had not expected.  For starters, we have no car.  This means we walk everywhere, but the beauty in this is we walk everywhere.  The town is small enough to cross in about twenty minutes, so walking works just fine.  And remember when you got your first car?  Remember all the freedom that came with it?  You could go anywhere you wanted to go, wherever the road might take you.  Well, I am experiencing the inverse of that freedom.  The freedom of no car.  I don't look for parking spaces, I never get tickets (even when I walk really fast), and best of all I don't remember how to work a gasoline pump.  Nothing to get scratched, keyed, or dinged.  No low air pressure in my tennis shoes.  Sheer bliss.  On occasion when I have to carry something cumbersome, I grab the local Positano bus, which circles the town once every 30 minutes. 

In addition to being car-free, our small apartment means a smaller space to clean.  A smaller space also limits the crap that I can collect at any given time.  The girls are content with fewer toys, and we spend considerably less time picking up after them.  I have no garden or lawn to mow - just a few plants on the balcony.  And I'm getting by with a fraction of my former wardrobe.  Other lucky surprises include an end to junk mail (those bastards don't know I'm here yet), no sales calls and the absence of TV since none of us speak Italian well enough to watch it.  And despite this lack of stuff, we are all quite happy.  It's like they say - less is more.

Our little kitchen.  Simple but very functional.

  

Now, it would be dishonest to romanticize our simple existence without acknowledging its dark side.  For instance, we have no clothes dryer.  And it's not just us - no one in town has one.  While it sounds very green and healthy to be hanging your clothes out on the clothesline, the availability of clean clothes in our home has become largely dependent on weather.com.  If we are unlucky enough to have more than five days without some decent sunshine, someone is going to run out of underwear.  And then there are the days that you hang the laundry, kidding yourself that a 40% chance of rain means it's not likely to rain.  Off you all go into town to meet friends for lunch, only to be caught by a 15 minute deluge that sets the clock on your "dryer" back to zero.  Or worse, some serious wind gusts kick up while you're out, and when your return home you realize that was your shirt that you saw in the bushes on your way home.  

Not only do we not have a dryer, we have no dishwasher.  I don't think I ever really knew what dishpan hands were until I got here.  And while no oven means there is less to clean, there is also less to eat.   No backyard means no BBQ, and the list goes on and on.  So while the lack of certain material goods has simplified my life, it also means doing without the benefits that these things provide.  Still, I am surprised at how little I miss these conveniences or having a larger space.  And while I don't think a simpler life is necessarily a happier one, my time here has made me more aware of the trade offs that come with ownership.  With our last weeks in Italy upon us, I have come to realize that there are many things that I can do without.  That seems like a good thing.

This set of photos are from my trip to the market this morning.
As you can see from the stairwell above, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

One reason walking through Positano is so enjoyable is the scenery that confronts you at every turn.

Soaking it all in on foot, from the waves against the cliffs to the clouds drifting across the mountains.

On a rainy day in December, the roads of Positano are fairly empty.  Something you can't enjoy during the summer months.