So, that’s been interesting. They accepted my offer on the tiny house (390 square feet, so you argue among yourselves about what’s truly tiny). It is contingent on many things, as usual for buying a house, which means key in hand and foot in the door hanging my hats is weeks away. But already, every day is filled with insights into how I live, how I can live, and what doesn’t get to be part of the new era. I really need to start carrying a tape measure around.

Does my couch, which is my bed, fit? It should. My tiny dining room table probably isn’t tiny enough, even if I drop it leaves. Will my bicycle fit under that awning or in that storage shed? Maybe, but wind will still carry rain into it. How big or small does that washer/dryer combo get to be, have to be to fit into that cubby?

I don’t have many clothes (#MassiveUnderstatement) until I realized how much closet space I need for a parka, heavy ski jacket, plus hiking gear, and bicycling gear, and grubbies for gardening. I plan on renting another storage unit. Will that be where my weekend wear lives?

My business papers will probably live there, too. So will my historical documents like old manuscripts, photos, book inventory, presentation materials, archival financial papers that I keep ‘just in case’.

One necessity of selling a house is leaving it when potential buyers want to see it. It’s April. Going for a walk in August can mean pausing at the beach until they leave. In April – it became an excuse to go food shopping because the Sun was hidden by the planet and the island was closed, except for a supermarket.

Walk through a supermarket and marvel at the choices, but how much storage room will I have? I’m single, so there isn’t much of a need, but I enjoy cooking and wonder what my pantry will be able to hold. Maybe many more and smaller trips to the market that isn’t ‘super’ but is much nicer. (Port Townsends’ Coop market is well-known for good reason.)

Pardon me. I have to sign a document accepting an offer on my house.

Authentisign done. We are now ‘mutual’, a real estate term that I felt should be wordsmithed but that’s a small fight requiring a large effort for no real benefit, except alleviating some confusion among inexperienced and normal homebuyers. Making real estate more attuned to non-brokers and non-lawyers is a gargantuan task largely ignored despite it involving most peoples’ largest transactions of their lives. But I digress.

A drink will celebrate the event after I’ve written this post. There’s an example of personal priorities: words over drinks.

And priorities bring this post back to the core of the choices I’ve confronted. Clearing, cleaning, and decluttering an 868-square-foot house down to fit into a 390 square-foot house (plus a storage unit or two) is teaching me about what I care about. That has a value I wouldn’t uncover otherwise.

This is an old story, but it becomes real rather than abstract when boxes that have only been peeked into in almost twenty years are handled, literally. One box for hometown stuff. One for family heirlooms and trinkets. One from college, including my Masters and its supporting material. One from Boeing. 747, 737, 767, a Chinese prop plane, R&D, High Speed Commercial Transport, Second Generation Space Shuttle, Reusable Launch Vehicle, a satellite Internet service set up – not Boeing material, but mementos of posters, pins, customer photos, etc. One for each of the books I’ve written (eight, so far). An odd-shaped and heavy box of photo prints that were exhibited in galleries. And realizing I saved photos before I considered myself a photographer as boxes of prints and slides hold early hand-developed black-and-whites from high school, color slide from college, and more and more.

And if you skipped over most of that paragraph you get an idea of dozens of boxes of history that have value, but that don’t have to be readily accessible every day. Storage unit!

A couple of days ago, I was in the new house for its inspection. Inspection of a tiny house? The square footage may not be much, but the number of appliances is nearly the same. And everything has to work because there are no spares. No spare bathroom to use if the other one leaks. No second fridge in the basement or carport.

That evening, I walked back into my big house and saw how much space it had that I never used – and that was only in 868 square feet. A neighbor and friend reiterated something I’ve known for a long time; people are usually only using a few square feet right around them, and that may only be for a few places in the house. Sleeping takes up the most space, but standing and sitting are much more vertical and have smaller footprints. If you’re living through your laptop or phone, you may not need much. You may be a minimalist without knowing it. That didn’t apply to kids who ran around a lot, but sitting is more common for them, too.

Wander through a hardware, housewares, and furniture store and realize how little of it is necessary. Now, start packing a house and handle a lot that isn’t necessary. Why am I handling all of this un-necessary stuff? That conversation becomes a self-examination of life, how it’s been lived, how it’s going to be lived, and how goals and assumptions change.

I mentioned owning a house, renting a storage unit, am probably going to rent another one, and then start fitting it all in and around a tiny house. My situation isn’t normal. (Duh. Who is normal?) My big house is on an island. My tiny house is on the neighboring peninsula. The two houses are only 22 miles apart, but water gets in the way. Driving to the ferry, waiting for it, riding across, and driving to the other place takes 52 miles and can take 2.5 hours. The storage units are staging areas like a suburban version of mountaineering caches.

For now, commuting and storing are expensive, but they are temporary. Smaller houses are cheaper, and have lower monthly expenses. I’ll get to that after I actually move and pay bills.

In the meantime, all of this work could seem like it has no direct benefit, but it does. I am much more aware of my life choices, goals, constraints, and freedoms – which, of course, will lead to yet another post. For now, though, there’s a drink to mix and sip, laundry to fold, and laundry to sort into stuff I always need (societal norms, etc.), sometimes need (dancing, hiking, bicycling, skiing), no longer need (a suit jacket for a forty-year-old me?), etc. And grubbies, of course, because moving is messy. Gotta remember to put a tape measure and a utility knife in those pockets.