If there was one saving grace of our unfortunate exile in Hooterville (and that's a big “if”), it was that the cost of housing was so cheap we were able to rent a fairly large house. Not only did it allow us to accommodate all our stuff without the humiliation of having to sell things off or trundle them off into storage, it also allowed us to live in denial about our drastically diminished circumstances. Since we're basically homebodies anyway, we could blithely go on living our lives as before and ignore the fact we were doing in the middle of fucking nowhere.
That isn't the case here in Orange County.
Here, for twice the price, the best we could do is a condo that's approximately half the size of where we once lived. Welcome to the dollhouse.
Ironically, now that things are actually looking up, I feel poor. Two years ago, at the depths of our despair, life still felt kinda roomy. Not so here. We were able to fit roughly half our belongings into the condo. The other half still sits boxed in what is theoretically my parking space in the garage. We've been here two months and for the first three or four weeks we naively believed that with thoughtful planning and a creative use of space we'd be able to get the bulk of the remaining items into the house. Turns out... fat chance. Looks like I'll be parking on the street for the foreseeable future.
Truth be told, I actually like living in a smaller space. It's certainly much easier to clean. The dogs, however, hate it. Where once my older dog had a huge house as a racetrack, he now has to be content with running tight circles around the coffee table. And the little dog, used to chasing tennis balls down a long hallway, has to settle for having them bounced off a wall. I know they're unhappy because they show me in the way they know best, forgetting they were ever housebroken.
I imagine this is a lot like living on a boat or in an RV except that it never goes anywhere. If I have any regrets it would probably be for my partner's and my taste in Mid Century Modern furniture. All those sharp angles and hard edges make for a perilous existence in such a small space. It's like living in the Cave of Swords. I've lost track of the number of times I've come close to severing my femoral artery on the glass coffee table. The easiest solution is just to move very slowly, to make no sudden moves, to move through the house as if you're practicing tai chi. That's going to have to suffice until we can wither afford softer furniture. Or move. Again.
