Stories of My Life

Before we moved, we purged a ton of stuff. After we moved, we purged even more stuff. And now six months later, we are still finding ourselves with things we that we have no use for here. Here is a little sampling…

Winter clothes – pretty obvious one – we need some for when we travel - but not a closet full

Vacuum cleaner – I find it very odd that they sell many varieties here. There is no carpet here folks! What’s the vaccuum for? A broom works much better and is way cheaper. I suppose many people have lots of area rugs (we ditched ours as it was just a holding place for crumbs until the ants found them). Now, give me that auto mopper thing and I’m GOLDEN!

Coffee bean grinder – This one makes me sad. I love to grind my beans and then make a fresh pot of coffee – but I have not been able to find whole beans of any local coffee anywhere here. Sure, I can drive 30 minutes to the nearest Starbucks and pay crazy amounts for whole beans there…but we actually LIKE the local coffee – and the price ($4 bucks a pound) can’t be beat. So – ground coffee it is and my grinder goes into the “not needed” pile.

Down comforters – or really anything thicker than a thin cotton blanket. THIS is an odd one. I didn’t bring any down with me, but did bring several other bed comforters and blankets. One night under one of those and I was on my way to the mall to look for something lighter weight. I shopped in every department store here looking for lightweigh bed linens…for my home in the tropics…where daily temperatures are somewhere in the 80-90s…hoping to find some nice  lightweight cotton something or other for the bed. And what did I find? Yep, down quilts and comforters. DOWN – as in what I used on freezing nights in Kansas to stay warm. I had to order lightweight quilts online. Crazy. It’s quite odd, really. I wonder if people just use them for looks or if they run their A/C? Ugh, I’m sweating just thinking about it.

Snow shovel. Yeah, another obvious one. But guess who has one in their garage?

So little by little we’ve been getting rid of as much stuff as we can. Storage here is an issue (meaning, there isn’t much of it at all) and with the humidity the way it is, you really just don’t want to store much.

The girls have also had to get rid of things…you know, extra clothing, toys and hair.

Yep. I said hair.

I’m so done with hair. More specifically the superfine hair of a 3 year old who possesses little no patience for the required combing after much time in the sun, water and wind. So – to keep things simple and in line with my less is more motto, I cut if off.

Here they are a few weeks ago before church (trust me, we don’t look that well-groomed any other day) looking so very cute and styled (it lasts all of 2 minutes like this, btw). [photopress:Girls_before_haircut.gif,full,pp_empty]

I invited over my new hairdresser (who makes house calls – I’m in LOVE!) and she went to work. [photopress:Clara_getting_haircut.gif,full,pp_empty]

[photopress:Libby_getting_haircut.gif,full,pp_empty]

Within minutes she had created an adorable chin length bob that resists tangles and stays (relatively) neat.

[photopress:girls_in_front_of_fountain.gif,full,pp_empty]

Definately less is more here. Hmmm, maybe I should be next?