Dreaming of a Minimalist Home

With inflation strongly felt in my part of the world, it only makes sense to live a minimalist life now more than ever. Food costs are so high that the fam doesn’t even have enough budget to buy useless stuff or too much food.

Lately, I’m proud that the whole household is purchasing and cooking just enough food for everyone. We are slowly realizing that minimalism is the way to go. BTW, I’m staying right now at my grandparent’s house, where ten of us share meals.

During my stay here in the boondocks, I couldn’t help but think about my dream minimalist life. (And @millycf1976 keeps inspiring us to discuss such topics, eh?) This place was where I spent most of my childhood. The large backyard has allowed me to eat fresh fruits and vegetables. The house is also located a few minutes away from Laguna Lake, so we always had access to fresh and cheap seafood.

It’s easy to live a sustainable life in such a place. And I keep telling my husband that someday, hopefully, we could establish our family somewhere similar to my childhood home—in arable land, near a lake/ocean—where we could live simple lives.

Let me take you on a tour of my grandparents’ land:

Here are some of the ornamental plants my grandma arranged on her own:

Here are a few of the fruit trees we had since I was young:

And here's the lovely front yard:

I never really appreciated how large the land was until I started living in the city on my own, where everything felt cramped. For my wee family, my goal is to get a place that’s, perhaps, just a fraction of this land. Because cleaning and caring for such a vast backyard would probably break my back and take up all my time unless I have money to pay caretakers.

We’ll have just enough space to plant herbs, vegetables, and a few fruit trees like calamansi, lemon, mango, papaya, or avocado. Perhaps, I’ll add a few ornamental plants too. I love gardening and it’s what I imagine doing most of the time when my little one grows up.

My grandparents’ house is also huge. And from experience, it wasn’t really practical. It’s hard to maintain and difficult to move around. It takes extra effort to access water and food. And honestly, it was kinda wasteful. We needed a lot of lights to brighten the rooms and many fans to cool the place. And some areas of the house hardly get lived in. So, they’ve gathered dust, rot, and pests.

Anyway, enough of my complaints. I’m pretty sure the huge land and house were the fruit of my elders’ labor and I’m happy they got what they wanted. But for me, I’d rather live in a smaller house where things are easier to manage. Also, I can always see and hear my husband and the little one.

We might go for solar panels for electricity, but I’d still research other sustainable alternatives. For cooking, I have in mind a biomass stove and wood pellets that are genuinely sourced from waste wood. Maybe, we’d learn how to make our wood pellets. The goal is to lead a life that would avoid harming the environment.

I’d prefer to live somewhere near the ocean so that we can swim anytime we want. If we have extra space in our house, I will put it up on Airbnb. What I learned from the pandemic is that life can be lonely. It’d be interesting to meet new people from time to time. But, when we’re in no mood for small talk (or there’s another pandemic), we could easily take our listing off the site.

Traveling isn’t yet in the picture for my husband and me because of our little one, and we’re still building our lives. Perhaps, someday, we’d put more thought into it. But for now, I’m happy dreaming about my little corner of the world.