Struggles with ‘Stuff’: Is it just me . . .

Does anyone else out there buy stuff they don’t need?  I’m not going to lie, I’ve bought things I don’t need before. I’ll probably do it again!  Generally, when I fall into such a trap, I discover that I wasn’t thinking things through and was kind of ‘flying on autopilot.’

So where does the habitual buying pattern come from? I’ve argued in the past that consumerism is hard-wired into evolutionary biology, and that if we want to fight it, we have to consciously think about our habits. In my humble and non-expert opinion, we also have plenty of cultural pressures and constructs that make purchasing ‘more’ a habit.  And let’s face it: our habitual, default behavior is much easier to maintain than something unusual, different or culturally . . . weird.

I’ve definitely made progress toward avoiding the consumer trap–but it was hard! Here are some of the actions/habits that helped me change my ways.  If you’re thinking they look kind of extreme, you’re probably right.  It took rather extreme measures for me to break out of old habits.  Do any of the following look like something you’ve done . . . or would do?

• (Involuntarily) Living on a budget that was much smaller than what I was used to in 2003.
• Not buying anything new for a year back in 2004 . . . a habit that has stuck with me to an extent.
• Not watching commercial TV or reading magazines.
• Not ‘hanging out’ in areas where there is nothing to do but shop.
• Getting more rest (I don’t know why, but I’ve noticed that having more time to engage in exercise and my passions, keeps me from overspending).
• Track my spending.  I have a space in my end of the month budget for ’stuff.’  When I used to spend more on random things I didn’t really need, I found that adding it up at the end of the month . . .and the end of the year motivated me to change my habits.

What about you?

Have you ever struggled with buying more ’stuff’ than you need?  Are you simply someone who never bought into consumer culture?  What strategies do you recommend to someone wanting to cut down on their consumer habits?

You and the clutter continuum.

Where do you fall in the clutter continuum?

In the blogosphere and in life, I’ve observed about five distinct clutter cultures (although sub cultures certainly abound).  Some have the need or desire to clear things out, while others may want to avoid decluttering.  I suspect we have a rather diverse community here at the Simple Life in France . . . but you never know until you ask!   Do you fall under any of these categories?

1.  strict minimalists:

you may live in tiny spaces (RV’s), paint your dwellings white and eschew window dressings.  You have clutter beat and are now working on more advanced projects.

2.  simplicity seekers:

You may have recently pared down your affairs, maybe due to a move or a sudden change of heart.  Less cluttered than most, you are still not satisfied and are still pruning away.

3.  recently awakened clutter fighters:

At some point in the not so distant past, you woke up and said, “Huh?  where the heck did all this stuff come from?”  You’re wondering why you even have some of these things.  In fact, you’re pretty sure you have stuff in your home that you have entirely forgotten about waiting to be discovered . . .as in an archeological dig.  You’re ready and determined to purge!  Eventually.  In the meantime, you still may find yourself struggling not to add more stuff to the mix.

4.  cozy clutter bugs:

You like your stuff.  It makes you happy to be able to see the things you own–your book collection, your  childhood toys. . .in fact, there’s more where that came from in storage someplace.   When you find you can’t put things away, you go out and buy some new shelves or closet organizers.  Your closets, in fact, resemble that old video game: tetris, where everything has to fit just so or the game is over!

5.  health hazard:

Some of my readers will think I’m kidding, but I’m not!  In high school, visiting a friend’s home, I realized that I could not distinguish from the ‘trash’ and the rest of the kitchen counter.  In my parent’s house, sitting on the sofa (near the laundry room) often means having a pile of my dad’s (clean–thankfully!) underwear cascade onto your head.  If this isn’t hazardous to your physical health, it can at least leave you emotionally scarred!

Alright–that’s enough of me being nosy for one day.  If you find the above describes you, fire away.  If I haven’t covered your category, feel free to add one. I’ll put my own response in the comment section–for full disclosure purposes.

Shelter publications: the end of decorating your way to security.

I can’t control that big, scary world outside, so I’ll just throw up a new window treatment. Perhaps rather than say that people had their heads in the sand from 2001-2010, we should argue that they had their noses in shelter magazines, or glued to Home and Garden TV.   Can you ignore your problems?  A number of people seem to have tried–albeit with mixed results.  You can now find articles describing the demise of the shelter magazines (not to mention the way of life that goes with them) all over the web.  Meanwhile homes drift ‘underwater,’ governments bail out banks, your neighbor forecloses and a company comes in to do a ‘trash out’ of his home–where they remove all those decorations, the big screen TV, whatever.  (If you’re unfamiliar with the trash out, see this article from the News Hour.)

What the heck is a shelter publication? I found this description from an article Nancy Davis Kho at SFGate.com particularly helpful:

Shelter magazines really came into their own in the post-9/11 environment. Gayle Goodson Butler, editor in chief of Meredith Corp.’s Better Homes and Gardens magazine, summarizes the lure of glossy home-design magazines at a time of national insecurity: “People wanted to create comfort and order in their lives. They might not have been able to control the world outside, but they could control their own home environment.”

Now, am I saying that Martha Stewart, the Home and garden channel and all those decorating neighbors are the cause of our economic woes?  No, I’m not.  They simply served as a distraction from the really pressing concerns during a decade where we could have been facing our troubles.  I’m not even against decorating, having a nice home or even having a home with ‘curb appeal.’  I suppose an interest in these things is neutral–as is an interest in fashion, good food, sex.  The problem is when we allow an ‘interest’ like interior design to become a smoky opiate–and then toke on it as we stand on the deck of a sinking ship.

I for one am quite relieved to see these kinds of publications going under along with the prices of housing and hope it will draw some attention to more relevant concerns.  While the loss of those cozy homes and the publications that coveted them may bring about discomfort–that is what change is all about.  Change, however, can be devastating if you refuse to adapt–or if you’re so busy curling up to a false sense of security that you can’t see it coming.

A cozy home, a simple home and moving–again!

Sometimes I feel like a walking contradiction.  I hate clutter and am fairly frugal by nature and I move often: 12 times in the past 15 years. Then again, I do love the feel of a cozy home.   Now, even though it feels like we just settled in (after 5 months) we’re moving again.  After his car accident, DH won’t be going up our four flights of stairs anytime soon!  Once again, I’m taking stock of our belongings and deciding which ones are really worth keeping, packing and transporting on to our next step.  Maybe I’m holding onto too much. Sometimes, I see blogs about people who live in RV’s and think I’d be perfectly happy to not have to deal with so many ‘earthly burdens.’   Regardless of your persective, repeated moving forces you to re-evaluate your relationship to ’stuff.’  Clearly, I’ve been doing some thinking as I pack.

Our bedroom . . . for the time being.

Books: one hurdle we’ve overcome. DH and I love to read and, as teachers, we also tend to stockpile plenty of books.  Before our last move from San Diego, however, I decided that my books had to go.  We moved to France by suitcase–so our book collection couldn’t fit.  Storing our books in the States didn’t make much sense either.  After all, what good is a book if it’s stuck away in some box and no one can read it?  I decided to liberate my books by giving them to friends and colleagues.  At least I know they’ll be used and read.  I found it hard to part with my books at first, but am glad I did.

Entertainment: yes, we have too many toys. I still allow myself a computer, a bike, running shoes and a yoga mat.  These are my toys.  DH has his bike, shoes, a collection of DVD’s in an album, his computers (yes, that’s plural) and a bag full of electronic toys, which, frankly, I can’t even identify.   It’s funny, isn’t it.  It seems like we have so many things, but when you see our home compared to the average home in the US (or even in France) the place looks fairly sparse.

Our living room/office.

Clothes: we’re actually stockpiling them! DH and I purchased extra clothing before we left the US because it’s so much cheaper there.  We have about two suitcases each–that includes winter, summer, professional and sports attire.  It feels like too much when I’m packing, although I know it will save us money in the future.  Has anyone else ever gone a long time without buying anything new only to have several items of clothing bite the dust at once?  I’ve learned my lesson.  I hate being forced to shop in a pinch–it’s too expensive and you are much more inclined to buy new than used.  That said, I’d love to find a job that would allow me to do away with my ‘professional attire.’ But it’s still too early–the last thing I want to do is be forced to buy clothes for work in a hurry when I already have plenty.

Kitchen supplies:  the bare minimum for someone who loves to cook! We have one box full of pots, pans, bowls and utensils and another, smaller box full of dishes and glasses–good thing I saved the boxes for the next move.  I find that kitchen supplies are so obnoxious and expensive to replace that I prefer just to keep a box full of them on hand–even if that means hiding them away in my mother-in-law’s attic. We do not, however, have any gadgets, mixers, food processors, bread-makers, waffle irons or any other one-use items.

Our kitchen with the fridge we move with us each time!

Furniture:  holding onto it seems cheaper, for now. One bed, one dresser, one futon-type couch, one table, four chairs, one small desk, one bookshelf, two wicker baskets, one tiny frigdge, a toaster oven and one tiny washing machine.  When you rent an apartment in France, the appliances don’t come with it–which makes moving slightly more annoying.  Years ago, we decided to always hang on to our used and cheap appliances because we can almost always fit them in our in-law’s garage between moves.  Buying new each time would not be cost-effective (especially given how often we’ve moved back and forth).  This works as long as we know people who have space to store our stuff

Someday DH and I hope to buy a tiny house on some land. Our new place will not be larger than our current apartment (65 meters square).  In fact, we may decide to go with an even smaller space.  In that case, we’ll get rid of a few things when the time comes.  For now, a lot of our furniture is used by us or purchased second-hand–anything we’d have to replace would cost more than what we already own.

Consumerism: proof we haven’t evolved to deal with abundance.

Yesterday, out walking on a beautiful Southern California fall day, I peeked into the open garages of a few expensive, designer homes to find them full to overflowing with all manner of things.  Although I grew up here, the specter seemed foreign to me after just a few months of concerted effort at downshifting and simplifying.

I wandered towards a shopping center because I need some contact solution.  It is a place filled with giant, box-shaped stores: Target, Bed Bath and Beyond . . . banks, cell phone carriers, sporting goods stores and fast food joints.  In case your garage has not yet reached critical mass or you ‘need’ more fast food, this is your place to be. Spending this past week in Southern California, I’ve really been struck by the amount of ’stuff’ and ‘food’ surrounding us here.

It’s more than what I’ve seen in France, but it looks like the French are catching up all the time. Hypermarchés are popping up everywhere, people are carrying around increasing amounts of useless things as the population falls increasingly victim to obesity.  So much for the French not getting fat.  People show a worrying trend towards being overweight, spending on credit and hoarding clutter in the US, but given the appropriate circumstances, anyone can fall victim to this kind of lifestyle.

In the US, we’ve created an environment that seems practically designed to waylay a species that has known scarcity during its formative evolutionary years.  Other countries ‘following in our footsteps’ will not be far behind in this trend towards consumer addiction on a mass scale.

In August, I saw an interview by David Solomon on The News Hour with Ellen Shell, the author of the book Cheap.   Shell has researched our consumer culture and it’s cost in detail for her book and the interview certainly merits a quick peek.  But here’s something Shell said that I find relevant to this post:

Brain scientists have shown that a good deal triggers the pleasure centers of the brain in almost all of us to such an extent that it obliterates a more reasonable, rational side.

In the case of bargain-hunting, the anticipation of owning something for very low price is what triggers the biggest reaction, the biggest pleasure sensations in the brain. It’s not the actual owning of the object, OK?

Shell’s goes on to argue that our hunting, gathering ancestors passing up a bargain or an ‘opportunity’ in the form of a missed kill or food not immediately foraged could be a life and death issue. Apparently we come from a long tradition of ancestors who took advantage of ‘deals’ immediately out of fear that later scarcity would not forgive the decision to pass up on opportunities.

It’s easy to see how the instinct to grab at opportunities in shopping is directly related to our tendencies to amass tons of clutter, gain weight and hoard things. In her article “A Clutter too Deep for Mere Bins and Shelves,”(January 2008) Tara Parker Pope of the New York Times discusses the link between clutter and health problems (including weight gain and psychological issues).  She also notes what she sees as a trend in concern over clutter and related health issues:

The country’s collective desire to clean up is evident in the proliferation of organization-oriented businesses like the Container Store and California Closets. Reality shows like “Mission Organization” on HGTV and “How Clean is Your House?” on Lifetime feed a national obsession to declutter. The magazine Real Simple has even created a $13 special issue on cleaning house.

I’m certainly not arguing that we can’t live in a time in which ‘cheap’ things and cheap food are abundant without reacting in wasteful, unhealthy and financially unwise ways–we can always counter our instincts with rational thought and mindfulness. It strikes me as obvious, however, that many people are not doing so.  Going against instinct and evolution takes time, effort and discipline.  It takes space to think and mull things over.  That’s not going to happen if you spend your time working, shopping, driving, eating out and then rushing to the gym to try to work off some of that extra food.

Overcoming our evolutionary impulses in this current climate takes an organized and focused effort–it will require living ‘examined lives.’ Particularly as the holiday season approaches along with the influx of foods, things and ‘reasons to buy,’ it’s important to recognize the impulse to spend for what it is: a leftover instinct from times of scarcity that (at least for now) is not relevant to our current condition.

I intend to spend the holiday season avoiding commercial TV and shopping centers–both the US and French varieties.  I’m going to use this festive season to reflect on my life and spend time with the people I love.

A world without closets? Frugal solutions for a small planet.

New apartment, no closet!

Ah the joys of living in old quirky buildings–no closets for example!  DH and I certainly noticed this when we found our new place and wondered how much it would bother us and/or cost us.  We needed an inexpensive solution fast–one that would allow us to hang our clothes without buying a massive, pricey wardrobe or worse–without buying more of that fake plastic junk furniture that seems to be growing at an exponential rate on this earth.  Finding something simple, frugal, earth-friendly and practical seemed like a tall order.

Makeshift  closet to the rescue:

In the meantime, we slapped together a temporary solution using things we had already and some un-used stuff family members had lying around.  We figured we’d eventually run across a better solution.

Our makeshift closet

Closet made of portable clothing racks:

I hung our clothes on an extra rack on wheels that my mother in law had in her home. DH gets the bottom row because he doesn’t have any long dresses–seems fair to me.  After a few months in which we never found a better solution, we got out our winter coats.  I hung them on the sturdy metal railing just to the left of our clothes rack.  It’s initially designed to keep us from falling to our deaths on the tiny stairs leading to the main floor.  (It really is sturdy, it bore my entire weight one day when my feet when out from under me and I found myself just hanging there like a monkey).

The really cool think about this closet is that I can wheel the rack of clothes around and access a little nook behind the clothes.  I keep a few hiking supplies, our suitcases for weekend trips, spare bedding and summer clothes stored in plastic bags on a rickety little shelf that we’d collected when we last lived in France.  It’s all out of sight, but easily accessible.

Uncovered closet

The best makeshift closet ever:

To keep our clothes free of dust and also protect them from fading in the sunlight, I covered them with two curtains that we had–again from the last time we lived in France.

My favorite function of this closet--pivoting clothes rack, hidden storage.

We never intended for this set up to become a permanent fixture, but today I’m glad we slapped it together with what we had and waited before buying something new.  This is the best closet set up I’ve ever had. It’s completely functional and frugal.  Not only did it stop us from ‘needing’ to buy more, it stops us from buying more clothing on a daily basis–we don’t have room for anything new.

Initially we worried that we’d have an unruly mess of unsightly clothes everywhere, but being able to see everything helps us keep everything organized.  It certainly gives us an incentive!

And since we have truly limited space and over-stocking makes the racks buckle and threaten to break down, we’ve been called on to whittle down our clothing little by little.  Those clothes that you never wear that normally drift to the darkest depths of the closet?  They have no place to hide here.

This is one temporary solution that will probably be my set up of choice for years to come.  The next step for us?  Cutting back even more on clothing.  I’ll keep you posted.

How to unlearn consumerism 101

Note:  this post is about the first steps in this process. I’m well aware that some people out there are far beyond this stage in the journey.  A follow-up discussion on more extreme measures would be really interesting–as would any comments about how other simple life blackbelts made the first step of their journey.

I’m not going to claim that the shift from the consumer lifestyle came naturally to me.  I started out with the following mentality: If I can afford it and I want it, why not buy it? I arrived at adulthood with a well-formed consumer habit and no one was asking me to question it or change it–in fact, societal pressure was quite to the contrary.

What I propose isn’t so much an overnight solution or a complete and sudden shift.  I suggest that anyone who wants to make a serious change in their consumer habits start with the most personally motivating changes, but remain open to refinement for years to come.  As you slough off the layers of old, dead habit, you may find that there are several more layers to pick at. Here are some basic steps.

1. Stop watching TV. First of all, you have the obvious commercials.  When I visit other homes, there are things that people have and buy that I’ve never even heard of because I don’t watch TV to know they exist.  Special forms of toothpaste, the latest drug for XYZ, a sexier car (cars are almost always about sex apparently–well, unless they are cars that allow you to live in a permanent outdoor vacation), a better razor–I wasn’t aware that those things existed, much less that I may ‘need’ them somehow.  But there are more insidious forms of consumer boosting.  Think of all those TV shows and movies in which the average joe character lives in an apartment or house that is priced FAR beyond the means of what his or her salary would be in real life.  Not to mention the pricey wardrobe, haircut etc.  TV can give you a very false version of reality if you give it too much of your time.  It can inflate your sense of need.
2. Don’t buy new for a year. Yes, yes, I’ve seen people mock this technique.  The thinking goes that after a year, you’ll just go back to your old habits.  But that’s precicely the point–you won’t.  I decided not to buy anything new for a year some time ago.  During that time, I had to constantly think ahead about what I was going to do at Christmas, how I’d deal with holes in my professional wardrobe etc.  Because this was a big shift in my habits, it required more mental work.  But as the year wore on, NOT buying new became the default habit.  Now that’s the easiest way for me.  Trust me, you’ll see.  By the end of a year’s time, you’ll be an expert on waiting out new purchases, seeing what you can do without, trading items, buying used etc.
3. Get rid of extra ’stuff’ around your home. It’s a good exercise. If you’re starting out the way I did, you’ll find that your consumer lifestyle has led you to collect some amazing artifacts–things you spent money on, that you don’t need or want and that now fill your home, take your space, and tempt you to pay for more space either in your home or in storage.  You’ll have to decide what to do with these vestiges of your old lifestyle.  It feels wasteful to get rid of them, right?  But what I learned from the process was that the true waste occured when I bought these items in the first place, not when I gave them away to people that wanted them, sold them on craigslist or sent them to goodwill.  Downsizing goes very well with a year of not buying for a good unlearning experience.
4. Consider a smaller living space. Obviously, moving has its expenses, but this is not only about money.  I’ve found that I don’t feel more relaxed in a larger space–I feel more relaxed in a less cluttered space.  I’ve been in very large homes where I’ve felt like I had to keep glancing around at the walls for fear of something popping off the overburdened shelves and landing on me, where I have to push aside decorative cushions and throws in order to sit down, where I have to clear a space in magazines and remote controls on the coffee table to find a space for my drink.  I’ve also been in tiny rooms that echoed with empty space, where there is room for me to come in and feel at home.  Living in a smaller space is a great way to learn this lesson–it also makes you think about each and every new purchase.  At first, you think of the new purchase when you get home and realize you don’t have room–but soon, the habit of thinking before you buy becomes inate.
5. Suround yourself with people you love and whose company you enjoy. If you’ve been using stuff to fill a void in your life, you may find that you’re now facing that void head on.  I found that shopping as a passtime made me less likely to spend time with people.  Once I let go of the ’stuff’ in my life, I realized that I really missed people.  So I went out in search of long-lost friends and precious time with people I care about.
6. Replace empty consumerism with other passions. Let’s be honest, how many of us have read all the great classics we wanted to?  Are there some books at your local library you could explore? What about the cultural and natural resources in your area?  When I worked 60 hours a week and spent my free time consuming, there was no TIME for these kinds of passions.  You might initially feel bored and lost as you let go of the habit of buying, shopping and consuming, but if you fill it in with richer things, you will create a positive reinforcement of your new habit.  Imagine yourself in the evening with a clasical concert on a free radio station and a library book in your hand, working in your garden, or writing your own novel.  These are the creative fruits of your new habits.

My questions for you:

The above are the things I did as I made the change.  But maybe  you followed a different path?  Maybe you were born frugal or anti-consumer?  I’d love to hear different perspectives.

How we learned to live on much less–and our mistakes along the way.

My husband and I knew we’d be making this transition to a lower salary for over two years before we actually made our move.  The first time we tried moving to France and living off one salary was a highly stressful experience for us, so we put some thought into how we were going to prepare this time around.

We struggled with our first move from France (and to a one salary lifestyle)  because we were so addicted to consumer culture before we left the States. We’d been living in the Silicon Valley, and quite honestly, were bored out of our minds.  Without family or many friends in the area, we were rootless.  We earned far more money than we needed to live and we spent the rest on various forms of entertainment: eating out, going to the movies, shopping in expensive shops, having cocktails at swanky cafés, going to concerts, going to the gym, having coffee out several times a week, expensive vacations, toys, gadgets, electronic devices.  We still saved money and we had no debt, so we actually considered ourselves frugal compared to people we knew.  But we had grown to depend on a quick fix of a new comfort, a new experience or a new toy for diversion and happiness.  We had begun to feel entitled to all of these things.

So when we moved to France the first time–until I found a job at least–we felt deprived by the fact that we could no longer buy ourselves toys and clothes anytime we wanted.  A new pair of shoes sent us over budget for the month.  A night out for a few beers?  Ooops, not in our budget.  We felt like we’d lost something we deserved–something we needed to be happy.  And that outlook colored our entire perception of our experience.

Despite our  initial unhappiness, we learned from our first move to France and adopted some new behaviors and outlooks.  Once we moved back to California, we decided to continue that way of life–regardless of the fact that we were making much more money .  Here’s a basic rundown of the changes we made:

Behaviors and habits

We no longer . . .

• eat out
• go to the movie theater or pay for entertainment
• buy prepared foods (including breads, cookies, canned or frozen foods etc)
• pay for gym memberships or fitness classes
• shop for fun
• go window shopping or wander around in cities where the only thing to do is eat out or shop
• own a second car
• drive to do our errands–my husband basically uses the car to go to work
• pay for a 2 bedroom apartment–we’re down to one bedroom and one bathroom
• own a TV
• receive, buy or read magazines or newspapers
• use the heater (well, so far so good)
• buy junk food
• borrow money, run a balance on credit cards or have debt

We do

• participate in clubs and do free outdoor sports (hiking, biking, running)
• occasionally go out for a coffee or a beer, but no more than once a month
• eat at least one ‘nice’ meal each week at home
• read, work on projects, spend time together or with family in our spare time
• get our news from the internet
• occasionally watch a movie on my husband’s computer
• listen to music or sing/play the guitar together
• go on weekend trips and explore the countryside on foot
• make our own bread, cookies etc
• wait a while before purchasing anything to see if we can do without it, get it used or even get it free
• have a small apartment, so that new ’stuff’ is not a welcome addition

Outlook changes:

We no longer feel entitled to gadgets, clothes, luxuries and extra comforts. We’ve dropped the notion of, ‘Hey, don’t I deserve this?  Don’t I work hard?’  No, there’s no such thing as deserving extras.  Everyone deserves to live well–including lots of people who are not lucky to live as well as we do.  We’re not entitled to anything.  We’re certainly not entitled to more.

We’ve realized that we don’t need to actually spend money to enjoy ourselves or be happy. I quickly realized that I actually got a lot more enjoyment out of meeting new people to bike or hike with or joining writing groups through clubs, associations or meetup.com than I did from paying activities like gym memberships and eating out.  I find walking in nature or on the beach FAR superior to strolling around a shopping area . . . where I’m likely to end up shopping.  My husband and I have had some really memorable evenings snuggled up on the couch with a cup of tea and a good conversation that we value more than a trip to an overpriced movie theater and an industrial sized bucket of popcorn.

We’ve realized that a little extra work, effort, labor or discomfort will not somehow make us weaker or hurt us. This is an important one to keep in mind and not always that easy.  For example, we live on the 4th floor of a building without an elevator.  After grocery shopping (or after a bike ride) when lugging my things upstairs, I’m sometimes tempted to feel sorry for myself, but I remind myself that going up the stairs might seem like an inconvenience, but really, it’s probably nothing but good for me.  In fact, I recently read an article in National Geographic about ‘Blue Zones’ or areas in which life expectancies are much higher than the norm.  Many of the case studies they discussed included people who’d lived through wars and times of near-starvation or people who did physical labor every day–even in their old age.  You can look at those kinds of experiences as discomforts that will forever leave you weaker, but it’s not necessarily the case.

We remember that we are very, very lucky. Neither of us has ever been directly involved in a war.  We are both in good health and have always had access to good health care.  We’ve never gone hungry or been without appropriate nutrition or shelter.  We have a stable income source, no debt and some savings.   We have a solid, happy relationship.  We’re happy most days and we basically live without any significant hardship.  Most people in the world are not so lucky.  Our life is a very precious gift and we try never to forget it.